Permafrost
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Check out this review of Permafrost (Summer 2011) on NewPages.

It is my very great pleasure to welcome, Caitlin Scarano, the current editor-and-chief of Permafrost to Niche. I want to take this opportunity to thank her again for agreeing to conduct this interview.

NM: According to your website, Permafrost was founded in 1977. How has the vision and ‘aesthetic,’ for lack of a better word, for the magazine evolved? What do you know of its founding?

CS: Permafrost was founded in 1977 by a group of graduate students at University of Alaska Fairbanks. Though there was a faculty advisor, the intention was that the magazine would be student-run, which it remains to this day. I recently learned that three of the founding editors are still in Fairbanks and still writing. When it was founded, Permafrost was the only literary magazine in Alaska, and is still the longest running. There was no founding statement that I’ve come across in my research.

In their nature, I think student-run literary magazines or journals are often fragmented historically and aesthetically, because, although there may be well-established initial vision or purpose, the staff is rarely continuous, especially with a magazine as old as ours. This can be a good thing – it makes the vision and aesthetic more mosaic-like.  The staff of Permafrost changes every two or three years as students graduate from the University of Alaska MFA Creative Writing program. I believe the tastes and preferences of the Permafrost staff strongly guide its aesthetic at any point, and that staff is constantly changing. For example, one of our genre editors is especially passionate about experimental fiction, so that could be reflected in next winter’s issue. 

The title of the magazine demonstrates Permafrost’s northern flavor.  We publish writing from across the world, not just “Alaska writing,” but we find that landscape, the environment, or the North (however defined) often influence the submissions we receive.  I love that about Permafrost; that it does have a distinct personality but that we have the freedom to publish any quality writing.

NM: On the Poet &Writers Literary Magazine database, Permafrost is listed as a print magazine, but it seems like it has an online presence as well. Is this fairly recent? Tell us a little bit about the shift. Will Permafrost now have both an online, and a print edition? If so, what are the benefits and downsides of both?

CS: Our online presence is recent!  We published our first online issue last summer (Vol. 34.2), and Vol. 35.2, due out this summer, will be an online issue. Readers can watch for it at www.permafrostmag.com. 

Personally, I am torn on this topic. I believe online publishing is the inevitable way literary journals (if not publishing at large) may be going, but there is still something invaluable about the weight/feel/presence of a book or literary magazine in your hands.  While we hope to improve and experiment with the design and layout of our summer online issues, Permafrost will continue to primarily publish a winter print issue indefinitely.

NM: Literary magazines seem to run on the promise that contributors will be granted the prestige that comes from being published along side the famous and infamous. Some of Permafrost’s representative authors and artists include Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol, Dan Pinkerton, Billy Thrope, and Illy Kaminsky. What other authors of note has the magazine published to date?

CS: Great question!  We’ve featured writing by or interviews with Naomi Shihab Nye, William Stafford, Robert Boswell, Günter Grass, Amy Bloom, Peggy Shumaker, Camille Dungy, Ed Skoog, and Sean Hill – the list goes on!  Vol. 33: Winter 2011 includes a great tribute to John Haines and some of his poetry.  Last fall student staff members conducted interviews with poet Robert Wrigley and memoirist Kim Barnes. These interviews can be found in Vol. 35.1: Winter 2013. 

I think it is important for a literary magazine to publish and promote “big names” because their work is clearly deserving, and it draws attention to the magazine.  But I see Permafrost mainly as a venue for new writers, as often is the case for student-run MFA literary magazines.  Personally, I’m most interested in helping these writers, who may just be starting to submit and publish, find an audience.  But if Sharon Olds wants to publish some poems with us, obviously I wouldn’t object!

NM: What role do the graduate students of The University of Alaska at Fairbanks play in the production? Do they accept and reject submissions as well as read? Can you tell us a little about how the selection and the designing process is handled 

CS: Besides the guidance, input, and fundraising efforts of our awesome faculty advisor, Daryl Farmer, graduate students are the magazine.  Our staff is comprised of the Editor-in-Chief (myself), Managing Editor (Caitlin Woolley), Web and Design Editor, as well as genre editors in art, poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.  We also have a group of 10-20 graduate student readers.  Each submission is read by at least three students, and each reader gives each submission a “Yes,” “No,” or “Maybe” response in regards to publication. The genre editors handle the rejections.  Any submission that receives a “Yes” or “Maybe” response is reread by the Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor, who handle the acceptances. Communicating with writers and letting them know that their work has found a home with us is one of the most rewarding aspects of my position.

NM: Roughly how many contributors does Permafrost publish each issue? How many of those are unsolicited? And roughly how many submissions does the magazine receive each period?

CS:  We’re trying to raise the quality and length of the magazine overall.  Vol. 35.1: Winter 2013 featured over 50 contributors.  The page count was 216, which is nearly double the page count of last year’s winter issue. 

We usually don’t solicit work accept for art, because we receive a very small pool of artwork.  I think this is a common issue for literary magazines.  In a typical reading period (based on the reading period for Volume 35.1), we receive around 300 submissions.  Currently, we accept both snail mail and online submissions (via Submittable.com). 

NM:  It seems that Permafrost is currently open for submissions until the end of March, is that correct? When will readers expect to see the next issue?

CS: Our submission period for Vol. 35.2: Summer 2013 online issue just closed, but submissions for Vol. 36.1: Winter 2014 print issue (due out in March 2014) will reopen from September 1st - December 15th, 2013. 

