Keep the Windows Wide: I Blame the Quarantine

Keep the Windows Wide: I Blame the Quarantine

Keep the Window Wide: I Blame the Quarantine is a project that I began the moment classes at Rhode Island College were shifted to online learning March, 2020. I'm an English professor at RIC, and I teach creative writing. I wanted to be sure not to "lose" my students, most of whom were creative writers, so I immediately sent them an optional assignment: Write a 300 word story, fiction or nonfiction, with the first or last line as "I blame the quarantine." I added, "Share this with whomever you want and have them send it to me." It grew. I got over a hundred submissions from around the globe -- as far as Spain and Mexico and the Netherlands. Teachers in public and private schools used the assignment. Submissions came in from folks as young as 8 and as old as 80, rural and urban.

In the summer of 2020, I created a blog site, selecting, curating, and framing the submissions. I kept it going for as long as I could before I had to turn back to getting my fall courses online for the remote year. The voices in the Keep the Windows Wide: I Blame the Quarantine are the voices from the trenches. The stories were written in real-time, and this, I think, makes them especially important historical record.

Dr. Karen Lee Boren

6/30/2023