TIFFANY NICOLE

  Golden Gardens, WA Recently I finished my freshman year of college at the UW. Spring Quarter, I took an intro to short story fiction writing class which will go down in personal infamy for being the hardest yet most rewarding class I've ever had the pleasure to take. My professor, Rae Paris, is a talented, strong, inspirational woman who constantly gave real, honest feedback on my writing which, while frustrating, changed how I write fiction and non-fiction alike.  Upon submitting our final story for the class, we also had to write this statement of aesthetics. The prompt and my own statement are attached below.   North Bend, WA "While writing, reading, and responding to writing are crucial in developing craft, also critical is articulating reasons for writing. The overall questions you’re trying to answer for this assignment are these: Who are you? What stories do you want to tell and why? In order to answer these q...

"Yes All Women because the odds of being attacked by a shark are 1 in 3,748,067, while a woman's odds of being raped are 1 in 6. Yet fear of sharks is seen as rational while being cautious of men is seen as misandry."  I think finding that quote was the first time I put into perspective the fierce adversity women face on a daily basis. While the accuracy of this data can be called into question, the point still stands: sexual assault happens in this country at an alarming rate. But perhaps alarming is too gentle of a word because every 98 seconds , someone in the United States is sexually assaulted. At school, I have attended several meetings held by an organization on campus to discuss and  prevent sexual assault in our Greek Community. We talk about everything from rape culture on college campuses to how to best support someone who needs help. At one of our gatherings, someone brought up the fact that most statistics about assault focus on the amount of peo...