This past Thursday night, the Final Thursday Reading Series, which hosts Cedar Falls’ most dedicated writing community, could not be stopped by neither cold temperature nor a pandemic.

Like many other events, the Final Thursday Reading Series had been moved outside of its place of residence at the Hearst Center for the Arts to accommodate the regular crowd. The established plan for Thursday had been to gather at 7 p.m. outside the building, with masks and social distancing required.

The night would usually begin with an open mic segment, for which people who wish to take part show up early for sign-up. Participants for the open mic have a lot of freedom when it comes to their performance, enabling them to perform original songs, poems, stories or anything of the sort as long as they don’t go over the tentative time limit.

However, when Interim Department Head, Professor, Founder and host of the FTRS, Jim O’Loughlin got word of the low temperatures, he sought to spare the crowd from the cold and adapted to an online platform instead. So, on Oct. 26, an email was sent out to both inform students and staff of the Languages and Literatures Department who the keynote speaker was and how to participate.

Now a Zoom meeting, attendees would have to register online. From there, they would receive their invitation to the online panel. Still free of charge. But, due to the last minute change in scheduling, the open mic portion had to be canceled. Near the end of the panel, however, O’Loughlin was open about his hopes that he would figure out a way to keep the tradition going by the next FTR.

“This is kind of an experiment,” said O’Loughlin, “hoping it all goes well.” He explained to the attendees that instead of the usual chat box in Zoom, they had a Q&A box that they could type questions into, which he would keep track of until the end of the presentation. The speaker would then have a dedicated time to address the questions, which O’Loughlin would make sure were asked and answered. He then gave a brief presentation of his own to the crowd where he incorporated and analyzed classic rock songs that included crime, which he would then solve for the audience. There were snippets of well known songs such as  “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen, “Rocky Racoon” by the Beatles and “Wanted Dead or Alive” by Bon Jovi.

Once his presentation came to an end, O’Loughlin introduced author and UNI professor Jeffery Copeland to begin discussing his recently published book “Lt. Elsie Ott’s Top Secret Mission.” Copeland, whose book was published on March 15 and is being sold in stores such as Barnes & Noble and Amazon, had plans for a book tour which has since been placed on hold. Copeland, a professor of creative nonfiction, explained that his book also belonged to the genre, but made sure to specify some key elements.

“We call this type of literary nonfiction –you ready for this– ‘bio lit,’” said Copeland. “‘Bio lit’ because it’s heavy on the biography. It also shares features with the biopic, the film genre, in that it’s written in a very very visual sense. And it features more than anything the how and why of a person’s life that we’re writing about.”

Copeland ‘s subject matter for the book was Lt. Elsie Ott, the first woman to get the Air Medal in the Armed Forces. In his book, Copeland recounts a secret mission in which she transported five critically ill and wounded patients over a six-and-a-half day journey via air transport. His book brings her story out of the shadows, shining light on the long successful attempts to bury her story, as well as the road she paved for the future establishment of the flight evacuation nurse program.

If interested in learning more about the book from the mouth of the author himself, head to the Final Thursday Reading website www.finalthursdaypress.com. There you can read more about Copeland’s latest book or find a recording of last month’s FTRS.