Danielle Livingston, senior writing major, and Karalee Manis, senior writing major, will be the featured readers in a senior project reading on Thursday, March 30 at 7 p.m. in the 1862 Lounge. Melissa Reise, senior writing major, will be the opening reader of the event and there will be an open mic after Livingston’s and Manis’s readings.

Livingston’s reading is sponsored by Psi Chi International Honor Society in Psychology and Manis’s reading is sponsored by Alpha Phi Sigma Criminal Justice Honor Society.

Livingston and Manis titled their senior project reading “There Might Be Something Wrong With Us: A Bunch of Weird Poems We Wrote for Credit.” Manis explained the title by saying, “The name came about when I was tasked (Danielle told me it was my job) with coming up with a title. I was trying to think of titles that would go with the subject matter of both of our senior projects, so I went with a broader theme of ‘we wrote these weird poems, some of the topics are kind of dark or creepy or odd or a little off, and yeah, maybe there’s a little something wrong with us.’”

Livingston added, “One of our big jokes was that after we published and professors saw our poems, they’d ask us ‘what is wrong with you?’ and tell us we couldn’t graduate. Our joke became the title.”

The two seniors have been working on their senior project reading together and have been bouncing ideas off of each other. “For the reading, Karalee and I have been splitting the responsibilities down the middle like any good married couple (just kidding!). No, but really, some responsibilities I took, some she took,” Livingston said. “We did our senior projects at the same time and we would foster each other’s weird poems and encourage the weirdness.”

The collaboration came about after their Advanced Poetry course. Manis stated, “We were both in that same class in fall 2015 and then went on to Developing the Senior Project the following spring 2016, where it was just the two of us and [our professor].”

This is not the first time the two seniors have worked together. Manis explained, “We’ve also shared a lot of other classes together since we’ve met—we’re both writing majors and I’m a psych minor, where Dani is doing a second major in psych. During our time with The Mirror, we worked together a lot, too. We both worked our way up together, with Dani eventually becoming the executive editor and me managing editor. We also work together for Seems as assistant editors.”

The process of their senior projects has been a long one, but they both have helped each other through it. Manis said, “After the developing class, we had both decided to write our poems over the summer. Before we started that, we both had May Term together, so during those three weeks it was just the two of us in the Mac Lab for three hours a day. During this time, we started on our poems, sometimes just talking about amusing ideas we had for them. That fall we had written all of our poems and had some final editing, and then we worked together to layout our books and have them printed.”

Livingston’s and Manis’s printed works will be available at the event on Thursday. Livingston’s book of poems, Word Salad, focuses on psychology, while Manis’s book of poems, The Mass Wasting, is based on crime and destruction.