Tusculum College student David Ronsckevitz, a senior English and creative writing major from Franklin, Tenn., is featured in this month’s issue of Connotation Press, an international literary magazine.
Ronsckevitz’s one-act play, “The House of Autumn Fire,” is featured along with an introductory biography on Ronsckevitz. The play began during Ronsckevitz’s advanced scriptwriting class last fall under English Professor Wayne Thomas. Thomas is also the author of Ronsckevitz’s introduction.
Thomas notes that Ronsckevitz’s “prose is smart and sometimes poetic and sometimes…. tough enough to make you shudder.”
The play centers on a suspicious fire that resulted in the death of an entire family, save one teenage girl, and that girl’s retelling of what led up to the fire. The play is set on sacred Cherokee land in the Appalachian Mountains. The play’s full text can be found on the Connotation Press’ website at <http://www.connotationpress.com/featured-undergrads/588-david-roncskevitz-introduced-by-wayne-thomas-october-2010>.
According to Thomas, an earlier draft of the play was selected by visiting writer Patrick Madden as a winner of the 2009-2010 Curtis-Owens Literary Awards.
Ronsckevitz is assistant managing editor of “The Tusculum Review,” the college’s international literary journal.
“Connotation Press” has only been around for a year, but the journal has already featured a U. S. Poet Laureate, two Pulitzer Prize winners and more than a half dozen U. S. State Laureates. Its website is regularly visited by people in 91 different countries.