The Goddard College / PEN North America partnership provides one $10,000 scholarship to an MFA applicant in Creative Writing who is a member of PEN America, PEN Canada, or PEN Mexico. Additionally, North American PEN members who are admitted to Goddard’s MFA in Creative Writing Program, but who do not receive the Goddard/PEN North American… Continue reading Goddard College and North American PEN Centers Partner for Creative Writing Scholarships
Category: BFA Creative Writing
Goddard faculty member Arisa White a Lambda Literary Award finalist
PLAINFIELD, Vt. – Arisa White, a faculty member in Goddard’s BFA in Creative Writing Program, is a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Her collection, You’re the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened (Augury, 2016), is one eight books nominated for the Lesbian Poetry prize. Lambda Literary, the nation’s oldest and largest literary arts organization advancing… Continue reading Goddard faculty member Arisa White a Lambda Literary Award finalist
Fall 2016 Newsletter
In the introduction to his stunning book of essays, Known and Strange Things, Teju Cole comments on how his journalism and essay writing have allowed him to explore his passions. He says, “Through the act of writing, I was able to find out what I knew…, what I was able to know, and where the… Continue reading Fall 2016 Newsletter
Fall 2016 Commencement Address by Arisa White
“Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.” – Cornel West Faculty member Arisa White delivered this commencement address to the Fall 2016 graduates of the Undergraduate Studies and BFA in Creative Writing programs on September 18th, 2016. Thank you to the graduating class for inviting me to be your commencement speaker.… Continue reading Fall 2016 Commencement Address by Arisa White
Writing From Home
This blog post was prompted by the following question asked by alumna Kat Richardson (BFAW ’15): Q: [What are] the benefits of writing from home (which I’m not feeling right now)? The reason I chose Knox over Goddard initially was because I wanted the experience of living in the middle of all those resources. I… Continue reading Writing From Home
BFAW Program Launches DUENDE Literary Journal
What is Duende? 1) “A sort of corkscrew that can get art into the sensibility of an audience…it climbs up inside you, from the soles of the feet,” wrote poet Federico García Lorca in 1933, in “Theory and Play of the Duende.” 2) A new, all-online, national literary journal, produced by students in Goddard’s BFA… Continue reading BFAW Program Launches DUENDE Literary Journal
BFA Faculty Poetry Reading: PoemCity 2014
Watch this video of BFA in Creative Writing faculty members Michael Leong, Michael Vizsolyi, Arisa White, and Wendy Call, and Program Director Janet Sylvester, reading original work as well as translations at this PoemCity 2014 event at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library in Montpelier, Vermont here. Thanks to ORCA Media for this video coverage.
BFA News & Achievements – Spring 2014
Welcome to our Spring 2014 BFA in Creative Writing eNewsletter! The students and faculty of our wonderful program have been busy since the fall residency. Here’s a run-down of recent publications, readings, collaborations, and general literary accomplishments: STUDENTS Cerridwin Aker has received a full scholarship to study nonfiction at the 27th annual Fishtrap Writers Conference… Continue reading BFA News & Achievements – Spring 2014
To Celebrate Walter’s Life
To celebrate Walter Butts, I want to write specific things about what it was like to work with him. Here is a sentence that I have found myself saying over and over since he passed away: Walter Butts was one of the best colleagues I ever had. Walter could be counted on to speak his… Continue reading To Celebrate Walter’s Life
Poetry & Symbolism
Here is the solitude from from which you are absent. It is raining. The sea wind is hunting stray gulls. — Pablo Neruda Every day, we encounter symbols that help redefine the world around us and our place in it. Pablo Neruda was a poet acutely aware of this dynamic, and his… Continue reading Poetry & Symbolism
Contemplation, Clarity, and the Poem
Complex thoughts distilled through plain diction, interactions with the natural world, and specificity of details can heighten imagery and evoke larger implications. This endeavor to make human connection through introspection, reflection and acute awareness of one’s environment is a prevalent style employed by many ancient Chinese poets. Within this seemingly simplistic approach, these masters arrived… Continue reading Contemplation, Clarity, and the Poem
Reading, Listening, and Making Poems
I’ve been thinking lately how certain literary influences have informed and shaped my writing. As a narrative/lyric poet interested in story and expressed feeling, the poets I keep returning to for inspiration include Richard Hugo, Stanley Plumly, James Wright, Philip Levine, William Matthews, B.H. Fairchild, Lynda Hull, Sharon Olds, and others who draw from… Continue reading Reading, Listening, and Making Poems
Revision: Liberating Language
The poet Allen Ginsberg has famously said, “First thought, best thought.” The inimitable Otis Redding, in the classic “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay,” laments “I can’t do what ten people tell me to do.” Here, in the BFA in Creative Writing program at Goddard College, you are encouraged to consider revision as… Continue reading Revision: Liberating Language
An Interview with Laurie Foos in The Writer's Chronicle
Jorge Armenteros | October/November 2012 Reprinted from The Writer’s Chronicle and www.awpwriter.org EXCERPTI’ll be perfectly honest and tell you that I have no adequate answer to why I write the way that I do. Writing fiction that departs from reality in some way is not intentional for me; it’s not a precept I impose upon… Continue reading An Interview with Laurie Foos in The Writer's Chronicle
Character-driven Fiction: Toward Believabilty
The novelist Paul Auster has written, “As long as there’s one person to believe it, there’s no story that can’t be true.” And what compels that one reader to believe, especially if the narrative consists of characters that might be difficult to identify with? The challenge here is to create characters in a way that… Continue reading Character-driven Fiction: Toward Believabilty