Daily Egyptian DAILYEGYPTIAN.COM
WEDNESDAY, JULY 8, 2015
VOL. 99 ISSUE 70
SINCE 1916
J ane F lynn | @janeflynnDE Dan Caulkins, of Decatur, and Mike Lynch, of Delta, Pa., work on the team’s bike prior to Saturday afternoon’s race held at Du Quoin State Fairgrounds. The bike was ridden by Jeff Carver Jr., 24, who has been riding motorcycles since he was 4. Carver is the third generation of his family to participate in AMA Pro Racing. “I just love the thrill and the way it makes me feel, the excitement,” Carver said.
Nine years later, flat track racing is back Jordan dunCan | @jordanduncanDE For the first time in almost a decade, the Du Quoin State Fairgrounds buzzed with the sounds of motorcycles and people cheering during the AMA Pro Flat Track race Saturday. The race took its hiatus after the Illinois Motorcycle Dealer’s Association stopped
promoting at the fairgrounds nine years ago. It returned when the promotion company Family Events took on the event for the southern Illinois track. Bryan Smith won the final mile-long race, crossing the finish line less than one hundredth of a second before Jared Mees. “That was one of the most intense races
I’ve ever rode because this track is fast,” Smith said. “The corner speed is probably the fastest track you’ll go to. So you’re balls to the wall this whole time” Flat track racing, the oldest form of motorcycle racing, has motorcyclists ride in groups as they let off the gas while sliding around each turn at about 100 to 140 mph.
“You got to dig down deep and do things you don’t think you can do and just grit your teeth and say a little prayer going 130,” Smith said. Francis Meehan, of Shilo, used to race flat track in the ‘60s and ‘70s and said a fast track has better traction, which allows better control and gives way to higher speeds. Please see MOTOR | 4
Alumna conveys college life in debut novel Chase Myers | @chasemyers_DE While many recognized authors from SIU are professors who have written textbooks, fiction writers who got their start here and broke the mold into the professional world tend to be overlooked. Kate Dierkes, an alumna from Chicago, published her first novel “Finding Dell” in May, a project three years in the making. The plot follows protagonist Dell Hewitt, a 19-year-old sophomore at a fictional northern Kentucky university. She believes she has the world figured out, until she finds her supposed perfect boyfriend out with another girl. This launches a dramatic chain of events and flips her world upside down. Dell finds love elsewhere in a young film major, which throws her into a new life journey and more honest relationship.
“I knew that I wanted to write about the college experience, just knowing that the college years are such a pivotal, emotionallycharged time in life,” said Dierkes. “I wanted to draw from that setting for a coming-of-age story.” Dierkes said her time as a Saluki heavily influenced the novel, even referencing Thompson Point dormitories in her dedication page. “I think that anyone who reads the book and is familiar with SIU would definitely see some similarities,” she said. “I really love SIU’s campus and I think I tried to capture the outdoorsy essence of campus in the book.” She said the writing process began about two years after she graduated in 2009 with a degree in journalism and minor in creative writing. “The aspect of journalism that helps a lot is being able to think,
because I think in fiction it’s just easy to get carried away forever,” she said. “In journalism, you really have to get to your point a little bit faster.” She began writing in November, which is known in the writing community as National Novel Writing Month, where writers are encouraged to produce about 50,000 words in one month, she said. “I started writing it a little bit as a hobby during that, set it down for a while and then I kept rereading it and rewriting it,” she said. “Three years of revisions later, it kind of came to where I wanted it to be.” When developing the characters in “Finding Dell,” she drew inspiration from people she met at SIU, slowly changing their characteristics over time. The characters became
increasingly fictional as she read more about the different psychologies of people as they progress, she said. “Some of the real people know [about their characters] and they’re excited about it, but I don’t know if they’ve read the book yet so we’ll see how they feel about it later,” she said. She said she worked as a fulltime consultant while writing, which posed as difficult when searching for time and creativity. “I would work all day in data and not in a very creative environment, so I would have to come home to decompress before I would write,” she said. “Actually finding the time and energy to do it while working was tough.” The length of the story became the hardest part because she was used to writing short stories for class, maxing out at about 20
pages, she said. “When I really started getting into it I was dealing with 300 pages of writing,” she said. “While doing edits, revisions and moving things around, it was so hard to keep track of everything.” She said although the process took more than three years and the novel was published only about a month ago, the responses from peers, family and those who have read it have been positive. She is in the process of marketing the book to a large audience, she said. “The library in my hometown decided to carry it and so they just put it on the shelf the other day, which is exciting for me to see,” she said. “I wanted to go take a picture of it myself, but someone had already checked it out so that’s a good response I guess. I’m pretty optimistic.”