Flyleaf Books hosts community spelling bee

Chapel Hill’s Flyleaf Books asked people of all ages to spell words like “bazaar,” “Afrikaans,” and “extemporaneous” Friday in its first-ever Adult Spelling Bee, co-hosted with UNC’s Program in the Humanities.

The event sought to playfully test the public’s orthography skills in a semi-scholastic setting.

“We like to put on programs that bring scholarship out into the community,” said Max Owre, associate director of the Program in the Humanities.

“One of the things that’s interesting is that this event isn’t really about spelling. In my opinion, it’s about words themselves — every word is a powerful symbol. There’s just the teeniest little sprinkle of academic content into it. It’s definitely tongue-in-cheek.”

The event was the brainchild of Jamie Fiocco, one of the owners of Flyleaf Books.

“We’ve always wanted to have an adult spelling bee,” Fiocco said.

“About six months ago, it came up in conversation with Max when we were talking, and he thought it would work great, so he kind of took it and ran.”

Owre said the playful nature of the event appealed to a less serious academic audience.

“One of the things we’ve been talking about is doing something a little lighthearted to reach a little bit more of a different demographic,” he said.

Flyleaf usually hosts programs for recently published authors, but this is one of the first that actively engaged the community.

“We’re partial to words here, and we just thought an event like this would be fun,” Fiocco said.

The spelling bee consisted of solo- and team-based competitions. For the solo portion of the event, participants were given a word to spell, and if the word was spelled correctly, they would proceed to the next round.

The team competition challenged groups of four or five contestants to spell a word — with each contestant saying only one letter of the word at a time.

Owre said he looks forward to co-hosting future spelling bees with Flyleaf.

“We hope to do at least three a semester, and at the end of the year we’ll have a championship round,” he said.

Chris Viti ello, a local freelance writer and poet, won the competition after correctly spelling the word “panegyric,” which is a public speech written to praise someone or something. Vitiello said he took a unique approach to train for the competition.

“I practiced for zero hours and did no preparation whatsoever,” he said. “I chose intentionally to listen to a French singer on the drive over, so that I wouldn’t get English words stuck in my head.”

Now that Vitiello has won the first adult spelling bee, he will participate in the championship round in a few months, much to his surprise.

“There’s a championship? I didn’t know there was a championship,” Vitiello said.

“Hopefully, just not thinking about it until the day of works again.”

arts@dailytarheel.com