As in, she DID read, and if you weren’t there but wish you were, here’s a video: Novelist and filmmaker Ruth Ozeki was our visiting writer at the MFA in Creative Writing Program’s spring 2015 residency in Vermont. Ozeki’s first two novels, My Year of Meats (1998) and All Over Creation (2003), have been translated… Continue reading Ruth Ozeki’s reading at Goddard
Author: MFA Writing
As Long As You’re Singing
My best poetry teacher ever was a poet named Jack Myers who titled a book, As Long As You’re Happy. Pete Seeger once said, “there’s no such thing as a wrong note, as long as you’re singing.” When Pete Seeger died, I was surprised at how the news hit me—in the gut and made me weep… Continue reading As Long As You’re Singing
Rejection Makes You Stronger
Minneapolis AWP — Check! I write this sitting cross-legged on the nubby zebra-print carpet of Seattle’s SeaTac airport. A friend dropped me off an hour early and I couldn’t be happier with the extra time to just chill. At the risk of sounding cheerleader-ish, what I want to say to all the beautiful passersby is… Continue reading Rejection Makes You Stronger
Rock The Casbah (Redux)
First: Take a large breath. Do you know that moment when you are in your Bootcamp exercise class, trying not to look totally decrepit as you struggle to find the right form when the trainer commands that you do endless burpees and then the music changes to The Clash’s “Rock The Casbah,” but it isn’t… Continue reading Rock The Casbah (Redux)
Calling All Alumni: CLOCKWORKS Arrives!
By Kathryn Cullen-DuPont The Spring/Summer 2015 issue of CLOCKWORKS has arrived and, as usual, its roundup and reflections on the goings on at Goddard and in its alumni’s lives make for inspirational reading. No alumni publication would be complete without a roundup of alumni post-graduate activities, and in addition to the more general… Continue reading Calling All Alumni: CLOCKWORKS Arrives!
Pitch Madness! How I Got My Agent
By Mia Siegert Recently, I participated in a Twitter and Blog Competition called Pitch Madness hosted by Brenda Drake. With increasing use of e-readers and social media marketing, writers are able to connect with agents and editors, sometimes having only 140-characters to pitch one’s book. If an agent’s attention is caught from just 140-characters, that… Continue reading Pitch Madness! How I Got My Agent
A Noh Drama about Elvis
Blue Moon Over Memphis, Deborah Brevoort’s Noh Drama about Elvis Presley will be produced in a traditional Noh staging by Theatre Nohgaku in Tokyo, Japan on Saturday May 23rd at 2pm and 7pm. The production will feature Noh orchestrations composed by Richard Emmert and a special Elvis Noh mask that was created by Hideta Kitazawa,… Continue reading A Noh Drama about Elvis
Urgency & the Word
For the first time in seventeen years—since I began writing books in my late twenties when I undertook advanced studies and completed my MFA—I found, in the fall of last year, that I no longer felt the urge to write anything. It was if for seventeen years I had been, without knowing it, on a… Continue reading Urgency & the Word
Cara Hoffman interviewed by George Stephanopoulos
Burgers & Books: George Stephanopoulos with Cara Hoffman The ‘Be Safe I Love You’ author reveals what drives her to write and where she finds inspiration. ABC News broadcast. ABC US News | World News
Last Call! Register Now for the CWC Conference & Reatreat
CWC Writers’ Conference & Retreat June 29-July 3, 2015 Goddard College, 123 Pitkin Rd., Plainfield, VT 05667 The Registration for the Clockhouse Writers’ Conference & Retreat ends May 15, 2015! While it’s true we that we do take late registration if space permits, please do email co-coordinator Carolyn Locke at clocke@clockhouse.net if you’re still thinking… Continue reading Last Call! Register Now for the CWC Conference & Reatreat
Science Fiction as Social Activism
by Chana Porter There is a TV show called Orphan Black which follows a woman as she discovers that she has many identical clones all over the world, the intentional orphans of a top secret genetics project. I’m most interested in Orphan Black as an exercise in empathy. The main character sees the person she… Continue reading Science Fiction as Social Activism
The Confidence Code: Joining the Party
As long as I can remember, I have had my nose to the grindstone, learning early in life how to tune out the noise of the rest of the world around me. I developed such a keen muscle for exclusion that when I had children, I actually had to train myself to pay attention to… Continue reading The Confidence Code: Joining the Party
Victoria Nelson in London
Victoria Nelson is in London this month!… Read her London Postcard: I am in London this month, staying in a spacious flat with dodgy plumbing in the Marylebone district of central London (this is the old station, not the flat): The weather has been gorgeous, tulips and daffodils are blooming in all the parks. This… Continue reading Victoria Nelson in London
Christine Kalafus: Storyteller
MFAW-VT student Christine Kalafus has been participating in storytelling events, like The Moth, broadcast on NPR and The MOuTH through the Mark Twain House in Hartford. In part because of her participation in these activities, she was recently selected to be a featured (one of eight) storytellers set to appear in 8 Objects/8 Stories at… Continue reading Christine Kalafus: Storyteller
Finding The Words
On deep grief and finding the words… By Carolyn Bardos My relationship with language used to be sweet and easy. Thoughts came, I wrote them down, said them aloud, played around with structure, voice, and perspective. In recent years, though, certain life events have left me all but wordless, and I think I know why. I’m… Continue reading Finding The Words
NEWS FROM MFAW STUDENT LUCY SNYDER!!
Lucy Snyder was a participating author at the Ohioana Book Festival last week and and was on two panel discussions: “In Brief: Essays, Poems, and Short Stories” and “Publishing: Everything You Wanted to Know”. And her short story “Cthylla” was just published in the anthology The Library of the Dead (Written Backwards, ISBN: 9780578156750). Congratulations,… Continue reading NEWS FROM MFAW STUDENT LUCY SNYDER!!
Writing From the Margins
Last week, I was invited to talk to a class at City College in New York. Someone asked me about structure; specifically what I thought of the fact that none of the books on their syllabus, including my memoir, had a traditional structure. It wasn’t until that moment – when I learned that the class… Continue reading Writing From the Margins
Giving Back
I love parties. I also love the opportunity to get to know people one-on-one, in some quiet book-walled room or garden corner. Perhaps most fundamentally, I love the chance to be of help in a good endeavor if and when an opportunity presents itself. Luckily for me—and for others similarly inclined—such things are part of… Continue reading Giving Back
Edgar Allan Poe Opera in Ft. Worth 2016 season
EMBEDDED, the Edgar Allan Poe opera written by Deborah Brevoort, will be produced by the Ft. Worth Opera in their 2016 season. The production is timely as Goddard College rolls out its new focus on libretto writing. EMBEDDED is part of the Poe Project, a double-bill comprised of two one-act operas, that was… Continue reading Edgar Allan Poe Opera in Ft. Worth 2016 season
When Play Leads to a Poetry Warning
By Cody Pherigo Diane Ackerman explores the history and deeper workings of play and how it is entangled with the creative process in her book Deep Play. She opens with a definition and a premise: PLAY. It is an activity which proceeds within certain limits of time and space, in a visible order, according to… Continue reading When Play Leads to a Poetry Warning