The English honor society Sigma Tau Delta has added senior Kurtis King’s nonfiction piece “The Hat” to its national magazine “The Rectangle.”
“It started out as an assignment that I had in one of (Adjunct Instructor of English) Marti Mihalyi’s advanced composition courses,” King said.
King is only the second member of Sigma Tau Delta to have his work entered into “The Rectangle.”
He said the essay took more than a year to get accepted into the magazine, and his intentions were to make “The Hat” much longer.
“There is always a sense of incompleteness of a work, and you always want to toy around with it until it is published or finished,” he said.
The idea of the assignment was to personalize an object of no relative appeal or significance to the author of the work.
King chose to write about a kind of hat, called a fedora, which he had worked to purchase because of the look of the hat. After purchasing the hat, King came to understand the importance of it because his father always used to wear hats. The hat reminds King of what kind of man his father is and what kind of father he is to his son, who is his living inspiration.
“The professors do a great job of introducing the students to great new pieces of writing,” King said.
Mihalyi was King’s mentor during the process of writing the nonfiction essay.
King has taken courses with Mihalyi ever since his time at the University of Kansas. She enjoyed learning about an earlier part of King’s life and the vibrant manner in which he tells about the original hat.
King was interested in giving his father this essay as a present and went to Mihalyi for advice on the essay. After meeting with Mihalyi and working on it during the summer in Lawrence, King expanded and revised the essay. Mihalyi then prompted King to submit it to “The Rectangle.”
“It has been a deep pleasure and a privilege to have had King in four different classes at two different universities,” Mihalyi said.
Lucy Price, faculty sponsor of Sigma Tau Delta, said King is a valuable member of the organization.
“It’s a real achievement and real outstanding for a student in Sigma Tau Delta to have their work printed in this magazine,” Price said. “‘The Hat’ is clever, intriguing and thoughtful.”
