The MFA Road Trip!

I drive a two-door lemon-yellow Hyundai that I’ve affectionately named Buttercup (after Princess Buttercup from The Princess Bride. You know you’re a  90’s kid when…). This week, Buttercup and I are traveling hundreds of miles around New England to visit graduate school programs. As I mentioned in my post, Transitioning, I’ll be applying to low-residency programs to earn an MFA in creative writing, focused on poetry. I am looking at low-residency programs because they offer one-on-one mentoring with professional writers, encourage the integration of a writing practice into daily life, and allow me to live anywhere while maintaining part of my writing life  in the northeast. My poetry is grounded in a strong sense of nature and place,  and it is important to me that part of that grounding continue to be in the place where I was born.  

Some highlights from this trip:

1) Bennington College, whose motto is “read 100 books; write 1,” severely intimidated me before visiting. I am a passionate writer, and I love to read, but like many of us, I do not make as much time to read as I would like. I was relieved to meet a student who informed me that, in her application, she mentioned reading National Geographic magazines and was honest about being in a reading slump. She attested that Bennington was a school without pretension, where she felt she could be forthright with her professors and peers.

2) Pine Manor College  offers the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing. They encourages students to explore community applications for their writing careers. I am seriously excited about their Applied Track in Pedagogy, which gives students tools to design and lead writing and composition classes.

3) Lesley University has a mandatory Interdisciplinary Component in which students self-design side projects that help fuel their creativity. Projects range from teaching to publishing to studying a genre outside of their primary focus. I have ideas about designing creative writing courses aimed at inner transformation and healing. My partner and I also have a running joke about picture books we want to create focused on a Moose named Smooches (in honor of a very up-close encounter we had with a Moose who had a foot-long stream of drool hanging off his large snout). I would love to have an academic setting where I can flesh out these projects! (Pine Manor’s approach would also allow me to explore these ideas).

I’m off to zoom around with Buttercup some more. Enjoy these campus photos!

Bennington College: Rated #3 Out of Low-Residency MFA Programs for Creative Writing

Pine Manor College: offers the Solstice Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing