Next weekend, Lesley University will open its doors to another 10-day residency for students in its Low Residency MFA Program. Fifth semester students will be presenting seminars and public readings at the end of the week before they graduate, and before all that happens, they'll stride across the campus and…
15 Posts
All posts tagged Lesley University MFA (Low Residency)
Flying Time
I just couldn't resist. Jonathan and I began dating in 2003, and married in 2004, while I was still in school. We lived in Livermore, 10 minutes from his job, and I commuted to and from UC Davis for the next two years. The round-trip was 160-odd miles, and by…
What I've been writing...
My mind might be breaking. I'm pretty sure I heard it crack yesterday. The office was silent except for the tapping of my fingers on the keyboard. I paused. I considered all the writing I'd done the days before and all the writing I had yet to do. And my…
A Pebble of Quartz is Gleaming: A Craft Annotation
I will be haunted by John Haines 's The Stars, the Snow, the Fire for many years to come. The ease (or grace) with which he handled the brutality of hunting and trapping lulled me into a deceptive calm, but his imagery was too graphic to pass by without a…
Nature Morte
Still Life. Stopping before Cezanne's painting, I see exactly what there is to see. A rough-hewn table. Burnished fruits rolling off a solid white plate. The shining curve of a wine glass, empty. Curtains folded back into a thick darkness. A window or wall. And a pitcher painted with flowers.…
Shot After Shot: A Craft Annotation
In college I studied Shooting an Elephant (1936), an essay included in this collection, which recounts George Orwell's time as a young British police officer in Burma. The essay has haunted me in the years since. It was the brutality that stuck with me, the killing scene, one which goes…
Check the Antifreeze: A Craft Annotation
Venturing into the wilderness at any point in life will have an impact on one's personality and lifestyle. It is always an adventure, and it is always dangerous. When Rick Bass and his then girlfriend Elizabeth rode their truck over a severely rutted road into the outback of northern Montana,…
Nouveau-riche Blue: A Craft Annotation
Whether painting for his reader a train's boxcar or a rare butterfly, Vladimir Nabokov handles the description with precision. He wields his weighty vocabulary like the sharpest of pencils and sketches every detail of the object in question. I could see the segmented panes of glass in the doors on…