After a few weeks back in classes, our 2019 faculty reading series officially began with a tour de force of fascinating readers: former Program Director and current faculty member Miciah Bay Gault, poet Bianca Stone, and writer and artist Frances Cannon.

Miciah Bay Gault began by introducing her upcoming debut novel Goodnight Stranger, which comes out, she announced to much applause, in July. After a quick introduction of the storyline and set-up, she launched us headlong into the story, choosing to read from a section right in the middle of the action.

In addition to this reading, I was also fortunate enough to have heard Gault read last year, when Goodnight Stranger was still somewhat in progress. I won’t reveal too much, but it was a treat to slip into the mysterious narrative that Gault has woven together. With its idyllic small-town setting (a quaint New England island, with all the trappings one might imagine!) and the appeal of the characters that inhabit it, the slivers I have been privy to have been fraught with tension and complexity. I—and, it’s safe to say the rest of the audience—eagerly await returning to it after its release.

Earlier in the day, we were treated to a discussion between Frances Cannon and Bianca Stone on the role of art and illustration in their work. I have no doubt that I would have been caught up in their readings regardless, but it was fascinating to have a different lens, a tutorial on the intersection of the written word and graphic art. As a selection of Cannon’s illustrations flashed on a screen beside the podium throughout the evening, it was easy to sense the intimate connection between her visual and verbal storytelling. Visually, her style is relatively minimal, perhaps sometimes encouraging the reader to color between the lines themselves. As she read from her recent graphic memoir, The Highs and Lows of Shapeshift Ma and Big-Little Frank (which, sidenote, “easily has the best title to any book ever,” according to introducer Kayleigh Marinelli, ’19), and her images accompanied her, we were allowed a unique step into a writer’s psyche.

I don’t think I’ve ever commented on a reader’s voice before—perhaps I should more often, as they are always so affecting—but I can’t help but mention it when it comes to Bianca Stone.

She presents her words slowly, deliberately, allowing her audience to savor every syllable. She speaks at a low register, so it doesn’t feel very much more significant in sound than a whisper, but with a rich resonance that requires attention. How do you make that happen? I found myself wondering over and over, as she executed each one of her pieces with such confidence, a calm sort of calculated boldness. How does one get there? How does one dominate a podium so gracefully, let alone create such entrancing pieces?

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A surprise snow shower started just before our evening began. Through the windows of Café Anna, we could see the flurries swirl across the campus green, settling on the fountain that has been drained in anticipation of our dropping temperatures. It all served as another poignant backdrop to the words our readers shared with us.

“We all started a class here with [James Scott] this week, and yesterday,” Mariah Hopkins, ’19 began candidly, “James taught us that there is an emotional question behind every piece of writing…and the emotional question behind this piece of writing,” she said, gesturing to the introduction she had written for Scott, her thesis advisor, “is how to do James and his work justice in such a short paragraph.”

After detailing his recent literary successes, Mariah welcomed Scott to the podium.

“I love writing because writing is like having a daydream—you can go wherever you want,” Scott began, recalling an exchange he had had with a friend who works with fourth-graders, one of whom offered the insight. After wondering aloud what the appropriate gif to send in response to such a declaration might be, he continued: “It made me think about what I’m working on now, and that it really started with some daydreams that occurred here in Vermont.”

As you may imagine, all Vermonters—natural-born or recent converts—blushed to ourselves in the audience. There’s simply no way around it: Vermont is a pretty dreamy place. It’s always nice to get a little validation, isn’t it?

James Scott then transitioned into reading the prologue for his current work-in-progress. I won’t reveal too much, except to say that it’s eerie, cold, and wet—and desperately mysterious. If that’s not an enticing combination of adjectives, I don’t know what is.

“At the end of my first year here at VCFA, every one of my classmates seemed to know what they were working on for their thesis project. I did not.” Mike Demyan began in introduction of our next reader, Sean Prentiss. He went on to confess that an essay he wrote in Prentiss’ nature and environmental class became the seed to what his thesis has evolved to today. He related Prentiss’ self-described relentless work ethic, prevalent talent in the creative non-fiction scene, and expansion into other areas of the writing world—a perfect example of the cross-genre exploration we students are expected to delve into ourselves during our time here.

“Every once in a while, I enter a fugue state and write a short story,” Prentiss started. “And by ‘once in a while,’ I mean like every third year. I know nothing about fiction…and I call this the dark art of fiction.”

Demonstrating his flexibility (even in the dark arts!) he went on to read a piece of short fiction about the intersection of young love and math. He raced through the story at breakneck speed, describing the bizarre conditions of infatuation and equations (and axioms, quadratics, and algebra) with the perfect frenzied feel, entirely evocative of what attraction feels like.

