As a young gay male in the center of a conservative city, the emotional challenges and daily trials are relentless.

“Three Cubic Feet”, a novella written by Lania Knight, assistant professor of creative writing, was published on Aug. 7 and concentrates around such challenges.

The main character, Theo Williamson, is a 16-year-old boy living in the ultra-conservative city of Springfield, Mo., where only his parents and close friends now his secret attraction.

With an overbearing stepmother and a father who is recovering from a vehicle accident that altered his personality, the only comfort Theo receives is from his close gay friend and romantic interest, Jonathan.

However, while Jonathan provides Theo with a sense of friendship, Jonathan’s personality also presents Theo with further challenges that push him to his limits.

“He pushes Theo in all these ways that Theo comes to a breaking point,” she said. “If Jonathan weren’t there, if Jonathan weren’t the difficult character that he is, Theo wouldn’t reach the moment that he needs to reach.”

The novella follows both Theo and Jonathan as they face the challenges of Theo’s parents, their complicated relationship, and life as young gay men in a society that is not accepting of their attractions.

Knight began writing the novella in 2002 while studying at the University of Missouri and attending a graduate fiction workshop.

“One of the guys in my workshop put up a story that I really hated, and I promised myself that the next story that I wrote would be about something that I like, a character that I liked,” she said.

Knight lived in Columbia, Mo., three hours north of Springfield before coming to Illinois and said her experience in the area allowed her to understand the sensitive environment for homosexuals in southern Missouri.

“It kind of feels like, in general, people think that things have moved forward so much, but there are a lot of little pockets of places where people are ultra-conservative, and they are very angry about homosexuality,” she said.

Knight also had a unique perspective about the life of gay men in southern Missouri because she had a close gay friend who spoke to her and showed her how gay men live in Springfield.

“He talked to me about Springfield and how it is like two worlds,” she said. “People don’t know that he is gay in his professional life, and he has a private life; he has friends who know he is gay, but the two don’t cross.”

Knight’s friend also took her to gay bars, where she noticed the many young men who found solace in the accepting environment and could “wear what they want to wear and dance with who they want to dance and say what they want to say.”

By being able to experience the lives of those young men and the vigilant lives they must lead, she found a deeper understanding of the life of Theo and Jonathan.

“That makes for a certain intensity, when you have to walk this straight line the rest of the week, and you can’t really show who you really are the rest of the time,” she explained.

Knight also read gay literature and watched gay films to gain better understanding. She had about 10 gay men, from the ages of 18 to 60, read her work to be sure the work truly represented the experiences of real people.

Knight exensively revised her manuscript four times and said it was a challenge trying to keep Theo real in her mind.

To keep him alive, she listened to the same music Theo listens to in the novella and imagined his bedroom so that she could keep her connection with him and remain motivated to complete the novella and to actually bring Theo to life.

Knight completed the novella in May 2011. She will read from her work on Sept. 22 at Indi Go Art Co-Op, 9 E. University Ave., Champaign, and has plans to host a reading with EIU Pride in October. A date and time has not been set.

Tim Deters can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].