President Kina Mallard, Brooke Fountain, Jessica Fanczi, Riley Gray, Provost Mark Roberts and Bill Walsh.
When Reinhardt University English majors taking Senior Seminar couldn’t find a publishing company for their books, they did the next best thing: they created their own.
Creating a publishing company amid a college semester seems time consuming, but most of the semester was smooth sailing for creative writing majors Brooke Fountain, Jessie Fanczi and Riley Gray. It wasn’t until the Amazon publishing company they started with announced they would soon be discontinuing their service that the process became complicated.
The students, however, were prepared. On the first day of class they decided to function as a publishing company, warranting an official name. In honor of professor Bill Walsh providing cold pizza in class on the last day of each month for breakfast, Cold Pizza Press came to life.
“These three energetic and talented students have defied the odds. Each in their own creative way has persevered to write a quality book and to create a publishing company that other students can utilize,” said Walsh. “This is a tremendous accomplishment for the students and a benchmark for the undergraduate writing program. I feel such immense pride for the effort they put into the Senior Seminar.”
Fanczi published “Little Crack House on the Prairie,” a literary collection of poetry, prose and drama, made up of various stories with a common underlying theme, and some sort of quirk. Gray wrote “The Ice Room,” a script about a comatose man coping with the death of his wife. Fountain’s “Burning Memories” – a compilation of work during her time at Reinhardt, includes short stories, poetry, an interview, an academic essay and a preview of a script she is developing.
“I’m not a huge fan of putting my work out there for others to read, but the more I wrote and compiled for this book, the more I wanted to see my writing come together in one piece,” said Fountain.
Fountain, of Dallas, Ga., believes Cold Pizza Press will provide seniors the opportunity to function as a real publishing company, teaching them how the publishing industry functions and how authors are involved in the process after writing the book.
Dacula resident Fanczi said it will benefit future students entering the course.
“Not only will they get delicious pizza in the mornings, but they will also get a sense of continuity and community with other members of the department,” said Fanczi. “It’s a fun tradition that I think will bring past, present and future students together since they’ve all worked for Cold Pizza Press and had similar experiences.”
