by Kylie Berry ’26
As I have had the opportunity of being taught by Visiting Assistant Professor Adam Abraham in his class “Serializing Fiction”, I was excited to find out he was doing a reading of his book Attack of the Monster Musical: A Cultural History of Little Shop of Horrors at the Van Etten-Lacey House. This presentation consisted of Professor Abraham’s review of three editions of Little Shop of Horrors: the two movies (1960, 1986) and the musical (1982). During this reading, we were encouraged to think about how different forms of media for the same story, also called transmediation, influenced how it was told. The transmediation of Little Shop of Horrors was explored, and audience members were invited to examine the differences based on varying translations, environments, and authors of the story. My favorite part of the presentation was the wild background of the 1960 film, as apparently it was filmed over the course of 2 days. In general, it was also nice to learn more about Little Shop of Horrors, as I had known nothing about any of the versions beforehand.
Though to this day I still cannot get the Little Shop of Horrors opening song out of my head, I think overall this experience was very useful from the insight it gave on how to approach working on a nonfiction book. I’m the kind of person that doesn’t tend to write nonfiction, at least not for fun. Sure, I’ve written my fair share of personal journal entries and blog posts, but it isn’t the first genre I think of when I sit down to write. Professor Abraham’s reading made me realize that perhaps I should try and research and write something nonfiction about a certain topic on my own.
Moving forward, I’m excited to attend more nonfiction readings along with exploring the genre myself. I could also try and find some people that write nonfiction during Free Write Fridays and ask how they approach writing.
Leave a Reply