An award-winning Off-Broadway musical-theatre team is taking their collaboration into the Spalding MFA classroom this spring to offer a workshop in writing for musical theatre.
Continue reading “Writing for musical theatre: A workshop with two Off-Broadway pros”
An MFA isn’t a degree like law or engineering, where you’re pretty sure you’re launching yourself into a lucrative career. Most people I know pursue an MFA because they have an unshakable passion for writing, because they feel driven—sometimes in the middle of their lives—to step off the expected path and do this thing that doesn’t make any sense at all, except that they can no longer pretend it’s okay not to do it. Continue reading “Bang for your buck: Cost, affordability, and what to look for when shopping for an MFA program”
With summer residency in Scotland behind us, it’s time to look ahead to special sessions on the slate for the Fall 2017 Spalding MFA residency, November 10-19 in Louisville. Continue reading “A Sneak Peek at the Fall 2017 Residency”
The truth is, I agreed to do a blog entry almost without thinking.
Katy Yocom suggested I write something on Denis Johnson, who died shortly before the start of the Spring 2017 residency in Louisville. No doubt she’d heard me and others talking during residency about his recent death, and because I opened my big mouth during the closing faculty and staff meeting to suggest that faculty looking for post subjects could turn to current writing-related events like Hulu’s premier of A Handmaid’s Tale or Johnson’s death. There are a lot of writers I admire, and nearly as many that I’ve stolen from as I try to craft my own style. But there are very few writers whose use of language and approach to their subjects has given me as much motivation for close study as Johnson. Continue reading “YOU START OUT CONFUSED & END UP MYSTIFIED: An appreciation of Denis Johnson”
Greetings, fellow writers. I write to you from the distant fields of my own particular revision process; the mud pit of the second draft. Most of the writers I know talk about revision without saying the word. When I ask a writer friend about her revision, her response is, “Knee deep. I’m putting the damn thing in first person now.” Continue reading “RE-VISION: Wright-ing; Erasure, Embroidering; the tweak”
