A few years ago I enrolled in a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course. It lasted for eight weeks, and included a daily hour of meditation homework, along with some other exercises. It did, actually, change my life. But that isn’t my point. For one of the exercises the members of the class had to… Continue reading Counting Pleasures
Author: MFA Writing
Futurists, Debate!
The Writer found this blog piece in Amor Mundi, a publication of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. What do those of you who write futuristic stories think of this? “With the 500th birthday of Thomas More’s Utopia in sight, Terry Eagleton considers what it means to dream of a perfect world: “To portray… Continue reading Futurists, Debate!
I Believe in Books
My granddaughter, who is in year six, at the primary school in her English village, participates in a Philosophy class in which the students, ten and eleven year-olds, engage in complex and difficult discussions. Recently her class was invited to hold their discussion on the stage in an auditorium filled with attendees at a Religious… Continue reading I Believe in Books
And have you read…Leaf is All?
Drew Dillhunt is an alum of the Goddard College MFAW Program in Port Townsend, Washington. His poetry collection, Leaf is All, was selected as the winner of the 2014 Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize, and will be published by Bear Star Press. Leaf is All is the further revised and polished version of his Goddard thesis. The Writer… Continue reading And have you read…Leaf is All?
The MFAW Post-Graduate Semester
Deadline to apply for both campuses is December 1st Yes, you can come back! We have a new Post Graduate Semester (PGS) option for MFAW alums who want professional feedback in a community atmosphere as they revise, complete, and polish a writing project. Or begin a new project. After years of percolating the idea in response to… Continue reading The MFAW Post-Graduate Semester
On Deadlines: I am not Anne Bean, either
My wonderful former advisor from Goddard College, Susan Kim, wrote an article on the alumni blog about deadlines. Susan Kim is a New York City television writer, playwright, teacher, and more. She has a zillion fascinating and important irons in the fire at any given time. And she gave me considered, wonderful feedback on the… Continue reading On Deadlines: I am not Anne Bean, either
Putting the “Dead” in “Deadlines”
This is a blog by writers and for writers. I get it. This is where members of the Goddard community reflect on topics germane to us, topics that are meant to inform and inspire: craft and voice. Activism and history. Process, revision, and the amazing book they just read. But I confess what’s haunting me… Continue reading Putting the “Dead” in “Deadlines”
And have you read… Headwaters?
Have you ever wondered who began the low-residency MFAW Program at Goddard College, the first of its kind anywhere? Who spearheaded our progressive and oft-imitated curriculum? It was Ellen Bryant Voigt, who just last week won a MacArthur Fellowship Grant. Ellen grew up on her family’s farm in rural Virginia. She earned her BA from… Continue reading And have you read… Headwaters?
Don’t Write?!?!
Rahna Reiko Rizzuto talks strategies to free yourself from the stranglehold our society’s consumer priorities may be having on your writing today on Hedgebrook’s blog: “I’ve been thinking a lot about being a writer in this world. Not about the need to raise our diverse voices, or to break down the barriers that keep too… Continue reading Don’t Write?!?!
Another World in Translation
Translation is impossible, poet and translator Alastair Reid told us in a small poetry workshop at Antioch College in 1970. He said you needed to know this, and then do it anyway. He describes the risk of failure in his poem, Speaking a Foreign Language: “Easy to understand,/through the tangle of language, the heart behind/groping… Continue reading Another World in Translation
“Never Forget” by Emily Stern
As yet another anniversary of September 11th passes, and as we continue to face heartbreak and trauma as a nation from unfathomable acts of violence, we invite you to read this recent article, Never Forget, published on Entropy, by Goddard alumna Emily Stern. Emily says, “At the close of a creative writing course at an… Continue reading “Never Forget” by Emily Stern
And have you read… The Stick Wife?
Darrah Cloud’s play, The Stick Wife, premiered at the Los Angeles Theatre Center in 1987. It has subsequently received over 100 productions. The Writer interviews her here. Q: What was the impetus for writing The Stick Wife? I read an article in the New York Times Magazine about the bomber of the 16th Street Baptist… Continue reading And have you read… The Stick Wife?
Sustainable Scholarship
There is something rotten in Denmark: transforming life, scholarship, and writing toward a more sustainable paradigm —or —you’ve got the craft skills, now what are you going to do with it? By Karen Walasek Anyone alive who is paying attention knows that we are on a crash course toward climate destruction and that the burning… Continue reading Sustainable Scholarship
In medias res
“Would you like to see your mother one more time?” asked the huge blonde woman with a Norwegian last name, one of a set of triplets who had taken over the funeral home from their father in Scottsdale, Arizona. For one amazing moment, I thought this might actually be possible. I thought I might be… Continue reading In medias res
And have you read… The Cryptogram?
When The Writer was a student in the RUP Program at Goddard College, she got a part in Paul Zindel’s play, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. It was her favorite play: she’d seen Eve Arden in it in Chicago at the old Ivanho Theatre, on a day when her mother “forgot” to… Continue reading And have you read… The Cryptogram?
What Would Sappho Do?
Answer: Send Sneakers Sappho was a Greek poet born sometime around 612 BC. While not much is known for certain about her life, among poets her reputation is as large as the remaining fragments of her poetry are small. One thing I can state categorically about her is that she was born on the tiny… Continue reading What Would Sappho Do?
And have you read… Rhapsody of the Naked Immigrants?
On Elena Georgiou’s rapturous rhapsody… Q: What was the impetus for this book? The impetus of the book was to try to document working-class immigrant voices. I am the daughter of immigrants who then also immigrated. In my experience, working-class immigrants, on the whole, don’t have much time for putting their lives on paper, and… Continue reading And have you read… Rhapsody of the Naked Immigrants?
A Shameless Act of Self-Promotion
By Jon Ulrich This September will see the release of my first book, Winter in the Wilderness. It’s been a long time coming. Success in writing, I’ve found, takes three things: persistence, luck, and persistence. I feel like I’ve won the lottery. In a way, I have. Not many people know this about me, but… Continue reading A Shameless Act of Self-Promotion
To Literature
She’d been feeling sad all week and she said it was because of a conflict with her lover or place of employ or caused by reading too many vacuous comments in the newspaper and the proud ignorance and misanthropy of the readers got her down. Or its cause was the news video she watched of… Continue reading To Literature
And have you read… Erebus?
Jane Summer is pictured here on the left. Q: How did you get the idea for your book? A: I actually didn’t get the idea. The idea got me—in a leg-hold trap. I grew tired of writing poems about how sad I was. After futzing around writing poems about the civil rights era and the… Continue reading And have you read… Erebus?