In 2018 Matthew Quick (MFAW ’07) was interviewed by Dustin Byerly (BA RUP ’01) for Clockworks magazine. Recently, I spoke with Matthew Quick (MFAW ’07) about his journey from high school teacher to award-winning author and the role Goddard played in his development as an author. Matthew Quick is the New York Times bestselling author… Continue reading Q&A with author Matthew Quick
Tag: Writing Advice
On Disability and Diversity: The Exclusivity of Inclusion
…disability is too often excluded in discussions of diversity, a good deal of which, for good reason, focuses on race. This silence is especially noteworthy because disability crosses racial, gender, sexuality, class, and national boundaries.
Alchemy of the Word News
In today’s Craft Book Spotlight, The Writer magazine gave our very own all-faculty compilation, Alchemy of the Word, a nice shout-out: “When National Book Award winner and acclaimed memoirist Maxine Hong Kingston praises a book, you sit up and pay attention. “Whether you’re a young beginner or a veteran writer like me, you’ll get support… Continue reading Alchemy of the Word News
Cathedrals and Yurts–A Reprint…
“I get it: I keep trying to build cathedrals when I should be building yurts.”
Emails to a Young Writer, or I Am Not Friedrich Nietzsche:
On Writers, Writer’s Block, Generosity, Creativity and Community
Why This Blog Is Late
I just started rehearsals for a ten-day workshop a relatively new play of mine: BORN IN EAST BERLIN. The workshop is at TheatreWorks in Palo Alto. I decided to blog the first day.
The Sugar Balloon
Whenever you bump up against a writing situation that feels impossible, remember the Sugar Balloon, and all the experimentation, tenacity, innovation, determination, and risk that it took to arrive at this floating answer to a once-thought-impossible question.
Notebook
The paragraph or so of writing in preparation for this post I began on an empty page of an old, located notebook, one that flips vertically like a police ticket or meter maid book, but unlike law enforcement trappings
Claribel Alegría: A Poetry Pendant
By chance or design, I held the words of the Salvadoran poet Claribel Alegría, later translated by poet Carolyn Forche and published by Pittsburgh in Flowers from the Volcano.
Writing By the Seat of Your Pants
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about thrillers. About why recently I’ve been reading them compulsively at all hours of the day and night. Maybe the subject for a new book? I’m thinking about that. In the meantime I devour them at a great rate.
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.
On Mastery
2018 marks two milestones in my life.
This past March, I turned 40, which everyone assures me is the new 30. (It’s also, unsurprisingly, the old 60, but no one wants to talk about that.) To celebrate my fortieth birthday, my husband attempted to coerce me into having a celebration worthy of the occasion, a lavish gathering of family and friends and colleagues, crammed into a modestly priced rental hall to eat finger foods we didn’t cook set to music we only vaguely remembered selecting. I refused. Does anybody really need to see me drunk and dancing awkwardly to another Macklemore song about inclusion? I don’t think so.
A Farewell to Rebecca Brown–From Rebecca Brown
After almost twenty years of teaching in the MFA in Creative Writing program at Goddard, I am going to retire. When I first started working at Goddard, there was one campus only, in Vermont. I went to Plainfield, where I’d never been, and started to work with a bunch of people I’d never met before. … Continue reading A Farewell to Rebecca Brown–From Rebecca Brown
Wanderer in the Dark (an excerpt)
Wanderer was one of the last documented ships to carry an illegal cargo of slaves from Africa to the United States, landing at Jekyll Island, Georgia on November 28, 1858, arriving with some 400 slaves who survived the voyage from Angola.
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
Deadlines
One of the many reasons I envy Goddard students is that they have deadlines.
On Writing, Politics, and the Tarot
What do writing, politics and the Tarot have in common? On November 7th, 2017, I was elected Town Supervisor of Pine Plains, New York.
Doing Laundry with Hannibal Lecter
Do you suppose Hannibal Lecter does his own laundry? It’s easy to see a white collar criminal doctor sending his whites out to be dry cleaned and pressed by an efficiently outsourced place with pink boxes. But I imagine, what with the blood stains and all, doing it himself is a better plan. So there he is in the basement—or, I guess he has one of those fancy laundry rooms on an upper floor with sunny yellow walls and a sign that says “Wash. Dry. Fold. Repeat.”— sorting whites and red and pulling out the bleach and hoping it doesn’t ruin his favorite sweater…
Disability Representation in Literature: Beyond “The Fries Test”
As a disabled writer, for over two decades I’ve looked at how disability is represented in our literature. This interest has taken me across the globe, with a special focus in disability representation in Japan, and more recently in Germany. I’ve taught classes and given talks on disability representation at many universities and conferences in North America, Japan, and Europe.
Notes from the Future by Deborah Brevoort
Get out your pens! Head for the future by writing big!