Respective alumni and current student at Columbia College Chicago, Nurrah Muhammad and Payton Hall explore their various passions through writing.
Check out their work below!
In a religiously conservative community, 18-year-old Grace finds herself torn between familial expectations and her own desires. Sheltered by her mother Isabel, Grace grapples with her burgeoning independence and the allure of the outside world, symbolized by encounters with her rebellious cousin Jonathan and enigmatic stranger Phoebe. As she navigates the line between tradition and self-discovery, Grace's journey culminates in a transformative, religious ceremony where she must decide between duty and love.
When I first wrote Sacrament, I really just wanted to focus on eerie cult aesthetics, but the story quickly grew into something more personal. Growing up queer in a conservative religious community is something that you quickly realize doesn’t mesh well, so the decision to distance yourself from that group is pretty obvious. But looking back, there are a lot of people I knew growing up who chose to stay. For a while I felt a sense of anger towards them for choosing the “wrong” thing. But now I realize that situations like this are full of nuance and hard decisions, and there really is no “right” choice.
Sacrament is planned to shoot this summer and will be entered into local film festivals.
Kenopsia is a psycho-thriller novel with humor and excruciating romance, written in first-person and told from two points of view; best friends, Marshall Bouchard and Evony Maes. Waiting for the summer to end and college to begin, a group of friends and friend-ish colleagues find themselves split from reality. In a world mirrored by their own, Marshall and his friends are forced to endure their traumas and fears in an isolated environment controlled by a psychotic bitch (Marshall’s grandmother). Evony and her friends are left at home but thrown into equally traumatic and fearful experiences as they search for their friends. Marshall questions his familial background and fears that he will never escape a tortured life and fated insanity; that he will harm the ones he loves (if he’s even capable of love). Evony, caring more for Marshall than herself, fears Marshall will never understand how different he is from his family and the love that he holds. Kenopsia is about growth and empathy; the relations we have and have had with people. Our individuality among our relations. What and who has shaped us? It’s about what’s underneath a smile and what we hide to survive. A raw look into how the human mind works and how far one can be pushed.
I started writing Kenopsia with a premise (if you could call it that) and a strong drive to flourish my idea; no plot, a small idea of characters, and a premise. I wanted to write a book where the reader witnessed the mental decline of the characters as they read. A book where the readers would endure isolation, questioning themselves and the characters. I began writing Kenopsia a week after the shutdown of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The isolation sparked the idea and from there, I created charming and relatable characters, allowing a plot to arise from their personalities and backstories. Since 2020, the plot has grown; it changed. Even now in 2024, many things in my second draft are far from what they started as. Writing is a long process with a never-ending desire to change everything. Regardless, I’m proud to have finished my first draft and restless to finish the second.