Shepherd University Professor dr. Matthew J. Kushin held a release party for his first novel, Beware The Smart Kids, in the Scarborough Library on Oct. 9.
The novel is a coming-of-age story set in Appalachia with troubled characters on a journey towards pursuing happiness.
The party was attended by Shepherd students, faculty, staff, and a local high school teacher.
“I wrote this book because I’ve been teaching social media since—I don’t know—2009, 2008, as a graduate student,” Kushin said to the party attendees. “And that led me to teach a class called ‘happiness in media versus reality’, it was a special topics class in the communication program, which was a lot of fun. And teaching that class, I wanted to take some of the lessons from that class and I wanted to try a way and get them to more people.”
Kushin then invited Martinsburg High School teacher Derek Gallagher to speak at the party, who expressed his admiration for the book.
“I was really intimidated to read Matt’s book. I don’t like fiction, and its young adult fiction. We had a conversation about it, and he was like ‘Hey do you want to read it’ and I was like ‘Yeah’ but in the back of my head I was like ‘No!’ It’s just not what I’m into at all.”
Despite Gallagher’s initial hesitation, he would come around to the book and would be in awe with the novel’s relatability.
“The book was phenomenal. I think that anyone that picks it up and reads it is really gonna get a lot out of it. It just has so many cool, applicable things. (…) It’s just put together in such a way that I think it fosters awesome conversations through a common narrative that the kids and me as a teacher we [sic] get to go through.”
Before leaving the stand, Gallagher would mention how proceeds from purchasing copies of the book would go towards buying more copies that would be provided to the students at Martinsburg High School. Remarking that he hopes to teach the book to students in the future.
After reading an excerpt from the book, Kushin would then take questions before retiring to the table set up for him in the library. There, many of the attendees met with him one on one, purchasing a book and get it signed.
Shepherd University Student River Boward was one of the students in attendance and positivity about her experiences with Kushin’s teaching.
“I’m in communications and I just wanted to come out and see what it was about. I loved [Kushin’s] classes. [I took] ‘writing across platforms’ [last semester.] It was a really informative class but also wasn’t so hard that it was impossible to get through. So, I learned a lot, it was good,” Boward said.
Kushin believed that the best way to explain and teach the public about pursuing happiness in a social media world was through writing his novel.
“Stories are vehicles for relaying messages, so that resulted in the creation of this book,” he said.
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