Editor-In-Chief Kimberly Culbertson wishes the Relief community a Happy New Year!
This past weekend, Ben and I attended two family Christmas celebrations. After celebrating New Year's Eve, it was a little odd wishing Merry Christmases and exchanging presents (again). There were times when I was afraid 2008 would never end. But now that 2009 is here, I am determined to lay a good foundation for peace and wellness.
New Year's Resolutions?
On New Year's Eve, Coach and I have a tradition of sharing our favorite memories from the year that's ending, but we haven't gotten very serious about New Year's resolutions. This year though, we're planning to take our resolution seriously: This year we will take a sabbath each week. It's a commandment--we're setting a boundary. Now, I'm not certain that sometimes awkward family events necessarily count as "rest" but they also don't technically count as "work" :) So this year, we're one-for-one so far.
If we're lucky, your resolution involves submitting your work to Relief and renewing your subscriptions
At any rate, we're all looking forward to an excellent 2009!
Thinking about getting your MFA? Relief Editors Alan Ackmann and Amanda Bauch answer a second question about their MFA programs.
Question Two: What do you feel was the strength of your program?
Amanda Bauch: Although I tried to pinpoint a specific strength of my low-residency program, I couldn’t. So instead I’ll highlight a few key strengths.
Over time, I grew to appreciate the interdisciplinary component. The first three of four semesters, students created a project that would feed into their writing, working with a mentor in a specific field. For example, my last interdisciplinary project was a website called “Places of My Youth.” I traveled back to my hometown, took pictures of significant places, and interposed them with text on the site. One of my mentors had told me that, after reading my work, she still couldn’t visualize where the action took place. This project brought these locations alive in my work, allowing me to include the kinds of details that make writing vibrant.
My program also had a profound effect on me as a person. One of the biggest struggles I had with my memoir was piecing together my identity, a complex, fluid part of my daily life and, therefore, my writing. Spending the intense, long days of residency with people from diverse backgrounds and locations exposed me to different perspectives on writing, art, and life. Also, most of the students in my program were returning to school after a prolonged absence; some hadn’t taken a class in as long as thirty years. The richness of their lives helped me value my own experiences, making me believe that my life—and writing about it—had value. Faculty and students alike created a nurturing environment, combined with some tough love, that forced me out of my complacency as a writer, and made me long to give my story the voice it deserved.
Of course, we also must not forget that the low-residency program had a practical, financial perk. Instead of having to move to Boston, one of the most expensive cities in the country (and where I’d have to work full-time to pay my bills), I could stay in Upstate New York, where the cost of living was much cheaper. That way, I was able to only work part-time and still have plenty of money to pay bills.
The greatest strength perhaps lies in the low-residency program’s ability to help students achieve that ever-elusive work/life balance. But I’m saving that for another post, so you’ll have to stay tuned.
Alan Ackmann: The first part of my answer is more of a general pedagogy response than a full-res specific response, but the biggest strength of my program was the emphasis on effective writing as reflection of critical reading. Arkansas’ students were required to take numerous form and theory classes, where we studied various creative schools of writing, methodically analyzing the techniques, styles, and subject matter of classic and contemporary writers. A high premium was placed on recognizing your gifts as a writer, and on emulating the skills of writers who had come before you. The process was not entirely imitative, of course; we were encouraged to take only what was useful to us from any given writer, and to augment our studies by uncovering our own artistic identities. Even in our obligatory workshop classes, the emphasis was not simply on a recursive correction of specific errors within a story, but on isolating the mental misconceptions that generated such errors, and on correcting those miscalculations so as to avoid additional lapses in the future. The net result of all that critical reading, for me, was an awareness of critical writing. Over time, I stopped just slapping down “whatever felt right” onto the page, and started making conscious decisions fueled by an awareness of how my moment-by-moment choices were effecting the larger work and its intentions, which increased my confidence as a writer.