NM: I’ve learned that most literary magazines basically rely on someone’s labor of love. Is Permafrost self-sustaining?

CS: Isn’t that the truth!  I know for me, and our staff, Permafrost is a labor of love. The magazine is volunteer-run, and published through fundraising and the cost of our reading fee through Submittables.com. But, as you probably know, we do this because getting people’s work out there in the world is valuable and meaningful.

NM: Will Permafrost be attending AWP this year?

CS: AWP is in Seattle in 2014, an area much closer to home for us here in Fairbanks!  We’ll be there.  We’d love to meet some of our readers, and encourage them to come find our table at the bookfair.  Come talk to us about the magazine, UAF’s MFA program, what 40 degrees below zero feels like…

NM: What else about Permafrost would you like readers to know?

CS: Most of our submissions are mainly poetry and fiction.  We would love to see more quality nonfiction and artwork submissions!  Issues and subscriptions can be ordered via email (editor@permafrostmag.com) or through our website and Submittables. I really do believe Permafrost is up-and-coming in the literary world and meant for big things, so keep an eye on us!

Poetry
April 2013
Volume 202, Number 1
Monthly

Released during National Poetry Month, one might expect the April edition of Poetry to be a bit weightier, coming in at 78 pages long. True to form, however, the magazine packs a punch for a deceptively slim publication. This month’s issue features work from Jane Hirshfield, Lucie Brock-Broido, and Eavan Boland, with the cover’s art, “City Island,” done by Victor Kerlow.

Four poems of Hirschfield’s are published in this issue. Once I, A Chair in Snow, An hour is not a house, and I sat in the sun all carry her trademark imagery and, the last especially, her skill for brevity. 

A poem of barely three lines, it manages to capture Hirschfield’s skill with imagery and flooring diction. The chair in the sun communicates leisure, a sentiment that’s challenged by the discomfort of hunger. The two feelings are unified by the voluntary moving one’s chair and abstaining from food. 

Another poet featured is Lucie Brock-Broido. Brock-Broido’s poems hold the reader with deceptively simple diction that creates unexpected imagery. Lines feed off of each other to create harsh and heartbreaking lines, like these from Currying the Fallow-Colored Horse:

Currying the Fallow-Colored Horse depicts themes of death and interactions with people around us. Her second poem, Gouldian Kit, is focused on physical imagery, first with hands submerged in water, then on sickness. These combine to mirror the themes of human interaction in Currying the Fallow-Colored Horse, but this time, the poem represents alienation instead of connection through interactions. 

The world is a recurring image in Gouldian Kit, and it contrasts well with Currying the Fallow-Colored Horse’s depictions of mortality. 

Eavan Boland’s poems show the strong influence of her childhood and education in Ireland, The Long Evenings of Their Leavetakings, with imagery of calla lilies and the Irish coastline. 

Her poems follow a man engraving A Woman Without A Country. Each piece expands the view of a city over water. The theme of Ireland is maintained through each poem, even if only through quick images of Dublin streets or the water of the Irish sea. 

Subscribers might remember a section Poetry included in their March issue, “A Few More Don’ts,” in which select writers add their own updates to Ezra Pounds famous “A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste,” which was first published in Poetry in March of 1913. This month, Marjorie Perloff, William Logan, and Sina Queyras contribute both observations on Pound and additions to the list in paragraphs and bullet-points. 

One collaboration featured is a Three Books: An Exchange, a back and forth of reviews between Gwyneth Lewis, Michael Lista, and Ange Mlinko. The three dig in to the recently released Lazy Bastardism by Carmine Starnino, On Poetry by Glyn Maxwell, and Madness, Rack, and Honey by Mary Ruefle, delivering on-point analysis and commentary on critical reception that feels like a long distance book club.

This month’s issue of Poetry also includes work from Stephen Stepanchev, Adam Kirsch, Michael Robbins, Anna Maria Hong, J. T. Barbarese, Randall Mann, Dean Young, Mary Moore Easter, Jamaal May, and Christina Pugh. 

While Poetry has been around since 1912, the magazine has only gotten better. The poets featured range from well known to obscure, and features are consistently new. The design has always been a more minimalist elegant around well-chosen cover art that should not be overlooked. All issues are available for viewing online, but also for purchase in print form 

I want to thank Carrie Lorig very much for conducting this interview about the MFA Program in Creative Writing offered at The University of Minnesota.

Carrie Lorig is a poet living in the cold part of Minneapolis, MN. She is author of the chapbook, nods. (Magic Helicopter Press), and the co-author of a book of political erasures, Nancy and The Dutch (NAP), with Nick Sturm. She has poems and collaborations published or forthcoming in The Denver Quarterly, TYPO, Forklift, OH, NOO Weekly, DIAGRAM, and other places. Her t-shirt says, Wonder, in redred lettering.

Niche Magazine: Can you tell us a little bit about your journey to the MFA? What form did it take?

