That’s what I heard in the classroom I’d been assigned for my summer class — not even chirps. No crickets, no students, no summer school session filled with eager fledgling writers. Apparently nobody wants to write stories this summer. If this was a Tuesday or Thursday (blog photo days), I’d just post a giant picture [...]
Tagged MFA, TravelI turn thirty-five today. Now that’s really starting to sound old. Some of my classmates are celebrating twenty-five this year. Oh, the places they’ll go. When I want to scare them I talk about dial-up modems and pagers, and how cell phones were as big as loaves of bread, and how you had to read [...]
Tagged Ain't That America, MFA, TravelThis is one section of the post-graduation strawberry mountain that Vanderbilt provided for me, and a few thousand other people. Again, it’s a cell phone pic so I apologize for the quality. But still: A strawberry mountain! And big bowls of powdered sugar for sprinkling, and champagne for drinking. It made up for the [...]
Tagged MFA, Photos(Continuation from Monday’s post.)
Recently I’ve been reading parts of John Gardner’s book “On Becoming a Novelist,” and I swear I found this part just as I was reaching the same conclusion:
I had by this time already faced the painful truth every committed young writer must eventually face, that he’s on his own. Teachers and editors [...]
(I broke this into two posts, one today, and one for Wednesday.)
I’m enjoying a two-week lull between the end of classes and graduation. That’s how I’m pitching it to myself: a two-week period in which I can ignore the obvious questions like “What’s next?” or “What about health insurance?”
First, health insurance? I’m more worried [...]
One of the enjoyable parts of finishing up graduate school is regaining control of my reading list(s). I spent two years reading what other people told me to read: selections from the worlds of literary theory, history, short stories, novels, novellas, craft essays, and nonfiction. There were plenty of good books in there, sure, but [...]
Tagged Books, MFAI’m driving to Montevallo, Alabama, today to attend a literary festival. Montevallo is just south of Birmingham, if you’re wondering. There will be many fine writers there so I’m looking forward to readings and maybe some Montevallian wanderings in my free time.
Do you think there’s a Count of Montevallo? There should be.
Yesterday marked my last [...]
I read a couple stories, or pieces of stories, really, at a second-year MFA reading last night. My last official graduate student reading! It feels like I was just watching last year’s second-year students get their send-off into the great post-MFA beyond, and then all of a sudden there I was in the same spot. [...]
Tagged Ain't That America, MFA