Alex Marzano-Lesnevich began with a disclaimer.

Because their work, The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir is non-fiction, some of which pertains to the murder of a six-year-old in Louisiana in 1992, Marzano-Lesnevich was artfully direct about their sources and their opinions in the process of writing their book. In haunting narration, Marzano-Lesnevich continued, detailing the conditions of the boy’s murder.

“I trained as a lawyer before doing an MFA, and when I was in my law program, I took a job in Louisiana, helping to defend men accused of murder,” they said after finishing the difficult passage. “Now, I am the child of two lawyers. I grew up talking about the Constitution over the dinner table. I remember the moment when I learned about the death penalty. I was horrified by it—felt right away that it was wrong. I have since learned that that is not a formative memory for most American schoolchildren, but it was for me.”

Before finishing their reading with a section from the memoir portion of their book that is woven into the account of the murder and its consequences, Marzano-Lesnevich paused, allowing us to step into their thought-process in going about this project. Needless to say, the subject-matter was stark and disturbing, but their self-reflective line of questioning was stunningly relatable: “Is who we are determined by the past,” they asked us, “or is who we are determined by what we believe?”

Photo credits to Bianca Viñas. Adidas shoes | Autres

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Our most recent guests to campus were poet Diana Goetsch and author Lesley Nneka Arimah. Both spent time in and out of classes with our Writing & Publishing students, offering their advice for their area of the writing industry and creative mentorship. The work and expertise they shared with us were invaluable.

“Diana Goetsch—pronounced like “fetch,” or “kvetch”—is the author of eight collections of poetry, including her most recent chapbook, “In America,” published in 2017.” Christa Guild, ’19 introduced our first reader. “She received her MFA from some school you’ve probably never heard of—the Vermont College of Fine Arts.”

Hearing Diana read her work was a striking experience. Not just because of her deliberate, graceful diction, or the complexity behind every syllable she spoke, but because she was one of us. Diana Goetsch did her time at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, like all of my peers in the audience. She had put in the long nights editing; she had dived into her personal experience and shared her intimate thoughts; she had probably negotiated a few of our formidable winters for her work. And, as with our other visiting artists and writers, she inspires.

“The challenge always is to be a writer—that’s my identity,” Goetsch said at one point in between poems. “It’s how I write something that satisfies what I call the ‘everybody test,’ the faith that when you write, it’s never for you, it’s not self-expression, and yet the subjects can be so specific. Who passes the everybody test is really for you to decide.”

“’When Enebeli Okwara sent his girl out in the world, he did not know what the world did to daughters.’ This exquisite sentence begins the story of Light, my first introduction to Lesley Arimah’s work back in 2015,” Samuel Kolawole, ’19 began, introducing Arimah. “The final sentence hit me so hard that I immediately started the story all over again.  Such is the calm, lightness, and power of Lesley’s fiction.”

We have had the pleasure of having Lesley Nneka Arimah on campus with us for the last three weeks as a visiting professor teaching our Fireside Chats (professional development for those of you not in the know!) and a fiction craft module centered around the concept of world-building.

One of the lessons that keeps surfacing as I review my experiences with Lesley is “mining one’s own interiority” for material. It’s a simple enough concept to grasp: tapping in on personal experience, thought, and emotion to inform your writing. We have read and discussed so much over our last few weeks with Lesley, and I can’t help wondering which bits and pieces authors and poets have sampled from their own brains for their material. I wish I could properly convey the deep impression she has left on her students—we are so sad that her time with us (for now!) is up.

As promised, I have a few more additions to our running reading companion playlist. This week, all contributed by Diana Goetsch: Roberta Flack’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” (belted out under the cover of an arriving train) The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby,” (a song about loneliness) and “Ziggy Stardust” by David (“wow, isn’t this a blahhhst!”) Bowie.

Photo credits to Bianca Viñas.best Running shoes brand | adidas Campus 80s South Park Towelie – GZ9177

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After mingling with the other attendees over drinks and hors d’oeuvres (pro tip: look out for the double-chocolate cookies—they are positively sinful) introductions began.

“I picked up Mad River and opened it randomly, landed on a poem involving masturbation and a candlestick,” Lennie DeCerce, ’19 said in her opening introduction of Bigos, pausing for a laugh. “I obviously had to have it immediately because I’m that kind of reader.”

“I think I should probably move that to the front for a second edition, maybe,” Bigos responded as he straightened his pages in preparation for his read. “For people like y’all—a new word here in Vermont.”

Justin Bigos’ poems are delicious—you can taste them. Not just because he uses a language of food—splitting sardines with his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, breakfasting on coffee and watermelon, pickling kohlrabi, and musing on kabocha squash and pipián verde, for instance—but also because one is simply encouraged to sit in a moment and consider with him.

