MFAW Director, Elena Georgiou Interview in Bustle Magazine

As one of the three finalists for the New American Voices Award, given by the Institute for Immigration Research, Elena was interviewed for the following article in Bustle Magazine.   From the website, here’s a little bit about the award: “The idea for the award, which is sponsored by the Institute for Immigration Research, arose over a year… Continue reading MFAW Director, Elena Georgiou Interview in Bustle Magazine

MFAW-VT Faculty Member Douglas A. Martin Interview

The Creative Independent, “a growing resource of emotional and practical guidance for creative people,” featured MFAW-VT faculty member Douglas A. Martin in their Sunday Edition Interview.  Here is a taste: “My book began its life as a dissertation. My approach was something like “I’m only going to write a dissertation in a particular way. It is not going… Continue reading MFAW-VT Faculty Member Douglas A. Martin Interview

REIKO RIZZUTO on CBC’s “Out in the Open”

MFAW-VT faculty member Rahna Reiko Rizzuto was interviewed for the show Out in the Open with Piya Chattopadhyay on CBC Radio.  The episode was called “What Moms Can’t Say.” Hosted by Piya Chattopadhyay, Out in the Open tackles one timely subject each week from many different angles with energy, wit, and journalistic rigor.  A diverse range of… Continue reading REIKO RIZZUTO on CBC’s “Out in the Open”

Kirsten Childs: Underneath It All

Goddard MFAW faculty Deborah Brevoort gave her Fall 2016 advising group the extraordinary opportunity to connect with the prolific writer, Kirsten Childs. Her credentials span various works, but we had the pleasure of examining her musical, The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin. This is a funny and poignant story about a little black girl named Viveca Stanton and her journey of self-discovery.

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.

Another Sneak Preview: CLOCKHOUSE Volume Four!

CLOCKHOUSE Volume Four will be presented to the CWC and MFAW community at a Preview Reading and Celebration during the Clockhouse Writers’ Conference & Retreat, and it will be published in July.   To give a sense of what we can all look forward to, here’s CLOCKHOUSE Editorial Director Sarah Cedeño’s introductory note to the… Continue reading Another Sneak Preview: CLOCKHOUSE Volume Four!

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.

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

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

And have you read… Headwaters?

Have you ever wondered who began the low-residency MFAW Program at Goddard College, the first of its kind anywhere? Who spearheaded our progressive and oft-imitated curriculum? It was Ellen Bryant Voigt, who just last week won a MacArthur Fellowship Grant. Ellen grew up on her family’s farm in rural Virginia. She earned her BA from… Continue reading And have you read… Headwaters?

And have you read… The Cryptogram?

When The Writer was a student in the RUP Program at Goddard College, she got a part in Paul Zindel’s play, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. It was her favorite play: she’d seen Eve Arden in it in Chicago at the old Ivanho Theatre, on a day when her mother “forgot” to… Continue reading And have you read… The Cryptogram?

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… The State of Kansas?

In simple, rhythmic, nail-sharp prose, the cast of unnamed characters in The State of Kansas survive a flood, brush their teeth, drink, attend a sinister dinner party, try to love others, think a lot about death (animal and human), and weigh the confusion of trying to and a place—decent or otherwise—in a big, beautiful, and often… Continue reading And have you read… The State of Kansas?

And have you read… Slab?

Slab is Goddard alumna Selah Saterstrom’s new book out from Coffeehouse Press, a place you can rely on for fascinating, timely and inventive work. “On a slab that’s all Katrina left of her Mississippi home, Tiger tells a story full of wickedness and incantation…” Excerpt from the book: “SCENE IN A HOUSE: The filthy kitchenette,… Continue reading And have you read… Slab?

And have you read… Devil in a Blue Dress?

Goddard College alum Walter Mosley has written more than 4 dozen books in his incredible career. In particular, he invented the character of Easy Rawlins, an African-American detective living in Watts, solving crimes, and reflecting on life in an America few get to know. The Writer has cobbled together excerpts from interviews Walter has given… Continue reading And have you read… Devil in a Blue Dress?