A new lecture series has started at the Downtown campus to give students an entertaining supplement to their writing classes.

The series entitled “A Writer’s Life,” included Dwight Allen and Michelle Wildgen in the first discussion of the series. Allen is the author of such works as “The Green Suit,” “The Typewriter Satyr” and “Judge.” Wildgen, the current executive editor of Tin House Magazine, has authored “You’re No You” and “But Not for Long.”

Larry Hansen, who is coordinating the series, came up with the idea with the assistance of fellow instructors John Galligan, Natasha Kassulke and Bill Yasbec. It came out of the goal of creating something that was a supplement to the instruction given to students in the classroom.

“We basically said, ‘we have a lot to offer here and we can do it. We have a lot of creative writing teachers. We have journalism teachers. We have this great span of courses in professional writing. We have a lot of expertise and we have a lot of contacts,’” said Hansen, who is an English and journalism instructor. “Let’s do more than just offer than just the courses.”

That supplement of the classroom turned out to be a lecture series that was tailored to students who are interested in some aspect of writing, whether that would be novel writing, poetry, screenwriting, journalism or even social media. The idea was to show people in the Madison area what it’s like to be a writer in many of these areas, Hansen says.

“We wanted to have a sort of a panel discussion where they talk about not just their latest novel or their latest poem or their latest film, but talk about the process of writing and why they write and how they write,” he said.

Hansen says he hopes to have novelists go to the lecture series to listen to social media content writers, poets go to listen to journalists and writers just going to listen to writers in general.

“I truly believe a writer is a writer is a writer,” he said. “A lot of writers love just the idea of story creation and putting it out before the public. It just takes many forms and what we’re doing with this lecture series is presenting all these different forms. So it’s all the writers getting together and talking about their world, their life, their craft.”

After a turnout of over 50 people, this could be a fixture for student writers throughout the college.

“I just think that we do have a writing community here at Madison College and the turnout shows it,” Hansen said.

On March 22, the next event in “A Writer’s Life” series will take place, which will be a discussion on poetry to be moderated by instructor Matt Guenette. In April, there will be a discussion on screenwriting to tie into the Wisconsin Film Festival. In May, the discussion has been planned to be on travel writing.