“The Star”
The inaugural episode of The Writer in the World podcast has been released by the Goddard College Masters in Creative Writing program, developed in conjunction with the program’s Podcast School launched this semester in collaboration with WGDR Community radio.
“The Star”, hosted by MFAW faculty Sherri L. Smith, features an interview with Rahna Reiko Rizzuto who teaches fiction and creative nonfiction at Goddard.
Reiko speaks about growing up in a mixed race, Japanese-American family in Hawaii, and how her experiences of race and culture have been informed by that identity. The first woman to graduate from Columbia College in Astrophysics, she shares her scientific approach to her writing, and how she draws on both logic and urgency in her own work and her teaching.
“When I work with my students, one of the things that I try to help them focus on is urgency… Why is something urgent to them? What is it that they need to say? What do they need to know, to understand, to confront? I think that is where the greatest energy in stories come from. I can teach them what a beginning is, what an ending or a middle is, and I can teach them how to read other people’s work, but I can’t teach them to care about their story and what they are writing about.
In today’s world, with our access to the kind of technology where anybody can publish a book, that is essential: How do you write a book that other people are going to seek out?”
What are the stories that are burning inside you, waiting to come out?
Listen to episode one of The Writer in the World podcast here:
Music Credits
- “Kid Kodi” by Blue Dot Sessions, Album: Skittle
- “Celestial Navigation” by Blue Dot Sessions, Album: Aeronaut
- “The Basket” by Blue Dot Sessions, Album: The Balloonist
Find out more about Goddard’s low-residency Creative Writing program here.
The Writer in the World is a collaborative site for the Goddard MFA in Creative Writing community – faculty, alumni and students – to share their news and their thoughts.
