Disable the Stairs. Disable the Stares. Disable the Barriers. This summer MFAW-VT faculty member Kenny Fries advised a great team of Master’s Branding students at SVA. Their thesis project, Disable the Barriers, is now up and running. Disable the Barriers is an unaffiliated global collective that aims to provide tools in support of people […]
After almost twenty years of teaching in the MFA in Creative Writing program at Goddard, I am going to retire. When I first started working at Goddard, there was one campus only, in Vermont. I went to Plainfield, where I’d never been, and started to work with a bunch of people I’d never met before. […]
What do writing, politics and the Tarot have in common? On November 7th, 2017, I was elected Town Supervisor of Pine Plains, New York.
I walked away and sat trembling on the back step of an abandoned building on campus, embarrassed. Later, at home, still thinking about it and unable to shake the feeling of being somehow exposed to view, I made myself a cup of tea and ate a slice of buttered toast…
By Simone John Who gets permission to be a poet? Which kids are told to aspire to be artists, and which kids are told to seek menial work? How can educators teach in a way that is liberatory? How can we interrupt thought processes born from the seeds of internalized oppression? I teach poetry out […]
by Christine Kalafus The first day I was to lead my writing workshop, I arrived at the library early and precisely arranged eight chairs in a circle. My workshop bible: Writing Alone and With Others by Pat Schneider was next to me. I couldn’t wait. In just a few moments my participants would arrive. To […]
by Kristen Stone One of the most amazing things about my Goddard experience (beside the invective to TRUST THE PROCESS, something I still wrestle with, on the daily, in my writing and non-writing lives) is the connections I made with writers—who became friends—around the country. One such friend is Kristen Nelson, founder and Executive Director […]
The teaching practicum is one of the cornerstones of Goddard’s MFA. Students graduate from Goddard having developed and conducted a writing workshop in their communities. As she gets ready for her own practicum, current student Catherine Aarts is reading Wallace Stegner, and here she shares her musing about her upcoming role as facilitator. “Stegner reminds […]
Besides teaching at Goddard, I teach at Sheridan College, a small community college in Sheridan, Wyoming. Every once in a while we get an amazing student. T. is one of the student-consultants in our writing center. He is a music major who is an excellent percussionist, but he has suddenly discovered literature. He comes […]
Novelist and documentary filmmaker Laleh Khadivi is joining the faculty in Port Townsend this semester. Introducing herself in her own words, Laleh writes: “I came to literature through film. My documentary work has focused on the criminal justice system and immigration and I have directed pieces for A&E and produced work for HBO and Sundance. […]
