This morning, I awoke and realized I was freezing. Then I realized that was because it’s cold outside, so I took out my iPhone to ask it some things about that. One of its new-fangled weather apps showed me a picture of Larry King and told me to wear a windbreaker, skinny jeans, and purple docksiders today. I don’t have any of those things and felt really confused about how Larry King related to the weather, so I went back to the old standard app. And then I saw it.
A fire danger statement.
Surely there is no coincidence here. Surely this is due to the quickly-approaching third edition of The Burning Swamp Reading Series, which shall take place this Thursday. Surely “a cooler but very dry air mass” is merely code for “a chorus of rejoicing Swamp Monster voices, whose very joy shall burn the very earth.”
It’s time to learn about another of our earth-scorching readers: the ever-kind and ever talented Evin Hughes.
A Little About Evin Hughes (by Evin Hughes)
This is a photograph of Evin Hughes, who totally doesn’t look squirrelly at all. Though according to spell check, he might look like a squire.
I hail from another borough called Swainsboro, a small place that most people know as “that town I drove through.” We are a squirrelly race, what with the annual festival celebrating pine trees (seriously) and our obsession with pinecone sculptures.
At Georgia Southern, I am double majoring in Writing & Linguistics and Information Technology. I enjoy writing creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. I love to read, can sort of speak Arabic, am an avid stockpiler of stationeries because you can’t have too many sticky notes, really good at balancing spoons on the tip of my nose during dinner parties, and a devout name-dropper. Oh and I recently won this award for an essay I wrote on ethics that was given to me by the Muhammad Ali Center, The Norman Mailer Center, and The National Council of Teachers of English.*
Evin’s Answers to Our Swamp Survey:
1. What’s your favorite cryptozoology creature?
Not enough people appreciate Barney—the psychedelic-colored, stickler-for-education, and sophisticated dinosaur.
2. Do you believe in Swamp Primates?
Where I grew up there was a swamp behind the woods in my backyard. I can still hear their mating calls.
3. What do you think we should do about all of the recent Swamp Primate attacks?
They are deadly afraid of bad literature. Just read Fifty Shades of Grey over a megaphone and they will run in fear.
* That award, incidentally, would be this award, which is totally awesome and a really big deal and some serious evidence of what a remarkable human being and writer Evin is. Also, that link will take you to a link to his essay. Read it.
The Burning Swamp Reading Series 