One year before she became an MFA student at Goddard College, Caroline Catlin had her writing published in The New York Times. For many writers, this would be a capstone achievement. But for Catlin, it was the foundation of her Goddard learning journey. In the article, titled What I Learned Photographing Death, she wrote about… Continue reading Spotlight: Caroline Catlin, MFA in Creative Writing
Tag: memoir
MFAW-WA Nita Sweeney is Short-Listed!
MFAW alumna Nita Sweeney’s unpublished memoir, Twenty-Six Point Freaking Two: How a Sedentary, Middle-Aged Manic Depressive Became a Marathoner (with the help of her dog), was short-listed for the 2018 William Faulkner – William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition nonfiction category. Read Nita’s blog, to see more about the news created by her unpublished memoir and advice for… Continue reading MFAW-WA Nita Sweeney is Short-Listed!
MFAW-WA Alumna Sarah Cannon’s Thesis Published!
MFAW-WA alumna Sarah Cannon’s Goddard thesis, turned debut memoir, The Shame of Losing (Red Hen Press), will be available October 2, 2018 in most independent bookstores in the Northwest. If you are a strong supporter, it would be helpful to ask your local bookstore and library to carry this title. If you’re thinking of buying a copy, the presale period… Continue reading MFAW-WA Alumna Sarah Cannon’s Thesis Published!
Between Yearning and Dread
Because Yearning and Dread is the theme of our upcoming Goddard residency, I’ve been thinking lately about the role these emotions play in my own writing, and as I look back over my fiction, particularly my novels, it seems pretty clear that the yearning and dread that fuel my work revolve around my parents.
Kenny Fries Visiting Writer
MFAW-VT faculty member Kenny Fries will be Visiting Writer at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, PA next week. During his time at King’s, Kenny will meet with faculty and students, visit two writing classes, and give a public reading on April 17, 7:30pm, Burke Auditorium, McGowan School of Business. Previous visiting writers at King’s have included Michael… Continue reading Kenny Fries Visiting Writer
In The New York Times, Goddard Faculty Member, Kenny Fries asks: “What Kind of Society Do We Want to Be?
Online today at The New York Times, Goddard MFA faculty member Kenny Fries asks: “What kind of society do we want to be?” In “The Nazis’ First Victims Were the Disabled,” Kenny Fries writes about the echoes of the extermination of the “unfit” carried out by the Third Reich, the importance of disability history and its relationship to… Continue reading In The New York Times, Goddard Faculty Member, Kenny Fries asks: “What Kind of Society Do We Want to Be?
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”
Hope is a Form of Energy
Goddard MFAW faculty Michael Klein: The beautiful writer, John Berger, who died a day into the New Year once said to the living: “hope is not a form of guarantee; it’s a form of energy, and very frequently that energy is strongest in circumstances that are very dark.” For all of you, I wish radical hope.
White Girl Migration
After graduate school, I joined a migration of writers to New York. My homeland was Skokie, a suburb outside Chicago, where our mostly old neighbors had just survived the holocaust and I could walk all by myself to their houses to play cards with them. We lived in identical small ranch houses, mine distinguished by being a place where adults spelled out the word “divorce” over my head like profanity and always in relation to other people. There was dinner every night, breakfast every morning, cocktails and television, piano lessons, BBQs on the patio, a set of World Book Encyclopedias and 12 novels, one of which was Gore Vidal’s MYRA BRECKINRIDGE, which I read on the sly when I was 12.
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.
Contested Spaces
Kenny Fries, Goddard MFA faculty member living in Berlin, visits “Homosexualität_en” exhibit at the Deutsches Historisches Museum and the Schwules Museum: “I was reminded of how the word “homosexual” was used for the first time around the same time as the word “normal,” and how historically the issue of “cure” has pertained to both homosexuality and disability. I noted how there have been laws “outlawing” both homosexuality and disability, including the “ugly” laws in the United States, which made it illegal for disabled people to appear in public. Most of these laws were not repealed until the 1970s. Chicago’s 1911 ordinance that stated, “It is hereby prohibited for any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated, or deformed in any way so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object to expose himself to public view,” was the last to be repealed, in 1974.”
Rejection Makes You Stronger
Minneapolis AWP — Check! I write this sitting cross-legged on the nubby zebra-print carpet of Seattle’s SeaTac airport. A friend dropped me off an hour early and I couldn’t be happier with the extra time to just chill. At the risk of sounding cheerleader-ish, what I want to say to all the beautiful passersby is… Continue reading Rejection Makes You Stronger
Alumni News: Michelle Embree Interviews Sarah Shellow
Michelle writes: “The week has gifted me with numerous pleasures. The best being an opportunity to ask a few questions of a fellow writer and Goddard graduate, Sarah Shellow. Her words always give me a sense of healing and I very much would like to share them with all of you. Thank you and enjoy.”… Continue reading Alumni News: Michelle Embree Interviews Sarah Shellow
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
EMILY STERN IN ENTROPY MAGAZINE
An excerpt from MFAW-VT alum Emily Stern’s memoir When Doves Cry, which is the evolution of her thesis, is in Entropy Magazine today. Author’s Note from Emily: “When Doves Cry is about my mother and her death from complications of HIV/AIDS in 1993. Beneath all of this, When Doves Cry is a story about the indestructible,… Continue reading EMILY STERN IN ENTROPY MAGAZINE
Undocumented: Sarah Shellow at Spoke The Hub
In 2003, I broke the law because I did not believe in one that kept people from knowing each other. I went to live in Cuba for three months, packing my bags with my dream to write, with my years of studying Spanish, with the years I danced Cuban salsa in New York, and with… Continue reading Undocumented: Sarah Shellow at Spoke The Hub