Goddard MFA Program Director, Elena Georgiou muses on memory, writing, history, art and inheritance, and offers you a writing prompt. “In my culture, it is the person who is celebrating a birthday who treats others (not the other way round). So in the spirit of my people, I offer you three gifts…”
Category: Thoughts and Musings
Are We Not Everyone? The Writer as Siddhartha
Goddard MFAW faculty member Darrah Cloud confesses to reading Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, for the 11th time. “Last night, on the 71st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I put it down and binge-watched a television show on HBO called Master of None…”
Poetry & Masks Collaboration: Beatrix Gates
Poetry and masks at the Farm/Arts Exchange in Down East Maine’s Hancock County with Goddard MFAW faculty member Bea Gates and her old friend Ron King–farmer, weaver, queer activist (Stonewall to present day), social worker, and wearer of masks–on Faerie Kingdom Road, King Hill Farm, Penobscot.
What Keeps You Up At Night?
What comes to you when you think of Goddard? At the Goddard MFAW graduation in Vermont, graduate Laura Cyphers mused about “radical imagination” means. And we ask you: What does it require of us to be a writer in the world? If we said to you, “Write for the World,” would that imply a social consciousness, a personal urgency, or an exhortation (along with the skills you will need) to reach the greatest audience possible?
Seeking Asylum: 100,000 Stories
You could say I lost my belief in our politicians. They all seemed like game show hosts to me. — “If I Ever Lose My Faith in You,” Sting I. Empathy and the Iliad I read an article this week, published four years ago in Scientific American, about how empathy had declined 40 percent among… Continue reading Seeking Asylum: 100,000 Stories
On Aretha Franklin and the Art of Showing Up
By Julie Parent By now you’ve probably heard about the spectacular performance by Aretha Franklin at the 2015 Kennedy Center Honors which was telecast on December 29. In tribute to one of the honorees that evening, singer and prolific songwriter Carole King, Ms. Franklin sang the song (co-written by King and the late Gerry Goffin)… Continue reading On Aretha Franklin and the Art of Showing Up
Post-Operative Depression, Inflammatory Cytokines… or Writer’s Block?
The operation was over, my gallbladder was out, and its massive infection had not killed me. I’d been free of physical pain for a week, and was days away from my “all-clear” follow-up check-in with my surgeon. My recovery, in other words, was well underway, and I ought to have been ecstatic to be free… Continue reading Post-Operative Depression, Inflammatory Cytokines… or Writer’s Block?
The Right Story: Rewriting My Life
In our February residency I’m going to ask my students of memoir to imagine their lives as if they had made all the right choices and gotten everything they’d fiercely wanted and failed to get. In this moment, a few breaths before the new year of 2016, I try imagining my own life the same… Continue reading The Right Story: Rewriting My Life
A Different Approach to Writing Annotations
By Patricia Connelly The Whole is Greater Than the Sum of its Parts–A Two-Part Blog At one of our group advising meetings during the June residency in Vermont, Deborah Brevoort suggested we all read one or two of the same works during the semester and annotate them at the same time. The idea was that… Continue reading A Different Approach to Writing Annotations
Confessions of a Playwright Cast as a Dramaturg (including a Glossary of Terms)
In the broadest sense, my lofty role at the theater where I serve as resident dramaturg is to protect the integrity of the art form. But day-to-day, I do research and read A LOT of plays. I’m also very involved with season planning, casting, production design conferences, and I develop and curate all the humanities… Continue reading Confessions of a Playwright Cast as a Dramaturg (including a Glossary of Terms)
Expanding a Legacy: The Pitkin Review
by Christine Kalafus Last spring I received an unexpected email from the outgoing Editor-in-Chief of The Pitkin Review. It read: “I wanted to ask if you’d be interested in filling the position of Editor-in-Chief next semester.” I nearly choked on my tea. Then I had two thoughts: There must be someone more… Continue reading Expanding a Legacy: The Pitkin Review
This Day, in Infamy and History
Today is a day that was supposed to live in infamy. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the U.S. response, kicked off a chain of events – including the internment and the atomic bombings – that still reverberate today. What do we know? President Roosevelt called Pearl Harbor an “unprovoked… Continue reading This Day, in Infamy and History
Pele’s Fire, Write to the Core: A Glimpse Inside
By Heather Leah Huddleston A writer’s retreat on the Big Island of Hawaii may sound like a far-off dream, but now, it is a reality. Pele’s Fire: Write to the Core, a writer’s retreat at Kalani, a 120-acre retreat space located near the village of Pahoa, is taking place in April 2016. “…for me, the… Continue reading Pele’s Fire, Write to the Core: A Glimpse Inside
Second Time Around: A Self-Interview
So, how does it feel to know that your 1999 memoir, Apples and Oranges: My Journey Through Sexual Identity, originally published by Houghton Mifflin, will be reissued by Seven Stories Press? Do you think this is a good moment for that to happen? It definitely feels good, but a little weird. Apples and Oranges is… Continue reading Second Time Around: A Self-Interview
Poetry as a Tool for Educational Equity
By Simone John Who gets permission to be a poet? Which kids are told to aspire to be artists, and which kids are told to seek menial work? How can educators teach in a way that is liberatory? How can we interrupt thought processes born from the seeds of internalized oppression? I teach poetry out… Continue reading Poetry as a Tool for Educational Equity
My First Time
There’s nothing like the first time. Everyone remembers it, don’t they? I remember my first time as if it were yesterday. I had never been to the theater before. I’d seen local productions of The King and I and Annie Get Your Gun, but I had never seen a play. As it so happened, in… Continue reading My First Time
Counting Pleasures
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
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
Love Story
By Richard Panek Two years ago I wrote an essay for another website, lastwordonnothing.com, that I called “Love Story,” and for the opening I paraphrased the opening of the novel of the same name: “What can you say about a fifty-seven-year-old book that has outlived its usefulness? That it was beautiful. And brilliant. And taking up valuable space… Continue reading Love Story