I’m sure it’s possible to come to those realizations without having a full-residency program, but I’m not sure I, personally, would have been able to do so. Learning how to write at this level was such a paradigm shift for me that it felt sluggish even when I was giving it everything I had, in terms of both time and effort. In all honesty, it took me almost a full year to understand why the stories I came into the program writing weren’t very good, and a whole other year to figure out how I might be able to make them better. And if I hadn’t had a half dozen or so good, good friends just a mile up the road who were going through the exact same thing I was, I’m not sure I would have had the stamina or courage to endure it. So those were the big strengths: the time to focus on the formative elements of fiction, and the community of people there to share in the experience.
Alan Ackmann, Relief's Fiction Editor, earned his MFA in fiction from the University of Arkansas, and his short fiction has appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Ontario Review, Louisiana Literature, and elsewhere. He was a Tennessee Williams scholar at the 2007 Sewanee Writers Conference. He teaches at DePaul University, and is currently completing his first novel. Find out more at www.alanackmann.com.
Amanda Bauch, is an assistant editor for Relief,writer, and teacher. She fled the harsh Upstate New York winters and now resides outside of Jacksonville, Florida. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University and is currently working on a young adult novel and a memoir. Her short fiction has appeared in Tattoo Highway, Bent Pin Quarterly, The Hiss Quarterly, and nonfiction pieces have been published in Writer Advice, Empowerment4Women, as well as two print anthologies, Tainted Mirror and MOTIF: Writing By Ear (forthcoming, December 2008).
To celebrate the birth of Jesus, we're taking a break on the blog.
I know there's lots of hustle and bustle during this holiday season, but try to take some time to chill (ha ha--we just got a bunch of snow dumped on us here in Chicagoland) and think about why we're really taking this time to remember the guy Who came down out of heaven to create a way to forgiveness and eternal life. All props to the J-man this Christmas!
We'll return to a semi-regular schedule this coming Monday, but we'll also take a short break for New Year's.
From all the Relief Staff, have a great Christmas!
Two Relief staffers, Alan Ackmann and Amanda Bauch, begin a new series to inform the masses about the MFA experience.
One of the cornerstone’s of Relief’s philosophy is that good writers are made, not born. There are the occasional fables of some hot-shot phenom bursting onto the scene with tales of perching before his laptop, cracking his knuckles, and spewing forth ream upon ream (do printers still use reams?) of prose guided merely by hope and instinct. Most writers, though, agree that you can’t sit down to write, and expect to write well, without having earned the knowledge of how to do so. Where writers often differ, though, is on the question of where one should acquire said knowledge. While it is possible to become a good writer just by living fully and reading well, many contemporary writers elect to speed up the process—hopefully—by enrolling in an MFA program.
One of the interesting sub-questions in writing centers on the pros and cons of full residency or part-time residency programs. To better explore that question, Relief asked two of its staffers, Alan Ackmann and Amanda Bauch, to share their experiences with writing programs in Relief’s most recent blog series.
Question One: Why did you choose a full residency or low residency program?
Alan Ackmann: To be honest, part of my initial choice was driven by snobbery. When I went to get my MFA, low residency programs were just coming into vogue, and didn’t have nearly the pedigree that many of the more established full-res programs did (that’s changed, of course, as the respectable programs have defined themselves and as academia itself has grown into the distance learning resources now available). Additionally, I was steered along by my professors at undergraduate, who encouraged me to follow the same path through an MFA as they did, and since I admired these professors greatly, I didn’t protest. Besides, full-res programs promised more of what my early twenties self wanted: the chance to make writing a fully immersive experience. What I wanted more than anything was a community of writers—peers invested in the same sorts of pursuits I was, and with whom I could learn and grow. I didn’t have a family or even a serious relationship, and therefore had none of the “real-life” obligations that often make low-residency programs so enticing and practical.
Speaking of practical, my other main reason for selecting a full-res program had do with the resources they could offer. By enrolling in a full-res program, I was eligible for teaching assistantships and grants, which combined to fund my education fully, and to give me an adequate living stipend besides. Additionally, I ultimately wanted to use my MFA to teach, and I knew that the extensive classroom experience and training I could get with my particular program would be very useful when the time came to transition into back into “real-life” and go on the big boy job hunt.
So off into the full-time game I went.
Amanda Bauch: Since we’re being honest here, I will confess that the first time around, I didn’t choose a low-residency MFA program. After receiving my BA in English Literature, I only applied to full-residency programs. I couldn’t fathom relinquishing the academic environment I cherished, where faculty nurtured me, friends surrounded me 24/7, and I had flourished both academically and socially.