Carrie Lorig: I took a route that I would argue has been an asset to me in the program. That is, I took some time to get here. By the time I decided an MFA was what I wanted, I knew I was going to write poetry my whole life whether or not anyone gave me permission. I took poetry workshops as a undergrad at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I worked on the Madison Review and clamored around town constantly with a gang of kid poets (Feng Sun Chen, who is also in the program at UMN, Jared Joseph, Leif Haven) starting magazines and writing all kinds of shitty sparkles. They were my first writing family, and I'm still in love with so many of them. Some of them have been reading my poems for 9 years! I had encouragement at UW from Quan Barry to keep writing poems, but wasn't really sure what I wanted to do come graduation. I didn't think I was very good at poems. I ended up spending two years in South Korea teaching English. I was lucky to have that opportunity. Because I went there, and I found out I loved teaching. I found out I loved peach trees and mountains. However, I was fucking sad and lonely there to the point that my body felt like it had burned itself numb. (This wasn't Korea's fault, btw. <3) So I started writing poems, scribbling in journals, reviewing books, and reading every book like I could turn it back into a forest if I just read it hard enough. Something in the gut region told me this was the way I could crawl back towards the world and to my life. I was right. Poetry opened me sea-like to my beastly, sensitive self. I got bigger. I started cutting my own hair. My first poem was published in elimae. I felt like I understood something about how light could come out of the dark. I moved back to Madison, WI for a year and was a bike messenger while I applied to schools. I spent my piddly nothing money on applications to school and beer. I kept writing poems, started getting published more, interned for the Monsters of Poetry (Adam Fell, Lauren Shapiro, Kevin Gonzalez) reading series, met people like Russ Woods + Meghan Lamb + Cassandra Troyan, made my first "chapbook" for my boyfriend at the time, and did my first reading in Chicago for Stephen Tully Dierks/Pop Serial. I got into Minnesota off the waiting list in April, after being rejected everywhere else. I had just gone to brunch at Monty's when I got the email, and I cried and cried and cried into my black fingerless gloves. 

NM: How would you describe the atmosphere in workshop? How might be different/unique from workshops in other programs?

CL: This is a complicated question. Maybe that's appropriate since workshop, in general, is kind of a big question for the MFA system. It's a model that's been in place for so long that it's a reflex, and I'm not sure everyone is convinced it's the only way we should be doing things. I don't think I am convinced that it's the only way we can be sharing and transferring poetry in-progress in an academic setting. 

Our workshops are what most people think of when they think of workshop. We read poetry books, most of which are contemporary or relatively contemporary. We have a conversation about them (sometimes student led/sometimes teacher led) and workshop 2-3 people per week according to comments we've handwritten on the poems. That said, I do find the atmosphere of our workshops to be supportive. Ray Gonzalez and Peter Campion, our workshop teachers these past couple years, are both very easy to talk to and be around. They are willing to meet outside of class and go over comments/ideas. They demand big output (both require poems + a paper analyzing and explaining your work, which I love and would argue is an incredibly important thing to do), and that's what you want and need to get out of a workshop. A WATERFALL OF STUFF TO WORK WITH. Ray makes a booklist like no other. (Reason and Other Women by Alice Notley!) The writers want to be genuinely interested in each other's work, and I think workshop can be an excellent place to experience a diversity of aesthetics. At this level, you can't just dismiss people and their work, no matter how much you "don't get it." You have to learn to respond to that diversity of asethetics thoughtfully/intellectually. Workshop teaches us to engage difference and to not assume difference is synonymous with hostility or "badness." We all fought tooth and raptor claw to be here. We all have tooth and raptor claws that can do awesome things. 

NM: What can you tell us about the funding/support given at Minnesota?

CL: We are very, very, very, very lucky to have THREE YEARS of funding (in exchange for teaching) that adds up to about $13,000 a year. That is not the case everywhere, as we all know. All of us are grateful and happy to be in a program that gives us that extra year and isn't going to leave us stranded in immense debt (Seriously world, why?). We are finally seeing creative writing students push back against this sort of thing at Houston, for example. I pump my fist in the air for them! We also receive some relief for AWP during one of our years in the program, and we can ask for modest reimbursements for readings we travel to do (I've benefited so much from this), conferences, etc. There are prizes every fall chosen by outside writers we can get some money from upon winning. 

However, student fees at the University of Minnesota/most universities are criminal (I love paying for services meant for the greater good, but we pay back a little over 11% of our already small, small earnings. I struggle every year to pay them, and I certainly don't live extravagantly. I buy PBR, yo.) Summer funding within the department definitely exists, which is amazing, but it's limited. I am the MFA representative to the faculty. I know how hard they struggle to get us money. I greatly admire them for it. However, only 5 of the 36 students receive summer funding ranging from $1700-$4000 for the summer. 3 others receive a travel grant that allows you to be reimbursed (for travel/studio space/supplies for whatever project you're doing) for somewhere about $2000. I work any number of odd, tolerable jobs in the summer, write as often as possible, and pray I won't have to ask my parents to help me.

NM: What can you tell me about Dislocate? How much are graduate students involved, and what roles do they play?

CL:  I'm not a member of dislocate. I'm going to turn this question over to Jennifer Fossenbell, one of the editors in chief.  

Jennifer Fossenbell: dislocate is 100% graduate student-run. Our staff come from MFA, MA and PhD tracks, and the exact roles are determined each year by who comes on board and what strengths and experiences they have. Speaking for this year, we've got two of us sharing the 'chief' position, a distribution team, a social-media/web manager, an event-planning team, three head genre editors, plus a tidy army of associate editors. But when it comes right down to it, many of the decisions we make are consensus-based, and we all do a little bit of everything as needed. As a result, we're all learning important skills for the real world, such as: how to beg for money in a convincing way; how to argue this poem vs. that one; how cozy is too cozy for a public reading; when to start x in order to complete y and z on time without stress-molting in the process; and how to answer PR questions about our publication. We're still working on all or most of these, but I can say it's a project that completely belongs to the students each year who make it happen... and to our readers, of course.

