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
Category: Thoughts and Musings
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
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
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
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
On Being a Student Again
Last month I attended a writing workshop as a student for the first time since becoming an MFA advisor nine years ago. That’s embarrassing to admit. Not that I went but that it took me so long. I should have known better. I’d delayed decades before getting my MFA. For years I’d told myself that… Continue reading On Being a Student Again
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…
A Master Class with Mozart
By Deborah Brevoort It is often said that Mozart is the greatest composer to have ever lived. After writing a new libretto for his comic opera The Impresario I understand why. I got the first inkling of his genius when I began work on the first aria sung by Madame Heartmelt. There was something in… Continue reading A Master Class with Mozart
I Dream of Wrigley
Tonight the 2015 Major League Baseball season opens at Chicago’s Wrigley Field with a game between the St. Louis Cardinals and the host Chicago Cubs. This essay originally appeared a year ago on The Last Word on Nothing, a science writers’ collective, in honor of both Wrigley Field’s 100th anniversary and one book’s indelible evocation of an era. By… Continue reading I Dream of Wrigley
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
Coping Skills
by Christine Kalafus The first day I was to lead my writing workshop, I arrived at the library early and precisely arranged eight chairs in a circle. My workshop bible: Writing Alone and With Others by Pat Schneider was next to me. I couldn’t wait. In just a few moments my participants would arrive. To… Continue reading Coping Skills
To Read Is to Dream, Guided By Someone Else’s Hand
by Traci Dolan-Priestley Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet, published after his death and put together by assembling notes that he left behind, was the first book I read about what it meant to be a writer. Not how to write, no, no, not even mentioned. I’ve quoted this particular passage many times. “One of the… Continue reading To Read Is to Dream, Guided By Someone Else’s Hand
Trusting the Process in Tucson
by Kristen Stone One of the most amazing things about my Goddard experience (beside the invective to TRUST THE PROCESS, something I still wrestle with, on the daily, in my writing and non-writing lives) is the connections I made with writers—who became friends—around the country. One such friend is Kristen Nelson, founder and Executive Director… Continue reading Trusting the Process in Tucson
Toklas, Stein and a literary Seance
I’m having some friends over tonight to plan a seance. Except it’s not really a seance; it’s just called it that to be silly and because it started with a ghost. The ghost of Alice B Toklas is rumored to haunt the Sorrento hotel in Seattle so the folks from APRIL (Authors, Publishers and Readers… Continue reading Toklas, Stein and a literary Seance
Some of What A Faculty Advisor Does on Leave . . .
…well, at least some of what this Faculty Advisor does on leave. This past week Professor David Mitchell, George Washington University, brought his “Disabled People and the Holocaust” class to Berlin. The class is especially interested in how what happened to those with disabilities in Germany under the Third Reich still affects people today, something… Continue reading Some of What A Faculty Advisor Does on Leave . . .
The Goddard Salons and The Un-Book Tour
by Ann Hedreen I remember poring over my first Goddard MFA residency schedule and the way my eyes skidded to a stop at the word “salon.” We would have such things as salons? À la Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas? I felt a little frisson, a cocktail of thrill mixed with dread. My instincts… Continue reading The Goddard Salons and The Un-Book Tour
On Being Copy Edited
“I have performed the necessary butchery. Here is the bleeding corpse.” –Henry James, to his editor, after being asked to cut a few lines from a five-thousand-word article for the Times Literary Supplement For years on my syllabi for fiction workshops I’ve been including boilerplate about how rare a treat it is to be around… Continue reading On Being Copy Edited
Some [tiny] examples of the EXTREMELY AMAZING THINGS THAT HAPPEN CASUALLY AT GODDARD AND NOWHERE ELSE*
by Kristen E. Nelson I got to study with Rebecca (mother-f***ing) Brown. That’s sometimes how I say her name when I get excited about Rebecca, and once you read/meet/encounter/learn from Rebecca, you continue to be excited about her. I read her short story collection What Keeps Me Here and then read all of her books.… Continue reading Some [tiny] examples of the EXTREMELY AMAZING THINGS THAT HAPPEN CASUALLY AT GODDARD AND NOWHERE ELSE*
So Someone Called Me a Narcissist…and other thoughts on writing, learning and teaching
My name is Regina Tingle and I write memoir. According to a recent statement by a fiction writer who will remain unnamed, this makes me an “attention-seeking narcissist.” Fine. I’ll step up to that. In fact, I’ll indulge my narcissistic self by sharing a story from my own experience. I don’t find it coincidental that… Continue reading So Someone Called Me a Narcissist…and other thoughts on writing, learning and teaching
Preparing for the Teaching Practicum
The teaching practicum is one of the cornerstones of Goddard’s MFA. Students graduate from Goddard having developed and conducted a writing workshop in their communities. As she gets ready for her own practicum, current student Catherine Aarts is reading Wallace Stegner, and here she shares her musing about her upcoming role as facilitator. “Stegner reminds… Continue reading Preparing for the Teaching Practicum