His reading primarily came from his current project, a book-length poem with dated sections. “I wanted to do something very different than I had done before, and so I decided to write daily, and to make that something that I went to like work, like labor,” He said in preface. “I also decided I wanted it to be something very multi-voice, very polyphonic.”

In this vein, Bigos dissected moments in time with references to pop culture, bits of then-current events, and above all—music. It’s fitting that Bigos sometimes dipped in and out of a lexicon of song titles and artists, once mentioning a Roy Orbison phase, then The Cramps (“real ghoulish rockabilly business. They took a genre they loved and fucked it in the mouth. I salute them.”) and Wanda Jackson’s “Fujiyama Mama” (“comparing her overpowering passion for a lover to the atomic bombs that killed over 200,000 people in Japan—but she didn’t write the song.”) His words have a musicality of their own.

Before our second reader started, we had one of those strange “art imitates life imitates art” moments. Bianca Vinas, ’19, who introduced Matthew Olzmann, began with an anecdote about mistaking another man for him around town.

“In wonderful poetic nature, Matthew,” She began, “I confused you with another human last week.”

She detailed a figure—“tall, gallant, dark-rimmed glasses, a chesterfield top coat”—who she “immediately prescribed…to be poetic,” and who she and a few others watched for hours, knowing that Olzmann would soon be visiting campus. “This is what I gathered: his huge strides in leather booties were poetic, forgetting the code to the front door was also poetic, walking in circles around the coffee machine was poetic.” She finished by describing his disappearance, which she thought “the most poetic gesture of his whole arrival.”

“So now that I know who you are, Matthew,” she finished, letting the audience laugh with her, “I want to thank you […] and promise I will never confuse you again.”

At this point, Matthew Olzmann took the podium.

“This is a poem also about being mistaken for someone else,” he said, not skipping a beat. The first piece delved into questioning identity and spiritual experience, weaving in and out of humor and solemnity at a deft, breakneck pace. He, unlike Bianca, compared himself to the musician Moby (“who, like me, is bald and wears glasses. I am not Moby. I am the man who is mistaken for the man who is mistaken for Moby.”) What followed were a series of hilarious and moving pieces delivered in sharp deadpan.

“If you’re trying to figure out where exactly we are and where exactly this whole thing is going to end,” Olzmann said in transition at one point, “when a cow falls through the roof, we’re probably halfway done, and when I start talking about an invisible horse, it’s probably time to go home.”

After we broke for the evening, I had so many song titles and artists bouncing around in my head that I could have made my own mixtape—so, essentially, that’s what I’ve done! Should you like to sink deeper into our readings, I’ve curated a playlist of all songs and artists referenced so far, and I hope to keep updating it with new additions whenever possible. So today, we have “Fujiyama Mama,” “Goo Goo Muck” by The Cramps, Roy Orbison’s “Crying,” and “Porcelain” by Moby (not Matthew Olzmann). I’ll keep you posted as time goes on.

For now, though–I think we’ve hit that invisible horse point.

Photo credits to Bianca Vinas and Blake Z. Rong. Nike Sneakers | UK Trainer News & Releases

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MFA in Writing & Publishing candidate Cammie Finch introduces Associate Director Lizzy Fox.

Associate Director Lizzy Fox reads at the September 14th open reading in Café Anna.

Looking back a year ago when I started the program, I remember that the first reading set the tone for the semester to come. This year, as students, faculty, and community members mixed over glasses of wine, I wondered where we would be heading under this new leadership, and what glimpses into their writing lives the evening in Café Anna would bring us.

Introduced by several of my peers, each writer delivered beautiful and interesting words, delving into both in-progress and long-published works, their subjects ranging from a personal reaction to the events of 9/11, to a study on the ritual of mourning the dead, to a retelling of a simple, poignant exchange at the fountain in front of College Hall.

MFA in Writing & Publishing candidate Lindsay Gacad introduces faculty member and Editor of literary magazine Hunger Mountain Erin Stalcup.

Faculty member and Editor of Hunger Mountain Erin Stalcup.

MFA in Writing & Publishing candidate Nick Howard introduces Director Rita Banerjee.

Director Rita Banerjee.

“Already?” I heard one of my fellow students whisper to their neighbor as the evening came to a close.

Over the last few days, I’ve been thinking about how Lizzy Fox talked about keeping gratitude lists as a springboard for one of her pieces. Ever since, I’ve been mulling over my own little list: I’m grateful for a cohort of kind, brilliant, and curious people; I’m grateful for a team of inspirational and thought-provoking mentors and writers at the helm; I’m grateful for summers away from VCFA, and for the opportunity to come back to it again, rested and ready to write.

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