Centenary Professor Dr. Spencer Dew Publishes Second Fictional Piece, HERE IS HOW IT HAPPENS

Shreveport, LA

Centenary's Dr. Spencer Dew, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, recently celebrated his published novel, Here is How it Happens with a reading during the English Department Wednesday Colloquium.

Here is How it Happens is Dew's second fictional piece to be published. The dark comic work is comprised of a series of scenes encapsulating a few days in the lives of several directionless art students in Ohio.

"I was interested in the idea of a novel in which young people are given the opportunity to change their lives but don't," said Dew. "There's a kind of tension between that moment when you're at college, about to leave college, enter adulthood, and conceivably everything is possible. At the same time maybe most of the patterns are locked in place, and I think there is a sort of wakening to that tension."

Dew first began plotting his novel years ago while studying at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. Here is How it Happens was later published in 2012 by Ampersand Books and has received praise from Xenofiles, Small Press Reviews, and Arcadia Magazine among others.

A review by Publishers Weekly was particularly thrilling for Dew who was said to have captured the "'violent ambivalence' of young people fearing their future, doubting their potential, and...stylizing their 'still-developing artifice.' His prose is simultaneously urgent and hesitant as his characters are desperate for connection but also terrified of what looms ahead."

"So much of writing is re-writing, and so much of good writing is based on wide-ranging reading," says Dew to student-writers. "(A liberal arts education) offers great preparation for artistic production in large part because it forces you to engage in such variety of topics and methods, to experience random, chance encounters with ideas or works or thinkers who may well turn out to be major influences."

Here is How it Happens is available at Amazon.com.