Submission 2018

Ted Swenson is a once-prominent author who, after the modest success of his first novel, settles into a long run as a creative writing professor at Euston College in Vermont. He hopes the next book will finally let him leave the campus behind, but roughly a decade passes and he remains a tenured instructor, shaping the minds (and ambitions) of a new generation of writers. When a standout student, Angela Argo, asks him to read the first chapter of Eggs, he recognizes a rare combination of confidence and polish in her prose that hints at real potential. The moment becomes a catalyst for a larger, more complicated set of events.

Magda Moynahan, a colleague and voice of campus politics, warns him about Angela’s earlier, more vulgar poems and reveals that she insisted on donating them to the college library as a kind of performance art or protest. Librarians wrestle with the ethics of the donation, finding the poems obscene yet deciding to keep them as an example of candid expression within the school’s walls. Ted’s curiosity leads him to the poetry book, which largely collects erotic exchanges between a phone sex worker, Angela 911, and her clients. The discovery is jarring, not for its salacious content alone but for how it intersects with questions about free speech, taste, and the boundaries of artistic expression on a university campus.

A turning point comes at a dinner hosted by a colleague, where Ted and his wife, Sherrie Swenson, weigh the impact of new campus sexual harassment rules and the growing emphasis on political correctness in the classroom. The climate feels tense, and conversations drift toward how teachers should respond when sensitive material collides with student safety and institutional reputation. Ted is impressed by Angela’s writing and continues to encourage her, while she responds by supplying him with increasingly explicit late chapters. He reads her work and imagines himself within the narrative as the science teacher figure at its center, even as he tries to maintain professional boundaries and avoid letting personal attraction blur those lines.

The relationship intensifies when Angela asks for a ride to Burlington to pick up a new laptop. After a brief trip together, she invites him into her dorm to help set up the computer, and, despite his reluctance, he agrees to stay. What follows is an affair that begins with awkward humor—Ted’s tooth accidentally loosening during a tense moment—and slowly becomes more complex and uneasy. Back in the classroom, Angela loudly denounces the perceived weakness of her own plot and characters in front of the class, a moment that places Ted in an awkward position as the group expects him to intervene. Later, Angela asks him to pass her manuscript to his literary agent, a gesture that inadvertently foreshadows the professional consequences looming on the horizon.

The agent’s disinterest is swift, leaving Angela feeling exposed and betrayed, and Ted is left to explain the increasingly fragile dynamic before it spirals. He is blindsided when Angela later files a sexual harassment suit, presenting a recording of their conversation as proof. The campus community looks to him for accountability, and the weigh-in is harsh: his job, his marriage, and his reputation unravel under the scrutiny of the board, colleagues, and students. In a twist of publicity that the film treats with grim neutrality, Angela suddenly draws renewed attention from the literary world as a result of the controversy, a development that adds a bitter note to the fallout.

Fifteen months pass, and Ted finds himself writing his memoirs in a cafeteria, trying to reckon with what happened. A quiet moment arrives when he spots a woman at a table reading Eggs and, in a subdued, reflective mood, wonders how she feels about the book. The ending leaves a lingering sense of ambiguity and consequence: ambition, desire, and the price of crossing professional boundaries in an environment that increasingly polices speech and power.