During the event, Tardiff gathered trash and recycled materials and brought it back for the students to make into their own art.

Tardiff, a writing consultant at the WC, said he was motivated to help coordinate the event to find common ground between the sort of work the WC does and what takes place in the book, he said.

Tardiff said for the characters in the book who lived in the slums, a major part of their life was finding something someone else might have viewed as trash and making it into something valuable to them — the same idea behind much of the creativity the WC works to cultivate.

“We want people to think about writing as a creative process where the possibilities are endless,” Tardiff said. “That’s my point: we sometimes see a pile of trash and it’s a pile of trash, but then sometimes, we see a pile of trash and think, ‘That could be something beautiful.’”

Matt Gomes, a doctoral student who attended the event, said for him, writing always has been academic, but it is nice to remember it is a creative process as well.

During the event, students built a “city” out of recycled cardboard, bottles and other materials.

“There are so many things we tend to not see the value in, and trash is one of those things we don’t see value in,” Gomes said.

“It applies to just all these things that we have discarded, and there is something really powerful in materials for production (and) materials for creation.”

Yang Song , a graduate student who also attended the event, said he was happy to discover how creative he can be. “(Tardiff) is really dedicated on his work and is showing us what we can do with
some used bottles (or) papers,” Song said.