NM: Who have you had an opportunity to work with?

CL: Ray Gonzalez + Peter Campion are here and serve as instructors/advisors to the poets. I've worked with both of them more than once. I've worked with Maria Damon, who brings an incredible energy to this city and to poetry that will be sadly missed next year when she goes off to head a department at Pratt. She attends every student reading or event there is (and brings food)! Her generosity and incredible knowledge of poetry/literature/theory (DEAR GOD) motivates me to be involved, to be interested, to care, and to work hard. I've also taken a jaw slackening Anthropology class with Stuart McLean about the dead that gave birth to the final portions of my chapbook that just came out, nods. We read Michael Taussig, Amos Tutola, Bracha Ettinger. He let us read and talk about poets Aase Berg + Raul Zurita per our invading MFA suggestion. Jani Scandura is teaching a class on the Avant Garde I'm taking this semester through the Art History/English Department that's been wonderfully challenging. We've read Rosalind Krauss, Marcel DuChamp, Walter Benjamin, Maurice Blanchot, The Surrealists. She is another one of these professors, along with McLlean, who believes in accepting creative projects as academic, intellectual work and responds to them as such. Being able to combine theory w/my creative impulses has been a huge turning point for me that has really allowed my work to blossom in unexpected, important ways. 

I also want to insist that who I've worked with is my cohort. I owe them all my first unborn ponychild hybrid. We are a tight (There are only 12 of us per year, 4 poets per year.), challenging group. Many of us work hard to push each other in terms of constantly thinking about what poetry/writing is and what it can be. We are always lending/giving each other books. Just this morning Elisabeth Workman gave me The Romance of Happy Workers by Anne Boyer. We exchange work in class and outside of it. We get together for circus drinking time, and we get together to talk about books for a thing we call "Gristle Day." This is where I found a plate shifting book in my writing called I LOVE DICK by Chris Kraus. I started a reading series, Our Flow is Hard, with Feng Sun Chen, Kristin Fitzsimmons, Chrissy Friedlander (all in the program/all powerful ladies of the swamp), and my roommate, Amelia Foster. Jennifer Fossenbell, another lovely pack of feathers in the MFA program, joined us this year. 

We work to be each other's teachers because we take contemporary poetry and our place in it seriously. I think that's something that sometimes gets a little lost in the academic scheme of things sometimes? Like, you are next! You are what is next in poetry, and so are the people around you. That means something. That means you don't have to cower under the shadow of all those dead dude authors, great as they absolutely are. Whitman would certainly not want that for us! This does not mean we give a shit about who is the most published between us or whatever. It just means we have ideas about what we could be. I don't know. Spew all your oily, pretty juices and feed voraciously off the ones coming out of those around you! Why else are we all in this small space we call the MFA together?! 

NM: Are you given the opportunity to teach, and if so, how have you found the experience?

CL: Yes. Everyone teaches. Each incoming year, one person receives a DOVE fellowship for their first year only. They don't teach during that time. Your first year you teach all three genres in Creative Writing 1101 (think 101) and probably TA for a lit course. Most classes are capped at 26 students. If you TA for a lit course, you'll have two discussions of 26. Your second year you start to have choices. You can teach freshman comp, do the same thing you did your first year, or teach one/both of the undergraduate workshops you're guaranteed during your time here. I think this is all incredible. I love the variety of choice we have. I love that we are guaranteed to be able to teach creative writing, which I understand is not the case everywhere. If you want to be a teacher, this is THE place to come. You will be one before you leave. I had some teaching experience before I came, but I really adore teaching college students. They are smart, open, and willing. Totally magic beings. They are so excited to read the things you have for them. They are so excited when you tell them that their thoughts matter and that they can do so many things with them. They are so excited to breathe some imagination. They teach me things too, and I will quote Emily Kendal Frey's facebook status here, "Learning is where all healing happens." Watching my students read wrinkle themselves through Edouard Leve and Amelia Gray has been the best  Prof. Joe Hughes, who I TAed for, let me to two lectures on Zachary Schomburg's Scary, No Scary for a 300 student class. That was a thing that really made me think yes, this is what I want to be doing with my little sliver of lizard life. We get a lot of freedom to control and make our classes (even composition) what we want them to be, which is a gift. I really think the MFAs and English PhDs are teaching some of the most exciting undergrad classes here at the UMN. 

NM: Any unique experiences you want to share about your experience?

CL: I think my unique experience is that the MFA became this entry point into the greater writing community for me. I came here, and I was OK, I'M GOING TO DO THIS. ALL OF IT. You don't have to wait to graduate to do this!!! I was walking once with Lewis Freedman in Madison before I got into a program, and he said something along the lines of, "If you love what a writer does, fucking email them. Tell them. Be that person." I went home and emailed a poet named Jame Schiller right away. And I don't forget what Lewis told me or quit doing that. This is why I review books as often as possible. This is why I have a reading series. This is why I go to readings here in Minne. as often as possible. This is why I pinch my pennies to death so I can go to AWP and eat burritos every year. I hug really hard at AWP. The MFA became this event that gave me a reason/the confidence to go and look for my writing and my tribe. This year at AWP, Matt Hart said it seemed like I'd figured something out, that I'd found out something about my place, and he's right. I correspond with a lot of poets. We send each other poems and recordings and emails and letters and packages. I travel to do readings as often as I'm invited and can manage to scramble the money together. I READ ON TOP OF A METAL BAND IN AKRON,OH THIS YEAR. My unique experience is that I figured out that I'm a person who thrives off the energy of other poets, of conversations and friendships with them. A lot of things continue to be hard and terrible, but I've found the sudden cultivation of such immense language and family to be a beach covered in beer and only the raddest jukebox songs. 

