MFA Confidential Blog

Just left my advising appointment for next semester’s classes and even though I had my questions answered, I am starting to panic about thesis hours. Thesis hours! Six little credit hours that … Read more

Well, we’ve reached the saggy middle of the semester, when people (or at least me) begin to feel completely overwhelmed. The three factors of work, school, and life are not meshing together … Read more

This week is Creative Non-Fiction Week at Columbia, which features readings and panel discussions with writers in the genre who work in various media outlets. Creative Non-Fiction has been called “the fourth … Read more

I majored in English as an undergrad, and now I teach high school English, so I am pretty well-trained in squeezing an obscure meaning out of a text, finding the symbols and … Read more

This week, we spent almost all of the 4.5 hours of my Tuesday night class sharing our writing. It always amazes me how much unspoken feedback you can get just from noticing the atmosphere in the … Read more

The atmosphere in the St. Viator’s gym was electric. There were twenty seconds left on the clock, we were losing 21-20 (a fairly high score in the world of seventh grade girls’ … Read more

Most of the people in my advanced fiction class are in their third year, so the other night my teacher asked us to give him our top three survival strategies for making … Read more

I haven’t started my Steeplechase assignment yet. I’ve pondered it a great deal, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to actually start writing. Today I’m going to use this forum … Read more

Well, it’s been assigned: The Steeplechase, quite possibly the most polarizing assignment in my MFA program. It’s a requirement for completion of an advanced fiction class, and since this is my second … Read more

This past summer, I spent some time in Ireland visiting a friend. He took me to Bray, a small town in County Wicklow, to do a coastal walk along the Irish Sea. … Read more