The pumpkin diorama project started on a whim in October 1993 when I was a student at Longwood College. I spotted a flyer outside the dining hall for a pumpkin-carving contest and, desperate to procrastinate writing a pile of papers before fall break, my friend Melanie and I chose a willing gourd from Harris Teeter. We decided we were going to win.
The result—which, sadly, I have no photo of—was a spaceship pumpkin with a decked-out interior. The “carving” consisted only of a row of round windows; the rest depicted a story about aliens hatching from the pumpkin seeds and escaping from the windows.
First prize. And we have the dot-matrix certificate to prove it.
I tucked the memory away, not knowing it would come back to shape a quirky creative tradition a decade later.
Nimble Narrative 