NM: Would Minnesota be somewhere you would settle after graduation?

CL: I'm not a settling type of person. My parents were migratory llamas. At least, I'm not a settling person yet. I want to go off and do more school because I love school + believe in school a great deal. However, if I don't get in anywhere, I might end up staying here. (Though, I hope that's not the case.) Lots and lots of MFAs do stay here. Minneapolis and the Midwest are fantastic. I wear my flannelized heart (I grew up in Wisconsin) for them. The Twin Cities are a collective Arts Town. It's not just poets that go to poetry readings, and there's a lot of places to find and get support here. There are a lot of writers/places for artists here doing wonderful things. Sarah Fox, Matt Mauch, Andy Sturdevant, Brad Liening, Coffee House Press, The Soap Factory, Matt Rasmussen, Lightsey Darst, William Walsh + Conduit Magazine, Rain Taxi, The Loft, Open Book, L'etoile Magazine, Revolver Magazine, The Walker Art Museum, Chris Martin + Mary Austin Speaker are coming here soon, Paper Darts, the recently re-located Whole Beast Rag. If you come here and show your love, people will return it tenfold. I love that about this town. Also, great co-ops, great music (PRINCE LIVES HERE), great neighborhoods, great bike culture, great bookstores, great record stores, great museums, great goodgod lakes, good beer, good food. 

NM: What advice would you give to prospective candidates?

CL: Kill everything. Murder the rhythm of your love and of your decaying spots. Kiss the gravestones against your house with all the risk. Be generous and thoughtful and caring with your work and others. Don't ever stop thinking that's what you need to do. Just write and read the fuck out of everything with every sense of bleeding you've ever had. Your MFA program is not the only poetry. Your mentors are not the only poetry. You are not the only poetry. We're in here massed together and complicated. Be a sound. Be a love monster. Go deep in there and crawl your way back out with balloons in your mitts. Maybe that all sounds simplistic. I'm not sure. But I don't think anyone could ever convince me to stop, no matter how many times my computer breaks or someone dislikes my poems, which they are certainly free to do. I'm going to be extreme and say that if you have that set to boiling, you will do this. I will see you at the Zombie Party, and we will dance. 

HOOT: a postcard review of {mini} poetry and prose.
ISSUES: 19
MONTHLY
WEBSITE

I was very fortunate to have attended AWP in Boston this year. Most of my time was spent at the book fair where I, and fellow MFA candidates, promoted our program’s literary journal, The McNeese Review. We were surrounded by very good company, but there was one literary magazine in particular which caught my attention.  I was so intrigued and impressed by the premise of HOOT that I invited the editors here for a brief chat, and they very kindly agreed. 

Niche Magazine: How did HOOT (a postcard of [mini] poetry and prose) come about?

Amanda Vacharat: The first time I went to AWP, a small magazine was having a contest for short fiction, the winner of which would be printed on promotional postcards for the magazine. I just loved the idea of having writing published on such a tangible medium that I wanted it to be a monthly occurrence! And with illustration! But it wasn't until two years later, when Dorian provided the fire to get it off the ground.

NM: Why the decision to do mini?

AV: Well-- the spiel we give usually references the internet-- mini/brief goes so well with the way we read things online. Brevity fits into our lives, and it's also shareable. But basically, it's because we like mini stories and poems! There's less room for pretension within only 150 words. 

NM: Tell us a little bit about who is involved in this endeavor, and what individual roles you all (Dorian Geisler, Amanda Vacharat, Jane-Rebecca Cannarella, Joseph A.Thompson, and Zana Bass) play to make a monthly magazine happen?

Dorian Geisler: Good question.  It is a little more like making something happen than simply making a thing--It's not just art, but art that goes out to people in their mailboxes!  Joseph Thompson is in charge of the pen pal program (see below) and so doesn't have much of a hand in the monthly running of the magazine itself.  Zana Bass is a guest editor, guest artist, and just general guest--we are glad to have her work with us when she is able, but, as you can gather, she, too, is not involved consistently with the production of  the magazine itself.  

To make a postcard issue happen, there are three main stages:

1.  Selecting the piece of writing.  Amanda, Jaine, and I all collaborate closely to choose the piece we want to publish for the postcard.
2.  Creating the accompanying piece of art.  Amanda . . . does this whole stage, all on her own.  I wish I could help her, but really, talent is the determining factor, and Amanda is able to do pieces in all sorts of media to compliment all sorts of pieces.  (I'm not . . .)  
3. Writing the seasonal notes on the backs of the postcards, adding stamps and addresses, and sending them out.  This again, Jaine, Amanda, and I do together.   

NM: Tell me a little about how you go about matching artwork with stories? Who is the primary artist? Will HOOT be asking guest artists to contribute artwork in the future?

