“The biggest mistake you can make is going before you’re ready.” I remember feeling absolutely crushed when someone who I looked up to, someone who I admired, said those words to me. We were on the phone, I was asking […]

I received an email in March of 2021 from Andrew Altschul announcing that I had been accepted to the MFA program in Fort Collins, CO. I was more shocked than happy, and I’ll explain why. A month prior to that […]

In August of 2020, I received a letter from my high school self. As an assignment for the first creative writing class I ever took in my senior year, our teacher had us write a letter addressed to the post-college […]

It’s been a long past 18-months, and a fast last three weeks. I spent the last year and a half living with my parents (although I don’t lead with that). And I’ve come to realize that, even in the middle […]

As a college education becomes more and more expensive and careers become grounded in traditional educations I continually come up against the question: why apply to and pursue an MFA in writing? Why not rely on self-education and self-advocacy to […]

As our country moves clunkily, inequitably—how else?—toward an approximate end to this acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, our work will by all accounts just be getting started. While our whole society confronts the lasting physical and psychological effects of […]

Friday, March 13, 2020, I got on a plane from Madrid, Spain to Washington, D.C.  This was somewhat coincidental. A month earlier, I’d spent Valentine’s Day in Florence with a friend from high school, a costume designer who’d just finished […]

  Starting my MFA as a 44-year-old mother and teacher during a global pandemic has been a trip. Is there ever a right time to do anything? Or a wrong time? I suppose you never really know until you throw […]

I’m currently struggling with a story. It’s the same problem that every writer has…eventually. How to make this story work? How to reshape the character/s? How to finish the story when you’ve already invested hours into its creation? You’re presented […]

Andrew Altschul called me last March offering a spot in this coveted MFA program and, in between frantic packing and nervous drinking, I could not allow myself to be excited about this opportunity. Hours before Andrew’s call, my undergraduate institution […]