by Elena Georgiou “I think we often think of freedom as a destination. Freedom as a noun, freedom as a settled place, freedom as being settled. And this image to me is very much in line with, I think what my understanding of freedom is. That it is constantly in motion. It’s constantly shifting. There is […]
While we all are destined to reach a point of stop-breath finality, our routes towards this summit traverse different topographies, navigate different twists of watercourse, and feel different illuminations of heat. Still, we mark similar paths: we all are, simply, in time, going to die. I think of this truth, in one way, as belonging […]
An Epiphany of Hope: Sherri L. Smith’s Writing Process for “The Blossom and the Firefly”
Sherri L. Smith had been working on writing her Young Adult novel The Blossom and the Firefly. Late one evening, Sherri made a declaration to her husband. Three days before the editors deadline, she announced that she had just completed her first draft. But the conversation that followed made her rethink everything. In an interview […]
Faculty member Kenny Fries, a leading voice in the disability arts and disability studies world, talks about high standards, research, humor, and finding ways to be in the present time. A poet, memoirist and essayist, and also a librettist, he says that traveling and living internationally is “as necessary as blood.” “Most of my work […]
Bhanu Kapil speaks about growing up amid immigrant voices in North West London, and how she “accidentally” became known for her performances as a way to cross time and space. “Trying to write a novel as a diasporic writer, I find it quite challenging to write the historiography, the memory, the cardinal flux of a […]
Susan Kim writes with themes surrounding female empowerment, privilege, institutionalized racism and classism, but always through the lens of human behavior.
Can one’s imagination run too wild? Fiction writer John McManus talks about channeling the dark – anxiety, emotion, even wildly horrible possible futures – into his stories. He shares the evolution of the novel he is currently working on, Magnetic South, in which “fake” reporting about the colloquially-known “Kill the Gays” bill in Uganda leads […]
Born and raised in an immigrant family in England, Goddard’s MFA in Creative Writing program director Elena Georgiou shares her experience of a community where there was “no pretense about a melting pot.” She talks political dreams, and how being an outsider, and a second class citizen, in her own country has fueled her writing: […]
In Episode Four in the Writer in the World podcast series faculty spotlight series, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto interviews fellow faculty member and award-winning playwright Rogelio Martinez who teaches dramatic writing on the Vermont campus. Martinez speaks about leaving Cuba: “a land where trust doesn’t come easily.” In May 1980, when he was nine years old, […]
In the third episode of Writer in the World Podcast, author and Goddard faculty Sherri L Smith talks about why writers should take time to express gratitude to trees and be prepared to listen. Smith teaches fiction, graphic novel, non-fiction, screenplays, and fantasy at the MFA in Writing program at Goddard College. Fellow faculty Rahna […]