AV: Except for our online issues, we don't actually match artwork with stories--we actually create (or have the artwork created) in response to the story/poem. Something we try to do is go beyond a basic "illustration" of what is already written - we try to give the writing an extra layer of tone, or the story another dimension. Up until now, we've had a few guests, but I have done the majority of the illustrations...but we're really trying to move away from that model (and are actively looking for illustrations), and in fact the next few issues are "guest" artists. 

NM: Tell me a little bit about the free workshops, including the Pen Pal Workshops that HOOT offers.

DG: The free workshops that we offer occasionally throughout Philadelphia are how-to's on writing very short fiction, or else on creating art to accompany pieces of writing.  The Pen Pal Workshops are run by Joseph Thompson.  Without getting too technical, the idea is for writers across the nation to share brief pieces of writing through the mail, and to receive feedback on them.  We also offer a free online writing workshop, every other Wednesday evening, which is held in a chatroom accessible from our website.  We workshop very short pieces, fiction and poetry, and we cater to whoever shows up.  It's a little rushed, and a little erratic, but it is also fun and (usually) helpful for the writers.  

NM: How does HOOT go about accepting submissions? Are there a certain things that HOOT looks for, or aesthetic that HOOT ascribes to?

AV: We accept submissions both online and via snail mail. Snail mail submissions are free (but require a SASE) and there is an online fee of $2 -- this goes towards paying our author. We read every submission out loud, to make sure we give it ample time and attention, and we often give the authors some feedback with our response. There's not really an aesthetic- though we do keep the Refrigerator Rule in mind--many of our subscribers hang the postcards on their fridge or above their office desk, where they (and their family/co-workers) will look at them all month long...we try to publish pieces that won't be offensive in those locations.

NM: Who has HOOT published?

AV: We've published a wide range of people-- there are authors who have published books, or who have started presses, but a good number of our issues are first time publications. I think because of the short format, it's a welcome place for both experienced and hesitant writers.

NM: Where can readers buy HOOT? How much do you charge for each postcard? How much does Hoot charge for subscription?

AV: There are a few stores in the Philadelphia area, but really we do our business via our website. A subscription is $14 (but that's soon to go up to $15 due to increased postage), single postcards are $2 and can be either mailed to you blank (so you can send it) or sent to an address with a personalized message written on the back.

NM: What’s next for HOOT?

DG: Another great question.  I remember when we were just getting started, or had just a few issues out, and people would always say to us, "That's a great idea for a magazine."  While that's complimentary (and understandable), that comment started to grate on me after awhile.  Nowadays people can look at our issues and (hopefully) say simply, "That's a great magazine."  Which--brings me to the actual answer to your question! We don't want HOOT to simply be a clever idea that came, was a cool novelty for a while, and then disappeared.  Right now, we're focusing on sustainability.  We're trying to develop habits, routines, networks, and skills that will enable HOOT to stay around for a long time.  What's next for HOOT?  Hopefully many years of respectable sustainability.

NM: Is there anything else about HOOT that you want our readers to know?

DG: Well, one thing is that HOOT is a very small magazine.  Not only is the basic print issue very small (it is, of course, only a postcard), but our staff is small and our subscriber list . . . is relatively small compared to more well known, long-standing and traditional literary magazines.  Part of working with HOOT, for me, is embracing this humbly.  Part of the reason I think HOOT works is that it is humble.  The writing is not presumptuous.  We're not presumptuous.  We're trying to send the signal that small, humble projects like a postcard magazine can succeed, even if that success is small and humble.  Ideally we're trying to send the signal: Something can be worth doing, even if it's small and humble. 

I am very happy to welcome Sean Pagaduan our  blog. I want to take this opportunity to thank him very much for sharing his experiences and insights about the MFA Program offered at New York University.

Niche Magazine: Tell us a little bit about your personal journey to the MFA.

Sean Pagaduan: I had graduated from the University of Arizona with a BSBA in Business Economics and a minor in Creative Writing, with a focus in fiction. It turns out that a BSBA is not enough to get by in today's job market. I ended up applying partially because I wanted to continue working on my writing, but also partially because I’m interested in teaching creative writing. Of the schools I was accepted to, I felt like NYU would work best with my aesthetic, and that the experience I would gain from living in New York City would be invaluable.

NM: Tell us a little bit about the funding offered for NYU students. Is funding competitive?

SP: NYU's official tuition is roughly $20k per year, but every student is offered a $10k remission. Some students are offered full remission and additional stipends. Some students also have the opportunity to apply for a teaching position with the NYU Veterans Writing Workshop (full tuition remission plus $12k stipend). I also have a couple friends who work as Starworks fellows in working with hospitalized children (another tuition remission plus $12k stipend). Furthermore, NYU guarantees an undergraduate teaching position in the second year ($5k per class, so that would be a 1/0 or 0/1 workload). The funding seems to have ballooned since 2008, and I think that it's slowly registering with MFA applicants that NYU does have money to give away.

NM: Does NYU encourage their students to send their work out for publication?

SP: I don't think I've been actively encouraged to send out work for publication. I do know that the professors here pay a lot of attention to the writing market and can tell you whether they expect a given piece to succeed. I also know that NYU is pretty active in bringing literary agents by. In a couple weeks, we're going to have an agent talk to a Craft of Fiction class for an hour or two about what agents look for in a manuscript and how to find an agent. Plus, NYU will have agents coming by in late March for second year students to pitch whatever they're working on. So, while they don't go out of their way to tell you, Hey, you should really really submit this, they do make a lot of resources available.

