Western Carolina University students who have been studying the Great Smoky Mountains National Park’s Hazel Creek community will present their fiction writing works about the area at 4 p.m. Nov. 17 in the Mountain Heritage Center auditorium.

The presentation is the culmination of a freshman seminar that combines first year classes for collaborative learning. Professors join together to help find a common theme in typically unrelated classes — such as literature and biology to study science fiction — or in this case, a course on the university experience taught by career services coordinator, Mike Despeaux, a professional writing course taught by assistant professor Jubal Tiner and a course on pivotal moments in U.S. history taught by assistant professor Alec Macaulay.

A group of approximately 20 students sign up for each of the three classes, helping to form a bond and a sense of community during what may be students’ first real time away from home.

Students studied the the creation of Fontana Dam in 1943, which flooded the only road into the Hazel Creek area. Now isolated, the residents were forced to move out, and the land was made part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The government promised to rebuild the road it flooded, but only a portion of it was completed. Many residents feel cheated by the government’s broken promise to rebuild the road, which would traverse the national park and allow families to visit their former homesites and graveyards.

Students met with a park ranger and traveled to the Hazel Creek cemetery by boat, where they visited gravesites. Many of the graves provided the basis for the students’ fiction writing projects, which must be set in the Fontana area either geographically or historically.

Students’ works will be judged with a small cash prize being awarded for the best work. Thursday’s presentation will include a reading of this work.

For more information, contact the Mountain Heritage Center at 828.227.7129.