The best art is grounded somewhere. We are all tied to memories of where we grow up, where we settle down, where we spend time in between. At our fourth reading, faculty members Sean Prentiss and Jessica Hendry-Nelson both talked about the value of place and how they ground their work in very precise settings […]
Poet and photographer Tyler Friend is a self-described “apricot/human hybrid,” a characteristically pronoun-averse writer, and someone who’s eager to take on new poetic forms. Friend’s 2014 chapbook, ampersonate was published by Choose The Sword Press (motto: “read a fuckin’ book”), which they describe as a “quasi-autobiography…a collection of insecurities…a topography of my heart.” After graduating from the MFA […]
On the right side of his neck, just below his ear, poet and professor Ruben Quesada has a tattoo of the Chinese character 晨, which he tells me means, “early light.” Quesada was born on an early morning in a late summer day in August. “I feel that idea of light embodies who I am […]
Visiting poet Ruben Quesada was the star of our third reading, a solo act. He read three poems from his upcoming and still-untitled collection, though they aren’t entirely poems, per se: they are disparate ideas split up into numbered sections that convey themes of religion, desire, and surviving the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. When the collection goes […]
Multitasking, that’s what it is, really—says Cammie Finch, an avid combination reader and hula-hooper, usually both at the same time. A first-year student at VCFA’s MFA in Writing & Publishing program, she has been frequently sighted outside of the dorms, holding up a (lightweight) book and simultaneously hooping it up. It might seem silly, sure, but […]
We kept our second reading of the year short, and to the point: poet Sherwin Bitsui, reading from his current work as well as a preview of his third book of poetry, joined onstage our very own Trinie Dalton, Faculty in the MFA in Writing & Publishing program. “I’ve kinda been in a mood lately,” said Trinie, just […]
Sherwin Bitsui’s Flood Song, the poet’s second book, is a hike through the desert at sunset when you don’t know where you’re going. It is equal parts disorienting, beautiful, and full of misdirection: surreal and bordering on the nonsensical, but with enough glimmers of the familiar to bring you back. You follow Bitsui to “a […]
Lewis Nordan, whose nickname was “Buddy,” stood in the same Southern Gothic cathedral as Faulkner and O’Connor. Over the course of his life he wrote four novels, three short story collections, and one “fictional memoir” before his death in 2012. Nordan played with expectations in unique ways: his uniqueness was magical realism by way of […]
Spend your first few weeks wandering around a dorm, and eventually a dinner party will break out. Says W&P student Lauren Lang (posting to the program’s Facebook page): “having a meal at a table is much better with friends when being away from family.” Five W&P students, gathering in the kitchen to concoct various meals […]
This past Friday, after a long day of class, the students and faculty of the Writing & Publishing program gathered in Cafe Anna to hear three professors give a reading, the first of the year for us in the MFA program. It was a fine showing, and the little cafe downstairs was packed. Below are scenes […]