NM: What authors have you had the opportunity to work with?

SP: So far, E.L. Doctorow, Irini Spanidou, Brian Morton, and Chuck Wachtel. I've also attended a master class by Lydia Davis. Lorrie Moore was NYU’s big catch to teach a craft class and a workshop this spring, and I’ve heard rumors that we’re going to have someone big next year coming by for a semester, but because it’s unconfirmed, I’m not sure if I should let the cat out of the bag just yet. But she’s a big name. I will kill to get into her class.

NM: How are the workshops at NYU structured? Would you call the workshop environment supportive?

SP: There isn’t really a typical workshop structure here. My class with Irini had one or two students leading discussion, and then the whole class just more or less went at it. My class with Chuck, on the other hand, is far more structured. His workshop is separated into three parts: Part One is mostly praise and a discussion of what elements of the story were working; Part Two is a discussion of what was unclear in the piece and suggestions for revision; Part Three is the author asking any questions she may have brought to workshop. Irini did not typically let students talk during their own workshop, but Chuck typically does. So, very different workshop styles. That said, both workshops I’ve been in have been very supportive.

NM: Are there any downsides to the program?

SP: I wouldn’t say that these are downsides so much as caveats. The first is that NYU is not one contiguous campus, so you really don’t get a lot of the school community that you would at a different kind of campus. The second is that NYU’s program is much larger than other programs. Last year, NYU admitted somewhere around 20-30 students for fiction, which, combined with the 20-30 from the previous year and the 5 or so third years, means that you definitely will not be close with every single person there (even though I’m guessing most writers become close friends with a half dozen people or so).

NM: How do you like living in New York? Upsides? Downsides?

SP: So I come from Phoenix, AZ, and living in a place that has excellent public transportation, a smart city planner, museums (some of which, by the way, NYU students can get in free with their student IDs), good food, and an amazing library system is something of a godsend. Downsides include the inability to actually see stars at night, horrible Mexican and Tex-Mex, and the cost of living.

NM: What advice would you give for prospective MFA candidates?

SP: Throughout the course of the program (or in undergraduate workshops), you’ll end up running into maybe two or three readers whose comments always scare you. These readers may be your close friends, they may just be random people, they may be lazy with everyone else’s stuff, and they may have a different aesthetic slant than you. But if they’re consistently scaring you, they’re the readers to pay attention to.

Poets and Writers (Profile)
Poets and Writers' Rankings  (New York University was ranked  #16)

Reviewed by Robert Boucheron

The Tribal Knot: A Memoir of Family, Community, and a Century of Change, by Rebecca McClanahan, Indiana University Press, 2013, paperback, 325 pages, $22.00

 Rebecca McClanahan is known as a poet. She has published five books of poetry since 1987, most recently Deep Light: New and Selected Poems 1987-2007. A teacher of writing, she also published two books on the subject, Word Painting in 1999, and Write Your Heart Out in 2001 in 2002, she published a book of personal essays called The Riddle Song and Other Mysteries. The title refers to the folksong that begins “I gave my love a cherry that had no stone.” The first essay, “Aunt,” describes her great aunt Bessie Cosby. (1880-1979) with whom she formed a close bond in early childhood. With a slight change in title, this book was republished in 2012.

The Tribal Knot is McClanahan’s tenth book. A model for the family memoir, it draws from “letters and postcards and telegrams and water-stained schoolbooks and photographs and diaries and newspaper clippings” and other documents dating back to the late 1800s. In addition to this mass of material, she interviewed relatives and researched official records. She was nothing if not thorough.

Though she now lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, home base for her family is central Indiana, Tippecanoe County. The industrial hub of West Lafayette and Purdue University are located here. But this is Wabash River country, the American heartland. One of the many pleasures of The Tribal Knot is its detailed portrait of the place, its land and people, through the twentieth century.

From the abundance on her desk, McClanahan had to choose what to include. The cast of characters has five or more generations and dozens of individuals. She also had to find a shape for her book and a storyline to hold it together. The shape she chose is an image, which she explains on the first page: “No living member of our family has ever seen it, but sources claim that a framed ‘hair picture’ . . . figured strongly in one of the darkest chapters in our family history . . . coiled into one continuous loop. Double helix, coded chain. Hair of my ancestors, the tribal knot.”

Cutting and saving locks of hair is an old folk custom. I once saw an exhibit of hair pictures in a Cape Cod museum. The Tribal Knot weaves several lives together like strands of hair in a braid. Interestingly, the prose style varies from strand to strand. Straightforward biography is one style. There are generous quotes from the letters, diaries, etc., giving a range of personal voices. Speculation is another style, as on page 150: “I imagine that when Arthur heard the news of the Valparaiso rally, as he very likely would have, he was extremely disturbed. The Klan in Valparaiso?”

One strand is McClanahan herself. Far from a disinterested historian, she relishes her role in the family. Not only is she a descendant, but: “As I write, my nieces and nephews number fifteen; my greats-, thirteen.” In a deliberately smudged way, she describes her first husband, a bout of depression, her recovery, and meeting the love of her life, her husband Donald Devet. Her joy is impossible to miss. Her curiosity about long-dead ancestors and her sympathy for hard-working farm women are equally vivid.

