Invasion of Privacy: Matt Keller and Carly Burgio explore life, The Lamron, and literary community

For years, The Lamron has been lucky enough to experience and engage with the many talents of senior English creative writing major Matt Keller and senior adolescent English education major Carly Burgio. As our final send-off of these two fantastic editors, writers, and dear friends, we wanted the Geneseo community to get to know the sides of Keller and Burgio that we here at The Lamron have come to know and love.

In our interview, it became clear that events as simple as Keller and Burgio’s beginnings at The Lamron have been indicative of the strengths and endearing qualities they’ve brought to the Geneseo community over the years.

“I think the moment I knew, ‘I want to get more involved in this,’ is when…last year, whoever was in charge—it had to have been you [Frances Sharples]—stopped the meeting at the end and was like, ‘Okay, now we’re all gonna gather around my laptop and watch “Man or Muppet,”’ Keller said. “And I was like, ‘Yeah…this is where I want to be.’”

Though Burgio’s time at The Lamron has been shorter-lived than Keller’s, it has been no less meaningful:

“I honestly wish I had joined sooner, especially in the editorial role, because I’ve just had so much fun with it—it’s a lot, but it’s so much fun,” Burgio said. “I haven’t really gotten to do a ton of extracurriculars during my time here that I’ve gotten to, like, write for fun…so it’s been great to kind of experiment with this and do something new in that regard.”

Of course, both Keller and Burgio have demonstrated their commitment to literary excellence, creativity, and connection with the world around them beyond just their roles at The Lamron.

“Restarting the Creative Writing Club was just an amazing time,” Keller said. “[The] written form is just so vulnerable, [so] having a safe space where people actually feel like they can share it and, like, not be judged for it…is really important to me. And then, going into the Writer’s Spotlight, targeting writers who don’t have the confidence to apply to Iris or Gandy, or anything like that, and giving them a place to grow their confidence is incredibly rewarding.”

Burgio nodded vigorously in agreement with Keller’s points, and expanded into the impacts that community has had on her more personally:

“That’s just such a special part of the writing community here, is that we challenge each other,” Burgio said. “[It] has been huge for me—being able to write more unabashedly and honestly, because I wasn’t for a while.”

Beyond literary community and connection, Burgio eloquently summed up the elements of Geneseo that she will miss most:

“My friends…[and] community…I’m going to miss taking classes that I’m super passionate about… I really find a lot of self-worth in my identity as a student, and I’m really proud of the work that I’ve put in. It’s going to be cool to be on the other side of it and be the teacher, but I am going to miss [it].”

We will, of course, miss Keller and Burgio dearly as well; however, we are simultaneously so excited to see how these hard-working individuals continue to affect the world around them post-graduation.

For Keller, his timeline is flexible: “[My] long-term goal is [a] Ph.D. in literature, creative writing, and hypothetically teaching at a collegiate level, but that’s very far in the future. Publishing a book of sorts would be great; I would have a great time with that.”

Keller also realistically explained how his plans would be influenced if he were to win the lottery—“I want to do a bookstore where there’s guinea pigs running around, and you can shop for guinea pigs and shop for books at the same time.”

Burgio’s plans for both the lottery and the future mirror Keller’s literary passions; she established that with her lottery winnings, she would continue to work on her aspirational home library. In terms of the immediate future:

“I’m going to be a teacher,” Burgio said. “I’m very excited—student teaching was brutal, but I felt really reaffirmed, student teaching, that this is what I want to do with the rest of my life…I’m gonna move to Rochester for an indefinite amount of time. I would love to live abroad for a couple years, but we’ll see where everything takes me.”

We know that Matt and Carly are headed for amazing things, and we are grateful to have been but a footnote in their journeys.