High Excitement for Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing
Notes From an MFA Candidate
By Noel T. Jones’ 12, MFA’ 19
From Walt Whitman to Betty Smith, Arthur Miller to Marianne Moore, Truman Capote to Thomas Wolfe, The Brooklyn Eagle to … well, you get the picture; the roots of Brooklyn’ s literary spirit are deepest in Brooklyn Heights, and the new Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at St. Francis College continues the tradition.
The MFA is one of the newest in the city, and is also unique. It’ s the only low-residency in the area, meaning that students come to campus twice a year for 10 intense days, then do the rest of the work online. As someone who worked their way through undergrad, and continues to need the support of a full-time job, this structure allows me to focus on making a living while also developing the skills necessary to hone my craft.
When I returned to St. Francis College this summer Noel T. Jones’ 12, MFA’ 19. to attend the inaugural MFA residency, I was reminded of Homer’ s classic poem“ The Odyssey.” After years of being lost“ at sea” in the workforce, weathering storms of self-doubt, hindrances in the form of rejected stories from journals, and disruptions in my commitment to writing, I discovered that Remsen Street is my Ithaca, and this residency was a homecoming.
However, it is my impression that SFC has that welcoming effect on any student, not just the ones who return. In a mere ten days, I bonded with two poets, three dramatic writers, and three other fiction writers— my fellow MFA candidates— which is to say nothing of the incredible faculty under the guidance of Dr. Wendy Galgan, chair of the English Department, and Professor Theo Gangi, Program Director and Lecturer.
Our jam-packed days began with in-depth workshops overseen by award winning professors including playwright and actress Kathryn Grant, poet and writer Annie Finch, and Man MFA students Evelyn Dumonte’ 21 and Adela Pacurar’ 19.
Booker Prize winning novelist and writer Marlon James. Taking a break from focusing on our own work, we attended lectures and workshops where we met myriad members of the literary world. The focus of each visiting writer, agent, and editor meeting with us varied from advice on how to map plot in prose, to how to measure meter in poetry, or how to create realistic dialogue on the page and on the stage. Despite the differences in gender, race, age, genre, and the role the speaker played in the publishing process, a single thread of advice connected all of these talks: publications and awards don’ t make you a writer; writing makes you a writer.
This may seem to be stating the obvious, but in an age when amateur writers are told only to expect rejection— a red-ink badge of courage— it is easy to get discouraged. Still more like Odysseus, we MFA candidates are not alone on our quest. It may be overwhelming to be in the same room as these successful figures, especially when some of them are tasked with the job of tearing your writing apart. Nevertheless, we learn from our mistakes and can only benefit from such insightful criticism. Under the unwavering tutelage of our accomplished faculty and with the sense of community we have built amongst each other, something brilliant this way comes, and St. Francis is at the core of it. ●
Lincoln Michel( online editor of Electric Literature, coeditor of Gigantic) leads a workshop with Steven Moller’ 19.
Learn more about the MFA at sfc. edu / MFA
Watch the MFA Mentors in an Author’ s Showcase: https:// youtu. be / onHO9UgwMOs
MFA Faculty Spotlights
Marlon James is the 2015 Man Booker Prize winner for his novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings. He is
Marlon James. also the author of The Book of Night
Women, which won the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and an NAACP Image Award. His first novel, John Crow’ s Devil, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice. ●
Annie Finch is an award winning poet with six books of poetry including, Eve, Calendars, and most recently
Annie Finch.
Spells: New and
Selected Poems. She has also written popular nonfiction, plays, opera libretti, memoir, and numerous books and anthologies on poetry and poetics. She was Director of the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing for ten years. ●
Kathryn Grant is an adjunct professor at St. Francis College. Her plays have been produced in New York and around the
Kathryn Grant. country. She has received the Berilla
Kerr Award in Playwriting, the Jerry Kaufman Award, two Premiere Stages Festival Awards and a citation from The Harold and Mimi Steinberg / ATCA New Play Award. ●
10 ST. FRANCIS COLLEGE TERRIER | FALL 2017 | VOLUME 81, NUMBER 1