To help Central Connecticut students advance their writing careers, the English department hosted “Power of the Pen: Careers in Writing, Editing and Publishing” on Oct. 25.

The event featured three guest speakers who informed the audience on their current professions, as well as how they stepped up to the position they are at now. English Associate Professor Mary Collins, who organized the event, said the inspiration behind it was assuring students that they could succeed in a field that they wanted to pursue despite being told differently.

“The reason I really started doing this is [because] a lot of my students were feeling pressured from their friends and their family to go into something that was a hard skill like nursing or engineering,” Collins said.

The event’s guest speakers were Evan Helminger of Globe Pequot Publishing; C. Flanagan Flynn of Brain, Child Magazine; and Namulen Bayarsaihan of Real Art Ways. They enlightened the room with their stories and knowledge.

Speaking of his career path, Helminger spoke of his journey of how he got a job at a publishing house and the importance of networking.

“Every company I applied to, I went to my agent and I said, ‘Who do you know here? Who do you know? Who do you know?’ I bugged her so much that she eventually hooked me up with an editor with my current company and I started as an assistant,” Helminger said.

Helmlinger then went on to speak about how he successfully advanced in the field.

“Most of my success came from when I sort of married the two sides of my brain: my creative and communicative skills with my more practical business sense,” Helminger continued.

Flynn had a different start, first majoring in music and feeling unsure about what to do because of surrounding  peers.

“There was a lot of external pressure. I was the first one to go to college in my family and everyone had an idea of what they wanted me to study, so I didn’t really fall into the publishing world and the writing world until my first job,” Flynn said.

Flynn built up a reputation for being able to write well and was promoted to meeting face-to-face with clients to help develop better marketing campaigns.  This promotion and other experiences have shaped Flynn’s view of the writing world.

“Sometimes the writing world can feel like a society that’s really hard to get your work out there and get noticed. If you can commit to honing your craft, editors would really, really, really be excited to publish people the first time around,” Flynn said.

The final speaker, Bayarsaihan, gave the audience advice referencing her own path and how important it is to embrace every opportunity presented.

“I think that’s an important lesson that I’ve been privy to—that you have to be ready for opportunities and the best way to be ready for opportunities is to be a critical thinker,” Bayarsaihan said.

CCSU alumni Morgan Finn, who attended the event, spoke out about life after graduation.

“You have to take full responsibility for your own professional development,” Finn said. “Don’t be upset that you’re not this overnight sensation.”