My top choice, Emerson College in Boston, accepted me. I looked forward to attending a well-respected program that would undoubtedly provide many post-graduation opportunities. Not only this, but I longed to return to a major metropolitan area, one I considered second only to New York City as a literary mecca.
Per the usual, my plans didn’t align with God’s plans, because I did something stupid. I fell in love.
I met someone special a mere two months before my Boston departure. What to do? If you’re as led by your heart as I am, you tell Emerson College “thanks, but no thanks,” and start applying to low-residency programs. Also, considering the amount of geographic upheaval I’d experienced in my life up to that point, the thought of staying appealed more than going. So when I discovered a fairly new low-residency program at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts (not Boston, but close enough, and maybe even better), I figured, “Why not?” I applied and a few months later, I received a phone call at work from the program director, telling me that I’d been accepted, and they hoped to see me at the next residency. I told him that they definitely would. Good thing I did say yes, since the “someone special” has been my husband for over three years now.
Alan Ackmann, Relief's Fiction Editor, earned his MFA in fiction from the University of Arkansas, and his short fiction has appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Ontario Review, Louisiana Literature, and elsewhere. He was a Tennessee Williams scholar at the 2007 Sewanee Writers Conference. He teaches at DePaul University, and is currently completing his first novel. Find out more at www.alanackmann.com.
Amanda Bauch, is an assistant editor for Relief,writer, and teacher. She fled the harsh Upstate New York winters and now resides outside of Jacksonville, Florida. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University and is currently working on a young adult novel and a memoir. Her short fiction has appeared in Tattoo Highway, Bent Pin Quarterly, The Hiss Quarterly, and nonfiction pieces have been published in Writer Advice, Empowerment4Women, as well as two print anthologies, Tainted Mirror and MOTIF: Writing By Ear (forthcoming, December 2008).
Editor-In-Chief Kimberly Culbertson brings news of sales and shipping!
Christmas Sale Ends Wednesday!
Order a subscription for yourself or someone else, and we'll make sure we ship the first issue in time for Christmas! AND anyone who orders a subscription by December 10th will also receive a free copy of Coach's Midnight Diner! We'll also have single issues of 2.4 on sale for $12.95 and Coach's Midnight Diner on sale for only $8.00! We'll ship all the sale orders on the 11th to be sure of pre-Christmas delivery.
Relief 2.4 Ships Tomorrow Morning!
We've been checking our list... (okay, well... our list of orders and subscriptions...) and we're sending out boxes and bundles tomorrow morning! Relief's "executive office" is filled with piles of journals in various states of the "handling" side of shipping and handling, and we're looking forward to sending these packages out in time for Christmas!
Editor-In-Chief Kimberly Culbertson wishes the Relief community a Happy New Year!
Amanda Bauch: Although I tried to pinpoint a specific strength of my low-residency program, I couldn’t. So instead I’ll highlight a few key strengths.
Alan Ackmann: The first part of my answer is more of a general pedagogy response than a full-res specific response, but the biggest strength of my program was the emphasis on effective writing as reflection of critical reading. Arkansas’ students were required to take numerous form and theory classes, where we studied various creative schools of writing, methodically analyzing the techniques, styles, and subject matter of classic and contemporary writers. A high premium was placed on recognizing your gifts as a writer, and on emulating the skills of writers who had come before you. The process was not entirely imitative, of course; we were encouraged to take only what was useful to us from any given writer, and to augment our studies by uncovering our own artistic identities. Even in our obligatory workshop classes, the emphasis was not simply on a recursive correction of specific errors within a story, but on isolating the mental misconceptions that generated such errors, and on correcting those miscalculations so as to avoid additional lapses in the future. The net result of all that critical reading, for me, was an awareness of critical writing. Over time, I stopped just slapping down “whatever felt right” onto the page, and started making conscious decisions fueled by an awareness of how my moment-by-moment choices were effecting the larger work and its intentions, which increased my confidence as a writer.
Editor-In-Chief Kimberly Culbertson brings news of sales and shipping!
