Category: Faculty News

Ten in Ten: MFA reading at Elliott Bay

What is Ten in Ten? This year, TEN members of the MFA in Creative Writing faculty are bringing books, plays, and productions into the world. You can catch three of them at Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, Washington, along with moderator and Goddard MFA graduate Isla McKetta.  From the Elliot Bay website: Two of… Continue reading Ten in Ten: MFA reading at Elliott Bay

The New American Story Project

Goddard MFA in Creative Writing faculty member Micheline Aharonian Marcom, along with four other artists and writers, for the past year and a half has been working on The New American Story Project, a digital oral history project recording the stories of children who have fled violence in Central America and have come to the United States as refugees. JoAnne Tompkins, a current student in the Goddard MFA in Writing Program in Port Townsend, WA, interviews Aharonian Marcom about The New American Story Project.

An Interview with Douglas A. Martin

In the new Rain Taxi, Douglas Martin and Andy Fitch talk through the examples of Kathy Acker, Hart Crane, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, and others. Narcissism. Writing sentences like painting. And how one gets involved in the work.

Political Incorrectness: History in the Family

Today it’s popular to say that political correctness is destroying America, but a recently discovered set of century-old clippings offer a cautionary reminder of what our country was like without political correctness. Goddard MFA faculty member Aimee Liu’s opinion piece about political correctness and her family history was published in the LA Times on March 27.

#Space#Poetry

NASA asked us what might this mission teach us about ourselves and our universe. NASA asked us how are we as a people are stretched and deepened by explorations beyond our Earthly home. And we have answered—collectively, surrealistically, idealistically. We are ready for our words to ride aboard the OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft on its journey to the asteroid Bhanu/Bennu.

Interview with Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi

Goddard’s Port Townsend MFA faculty member Aimee Liu will be interviewing Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi on Tuesday, March 15, in Los Angeles about her new book Love, Loss, and What We Ate. This vivid memoir of food and family, survival and triumph, traces the arc of Lakshmi’s unlikely path from an immigrant childhood to a complicated life in front of the camera—a tantalizing blend of Ruth Reichl’s Tender at the Bone and Nora Ephron’s Heartburn.

And more on… Fox Tooth Heart

MFAW-VT faculty member John McManus’s new collection of short stories Fox Tooth Heart has garnered amazing reviews since we posted about it two weeks ago. Join us in celebrating John’s success, and read all about it below! From LitHub Magazine: “The first sentence of McManus’s short story “Bugaboo” establishes mood, setting, and character all at… Continue reading And more on… Fox Tooth Heart

Story Threads: Gale Jackson

Poet Gale Jackson (MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts faculty) is actively engaged in work that involves storytelling as practice and conduit for research. She has helped develop Storyteller in Residence / Poet in the House Collaborative for public school students in New York City. Says Gale: “Storytelling is our oldest site of pedagogy, wondering, imagining, discovery, socialization,… Continue reading Story Threads: Gale Jackson

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?!?!

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?

And have you read… Three Apples Fell From Heaven?

Three Apples Fell From Heaven was Micheline Aharonian Marcom’s first novel. Here she tells us a little about its inception: I began it when I was in my late twenties and enrolled in the MFA Program at Mills College, where I also currently am on faculty.  The main drive to write the book was to… Continue reading And have you read… Three Apples Fell From Heaven?

And have you read… Gaining?

Gaining: The Truth about Life after Eating Disorders by Goddard MFA faculty member Aimee Liu is a classic on the subject of eating disorders. Read our interview with Aimee! http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/gaining-aimee-liu/1112492800?ean=9780759518421 http://www.gainingthetruth.com/ Q: You’re an author of several novels.  How has your past struggle with anorexia influenced or impacted your fiction?  A:  While none of my fiction… Continue reading And have you read… Gaining?

And have you read… The Child Eater?

Rachel Pollack’s new book is an adult fairy tale! She answered a few questions for The Writer: 1) What was the inspiration for THE CHILD EATER? THE CHILD EATER began as the two final stories in a collection of adult fairy tales, The Tarot Of Perfection, that I’d written some years before.  Actually, three of… Continue reading And have you read… The Child Eater?

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

How to Survive Winter with Just Your Own Mind…

                        This past weekend, it snowed on the Vermont campus! If you’ve still got the chills, or are dreading next winter, or summer is your winter, learn how to survive winter in this now-classic essay by Rebecca Brown in The Stranger: “It’s dark outside… Continue reading How to Survive Winter with Just Your Own Mind…

Art As a response to Planetary Emergency

Although both had been feminist writers and peace activists living in Brooklyn, NY for many years, playwright Karen Malpede and poet/novelist Jan Clausen didn’t know each other very well until they spent a night in jail together following a civil disobedience arrest at the time of the Iraq invasion in 2003… Kenyon Review has just… Continue reading Art As a response to Planetary Emergency

HARIBO to publish “B-61” by Douglas A. Martin

This is a new publishing idea (“a new place for writing that I am making online”). More from editor Jacob Severn: “I would hesitate to call it a journal, because it will have no archive, no collection. Only a single piece will be made available to read at any given time.” I first met Jacob… Continue reading HARIBO to publish “B-61” by Douglas A. Martin

Rebecca Brown on Opera Diva Worship

Check out Faculty member Rebecca Brown’s essay on opera diva Stephanie Blythe in The Stranger… “…The word “diva” is Italian for “goddess,” and human culture is full of humans who, if they try to approach the divine too closely, get burned (though not always literally). You’re supposed to behave reverently when you want to meet… Continue reading Rebecca Brown on Opera Diva Worship

National Poetry Month – WeHo Lamppost Poetry Project and Reading

MICHAEL KLEIN is one of 23 poets (W.S. Merwin, Marie Howe, Toi Derricotte, Mark Doty, Sharon Olds among them) who, for National Poetry Month, has their photo image (by MFAW student Shef Reynolds) and line from one of their poems as part of their own banner which graces a lamppost along Santa Monica Boulevard in… Continue reading National Poetry Month – WeHo Lamppost Poetry Project and Reading