Growing up with parents who both hold English PhDs, Thalia Halloran was always drawn to literature. Halloran began learning how to read and write at only three years old. In their Bloomington, Indiana home, Halloran’s older sister offered rudimentary lessons. The pair would write letters and sound out words together.
“Once I knew that stories were a thing I could read,” Halloran said, “I immediately wanted to make them too.”
Seventeen years later and now a junior at Duke University, Halloran is doing just that. Her passion lies in writing creative works and expressing feelings through her stories, she said. As an English major with minors in creative writing and history, she has immersed herself in the humanities.
Last year, Halloran took part in an arts incubator program called StudioDuke, a collaboration between Duke Entertainment, Media & Arts Network (DEMAN), Duke Innovation & Entrepreneurship, and Duke Arts. StudioDuke pairs Duke students with creative industry professionals to provide mentorship and help develop students’ creative projects. Halloran spent the year writing and refining a collection of short stories.
Mentors are often Duke alumni, Halloran said, or other professionals involved with the arts at Duke. Past StudioDuke mentors have included Chuck Adams, executive editor at Algonquin Books publishing; Claire Florian, studio company manager at the American Ballet Theatre; and Rob Chavis, a comedy writer for ABC’s Black-ish.
Amy Unell, Duke’s Arts Engagement & Partnerships Senior Director, helps run the budding program. “StudioDuke is a two-semester creative lab and mentorship program providing students the opportunity to take their advanced, on-going creative projects to the next level,” Unell wrote in an email. StudioDuke students have worked on a wide range of creative projects, including screenplays, novellas, podcasts, music compositions and choreography.
To be selected for StudioDuke, students need to submit a project that is already well under way. Over the course of the year, the selected students work with their mentors to polish their projects and make them the best they can be.
“I submitted a short story collection draft,” Halloran said. “You have to have more than just an idea. Our group had people working on compositions, films, poetry collections, really all sorts of different creative projects.”
Halloran was paired with novelist Maria Kuznetsova for mentorship. “Working with her was really interesting. I learned a lot about her journey to being where she is as a writer,” Halloran said. “I also got one-on-one direct feedback on stories that I’d written, so I could help improve them and expand my collection,” she said.
English majors Anil Prasad and Anna Kasradze are students in this year’s StudioDuke cohort, both working on writing projects. Kasradze is writing a novel about cultural dislocation, based on her experiences in a Georgian-American family. Her mentor is the New York Times bestselling novelist Christina Baker Kline. “[She] has been really encouraging, and inspired me to set bigger goals,” Kasradze said.
Prasad is developing a novel for young readers, which he wrote this past summer. He hopes to get his work published with the help of his mentor, Julia Livshin, a Duke graduate who now works as a literary agent.
Halloran said that the mix of students, mentors, and different kinds of projects was one of her favorite aspects of StudioDuke. Everyone could help and learn from each other, she said. Halloran’s StudioDuke group met for monthly dinners to share updates on their projects and occasionally hear from guest speakers.
“You get people from all over, and all these different types of life experiences and arts careers,” Halloran said. “They really have a lot of insight. And you also learn a lot from seeing the other students’ projects and watching them progress.”
StudioDuke is virtual this year, but is still able to hold successful programming online. “The monthly cohort dinners are now Zooms, which gives us the opportunity to hear from creative professionals across the country,” Unell said.
Halloran finished StudioDuke with a stronger, more cohesive set of short stories, she said. She’s thankful for the program and for the English Department for supporting her passion for creative writing.
“I love stories,” Halloran said. “I think that they’re the most human thing that we do.” Reading and writing allows Halloran to understand the world around her better and more intricately. Stories give her hope and strengthen her sense of empathy, she said.
A short story Halloran wrote last spring, called Blonde, won the Rosati Creative Writing Award for Duke undergraduates. The award is given to a student each year for an outstanding work of creative writing.
Blonde follows a young woman who decides to dye her hair blonde, and explores the range of reasons behind the change. The story digs into the main character’s complex interpersonal relationships and her relationship with herself, Halloran said.
“The first draft of it just spilled out in the course of a couple hours,” she said. “There’s something really magical when the ideas are just flowing onto the page.”
Halloran enjoys creative writing so much that she hopes to be a novelist one day. She’s still figuring out what she would like to do after graduation, she said, but making a living as a writer is a dream of hers. “Whatever I do, it will have a significant reading and writing component to it,” she said, “because those are just the things I love to do most.”
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