Piper Writer’s House: Little Cottage, Big History

The dusty orange, brick cottage stands between Old Main and the George M. Bateman Physical Sciences Center on the Tempe campus’ Tyler Mall. It’s one of the most historic buildings on campus, yet its significance is often overlooked.

Home to the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, the writer center is a resource for creative writers, especially for those who are in the Creative Writing Master of Fine Arts program.

The Creative Writing MFA program will be celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, though the program officially turns 25 in 2010 says Karla Elling, program manager and coordinator for the Creative Writing MFA program.

Elling’s display of the creative writing program’s history in paper art opened in October, which started the celebration of the program. Paper art is created by using the letterpress printing technique, which can be commonly noticed in certain types of stationery, cards and wedding invitations. This technique can also be seen in broadsides, which are large pieces of paper that have type and art on one side.

The Piper Writers House continually celebrates the creative writing program, with its many workshops, the Distinguished Visiting Writers series, classrooms and libraries, which writers and non-writers  are welcome to attend and utilize.

Students and guests enter the Piper Writers House through the front porch. One of the most notable interior features is the grand wooden table that resides in the premiere classroom, to the left. The living room encompasses the entire right side of the first floor, while the kitchen, bathroom, resource library center and community classroom use the remaining space. The cottage is generally quiet and the sunlight penetrates the wooden, earthy rooms in a soothing way. Only a few students linger, along with the center’s staff. Most cluster in the library, upstairs, on rocking chairs in the front or on the living room couches.

“It’s an oasis in this campus,” says Sally Ball, assistant director of the undergraduate creative writing program, of the Piper Writers House. “It’s a nice place to be able to go in and enjoy the atmosphere.”

Ball works to promote the connection between the undergraduate and graduate creative writing programs and the Piper Center and Writers House. She encourages students to go to the programs the center offers and teaches students about some of the visiting authors, assigning their literary work to students for critique in her classes.

“I think it creates a real center, a gathering place, a place where [students] can feel connected to the program,” Ball says.

The luscious gardens, which surround the cottage, were planted during the cottage’s renovation process.

“The whole idea behind this being a writers’ house is that it creates a space that brings the University community and the greater Phoenix community together and kind of   serve as a home for creative writing,” says Elizabyth Hiscox, the program coordinator for the center. “The gardens have been used for various events but they’re really an informal space for people to come and read and write and have conversations.”

The namesake of the center and house is Virginia G. Piper, who was a philanthropist while she was alive. “A lot of the art on the walls is honoring Virginia Piper, who endowed the creative writing house and allowed the renovations to happen and for this to be the home of the creative writing center,” Hiscox says.

The library resource center is another aspect of the house that is unique when compared to other buildings on campus. “One of the things that the Piper House wanted to do…was to provide resources for creative writers in the ASU community in the creative writing program but also in the community at large, so we subscribe to journals…[and] major publications,” Hiscox says.

There are around 40 different magazine, journal and other subscriptions that the center receives. Some of the articles and books aren’t available at the libraries at ASU. For example, there are rare poetry books and cassette tapes of well-known poets reading their poetry that Dorothy Lykes, a poet, donated upon her death.

English literature junior Chrysta Wellman says she regularly passes by the Piper Writers House, with its cottagey feel and surrounding gardens, but says she doesn’t know anything about it and hasn’t used it as a resource.

“I’ve been curious about what goes on in there, but I’ve never gone inside or really looked into it,” Wellman says, adding that she has some theories about what goes on inside. “I just thought it was a house where creative writers go and hang out.”

Although Wellman is right in one sense, there is a lot more going on than hanging out.

“A lot of the work that the house does is directly related to supporting the students in the graduate program as well as the faculty,” says Peter Turchi, the director of the creative writing program and the Piper writing center.

The center has been assertive this year in involving undergraduate students as well, including the creation of a new undergraduate newsletter, the Dead Metaphor, he says.

Creative writing senior Cortney Yee is an intern at the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing. On a tour of the Writers House, Yee says that there is possibly a ghost of Dixie Gammage, the first wife of former ASU President Grady Gammage, because the house was once his residence. Dixie Gammage died at the house in 1948, confined to the second floor due to health problems, according to an article in Marginalia, the magazine for the center.

The Piper Writers House was renovated in 2004 and finished in 2005, but the center is 6 years old. The original cottage was built in 1907 and served as the former ASU president’s house until 1959, where it was eventually used for administrative offices for the ASU Alumni Association. From 1972 to 1995, it was used for University Archives.

There is a time capsule buried in the backyard from 2005. The capsule’s commmorative plaque is surrounded by red-orange bricks with signatures from national and international visiting writers.

“Some of the staff and writers put stuff in there and are going to dig it up in 50 years,” Yee says. More specifically, the time capsule will be unearthed 100 years after its burial, in 2105.

The house is always open for visitors, she says. The cottage’s cozy vibe attracts a few students from the masses throughout the day.

“It’s pretty much a lot of grad students who come and hang out,” Yee says. “Random people like to come up and sit in the rocking chairs out front.”

Amanda Rohkohl, an English freshman, says she sits on the comfy, beige couches in the living room

often.

“It’s quiet and relaxing and they have comfortable seats,” Rohkohl says. “It’s a nice place to go in the middle of the day while it’s hot outside.”

The side of the house. Photo by Rheyanne Weaver

She says the house is never really crowded, since students go back and forth from the living room to the classrooms to outside, though early afternoon is probably be the busiest time.

Students are invited to read books from the various bookshelves around the house, though most cannot be taken outside.“They do have a wide assortment of different writings, so it’s not all specifically one type or one genre,” Rohkohl says.

Matt Brennan, a creative writing graduate student, is also the program assistant for global engagement at the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing. He says he visits the house for reasons other than work — like for the library and classrooms, where most of his classes meet. Like Yee, he has heard of the supposed ghost.

“I’ve been here pretty late at night on weekends when no one else was here, locked in by myself, and haven’t felt anything weird,” Brennan says. “Maybe I’m not attuned to that kind of thing.”

Reach the reporter at reweaver@asu.edu

Tagged as: asu, cottage, creative writing, English, Grady Gammage, piper writers house, Rheyanne Weaver, virginia g. piper