Scene Spotlight

By Oliver Evangelista and Jane Muhlstein

Scott Garson

? English Professor

Born in North Field, Minn., Garson is far from home. He has gone through many different neighborhoods in his quest for life and stories. He grew up in Des Moines, Iowa and went to graduate school in Virginia. When he wasn't waiting tables, rooting for the Vikings, teaching classes in English as a second language or pretending to study, this vagabond was writing the occasional story that placed third in the Playboy Fiction Writing Contest (he swears the story was innocent). He won several grants from the Mary Roberts Foundation to help pay for his MFA from George Mason University.

In the summer of 2000, he finally found a woman who could put up with a writer and got married. The couple then moved to the Bay Area so that his wife, Becky, could attend grad school at the University of California - Santa Cruz. Soon after, Garson had his first child, Naomi. When talking about his baby, Garson sounds like a child himself and is ecstatic to claim that Naomi had recently rolled over for the first time.

In his work world, the professor is primarily a writer of fiction, and has a story in the upcoming edition of the Crescent Review, a well-respected publication on the East Coast. He is also close to the end of his first novel, which he hopes will pull in the big bucks. After traveling, studying, writing, marrying and making babies, he has yet to find a permanent home. Since he has moved around so much throughout his life, it is probably hard to identify where exactly home is. However, he has learned to support the Sacramento Kings in the quest to destroy, who he calls, the "evil empire" - Shaq and company. But with the majority of his and his wife's family spread across the Midwest and East Coast, it looks like the Garsons will be off seeking their roots, and those of us who got to meet him and learn from him while he lived in the Golden State can consider ourselves privileged.

Nicole Docimo

? Class of '04

? English major, creative writing minor

For as long as she can remember, creative writing has been a passion of Nicole Docimo. When she was in high school, she and a friend wanted to start a creative writing club. "It's a lot harder in high school to get a group of people together who are interested in creative writing," she said.

Now Docimo is taking advantage of her time at Santa Clara to bring that dream to fruition. She and fellow English major Jamie Sheridan are starting a club that will foster the creative writing talents of Santa Clara students. The group will be open to all kinds of creative writing, "which means poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction," said Docimo.

"It's a workshopping concept, which means you bring in something you've been working on and get feedback from a group of people. It's pretty much what you do in a creative writing class," she said. Before, Santa Clara students who were not enrolled creative writing classes did not have the opportunity to share their work with and get advice from their peers.

Docimo feels this is an important opportunity for the many students who are interested in creative writing and want to get responses to their work throughout the writing process. "There are a lot of great opportunities for you to share your work in terms of open mics in the bay area," she said, "but there are not a lot of opportunities to bring in things you are working on and get feedback."