Congratulations on MFA Program Acceptances

I believe that getting an MFA is one of the best things a writer can do, and I’m always foisting this opinion upon writers who seek my advice as a Hugo House writer-in-residence. It was with great pleasure, then, that I learned that three writers who’ve consulted with me in my storage closet office at the House have recently been accepted to MFA programs.

Alex Russell is a fine short story writer who has sent me a number of realist stories based on his varied experiences in the workforce. He just got accepted to UC Davis’s MFA program. Sayeth Alex, “As far as what I plan to concentrate on, I think for the first year I'll doggedly revise and workshop the stories I'm drafting this summer, with a poem or few thrown in. My second year I want to do a novel. Swing hard.”

This year Glenn McCrary sought my thoughts on a novel, and was recently accepted into Pacific University’s MFA program. Glenn writes, “Everyone I know who has MFA experience has encouraged me to focus on short stories so that I can stay flexible and try as many techniques as possible over the next two years. But there’s a novel that’s been in my head for the last six months and won’t let go. It’s really apocalyptic and it’s got me all fired up about ending the world. So I’m torn. I’m thinking about writing a collection of short stories as a prequel to the novel, just because the characters and places are so clear in my head right now. I’m also planning to keep my blog updated at hgmccrary.com for anyone who’s interested in following my progress as I go through the process.”

I met with Chelsea Werner-Jatzke in January when she was working on her application essay for Goddard College’s MFA program in Port Townsend. Now that she’s been accepted, I’ll luckily be seeing a lot more of her, as that’s the program where I teach. Chelsea plans to use her considerable memoir-writing powers to explore her family’s history. She writes, “I plan on studying creative nonfiction, traveling to Danzig, which is now Gdansk, where my grandparents lived and writing linked biographical stories that are an investigation into memory and identity. Or something along those lines. But really, who knows what I'll find out once my research and studying begins. And going to Goddard, no one is going to restrict me to a genre, but if I had to declare a proposed genre, creative nonfiction seems closest to what I plan on producing.”

Congratulations to Alex, Glenn and Chelsea!

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