 For a storyline, McClanahan again chose her great aunt, Bessie Cosby.. Chapter 1 begins with Bessie’s diary of 1897, and the book ends with Bessie’s death at age 98. Bessie is the heroine. Much of her life is ordinary. As a girl, she did well in school. She was a great reader, and Byron was her favorite poet. She worked in a factory, married a farmer, helped raise her much younger siblings, and lived in a log house called Briarwood into old age, “but she kept her suitcase packed at all times, joining our family wherever my Marine Corps father’s orders happened to take us.” A decisive event was the death of her younger brother Dale. She did not travel to see him before the end, and she regretted this fact the rest of her life.

Bessie had no children, but she was enmeshed in the “tribe.” McClanahan, who is now in her sixties, also childless, identifies with her great aunt. Bessie’s uncrushable spirit and her gift for language may also factor. As a child, though, she saw Bessie as “scrawny,” an “annoyingly eccentric” old woman. In a wonderful bit of dialogue—yet another prose style—Bessie drills Rebecca in the names of her ancestors. The author knows what the child does not, that this scene is the essence of their bond.

 Instead of a conventional family chart, page 17 offers a “maternal lineage” that looks like a river with tributaries. At the center are Bessie and her sister Sylvia, who had five children. The line of descent is through daughters, starting with Lucippa about 1840. I turned back to this page again and again. It is telling in the way it shows how women hand down their history. And it is touching, as each name comes alive.

The book is long, and it took a long time to write. McClanahan refers to “this project over the span of many years.” Portions appeared in nine magazines. The sources presented gaps, puzzles, and discrepancies, and McClanahan says of her siblings that “their memories collided violently with mine.” But she strives for a coherent narrative. By the end, I felt that I knew her family as well as my own.

There are plenty of black and white illustrations. These are mainly old photographs, but there are handwritten letters, notebook pages, itemized bills, even a land deed. Captions are excellent. Naturally, there is a shot of “Bessie holding me outside our family’s home in Corpus Christi, Texas, 1952.” An icon of “the golden years” is a “photo taken by my mother on Easter morning 1961.” Handsome flight instructor Paul McClanahan and his five children are carefully posed. Behind the camera, Juanita is absent.

Six Minute Magazine
Brian Maurer (Editor in Chief) & CRhodes (Associated Editor)
Total Issues: 6 (GO TO ARCHIVES)
6MM @ KINDLE & 6MM @ FACEBOOK & TWITTER

Niche Magazine: Tell us a little bit about how Six Minute Magazine  (6MM) came about.  It’s very much geared towards attracting writers who work in the short form Flash Fiction (500-1000 words) and Micro Fiction (<200). What drove you to carve out this this niche?

Brian Maurer: The magazine itself was formed as a compliment to one of several online writing forums that I own and administer: Flash Fiction Forums. It was a site dedicated to sharing short form fiction writing, and offering your thoughts, critiques, even edits, to anyone willing to read and open-minded enough to accept. It’s a wonderful niche, though terribly underrepresented in the market. Short form writing has always been a passion of mine, sparking from fabulous authors that shaped my writing. Vonnegut, being one such writer, was well known for making each one of his chapters as precise and yet, brilliantly detailed as possible. He was also known for his micro-editing style, not moving on to the next chapter in his book until the previous was perfect. I adopted this model, and in doing so, found that I never could seem to manage to move on from one chapter to the next. I’m a one chapter man, it seems. And that’s perfect for such a magazine, and for readers interested in reading a single chapter. The magazine seemed quite natural, for both our forums, and for me personally.

NM: Is the seemingly simple but complex what you look for when combing through submissions? How do you, as an editor, distinction between a crafted carelessness and mere carelessness?

BM: I think to best answer that is to simply state that good writing is not careless. Carelessness is something we look for in our submissions, this much is true, but certainly not as a good thing. When crafting flash fiction, one is given a finite number of words to work with. As an author, you much choose so very carefully what imagery, what language, what actions are not only pertinent to the story, but create a colorful, vibrant world for us to vanish into. Carelessness is to throw aside those rules. Or perhaps, not be aware of them. I always default to the famous “story” – For Sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.   Is that careless? Is that too simple? It’s hard to tell. So much of a story is brought to us through personal experiences, through personal creativity. It’s the careful choice of words that allows the reader to paint such a picture. Carelessness is telling us what to see, how to see it, and why to see it. We look for submissions that leave that imagination to us, while still crafting a beautiful and intriguing story. 

NM: Clint Rhodes is the associated editor. How do you two balance the division of labor? 

BM: During our submission window, he receives all our submissions and brings them to a place where we both can read them, and have an active discussion about whether the submission is a good fit for our magazine. Sometimes, we offer editorial remarks to those that submit work to us. Other times we don’t. I think that’s the editor in both of us,  and us missing being able to actively read fiction all the time and offer thoughts. It’s been quiet these days on the forum. Regardless, after the piece has been selected, I do the layout for the magazine, and post it on our website. 

NM: There are several other magazines like The Journal of Compressed Literary Arts and Brevity that deal with the short form. Brevity deals exclusively in short memoirs. I’ve heard some say that all flash fiction is really memoir masquerading as fiction. Do you personally make a distinction between writing short fiction verses flash creative nonfiction, or are the concepts driving the genres fundamentally the same?

BM: I feel that both flash fiction and flash nonfiction are, as Brahms stated, Variations on a Theme. The theme is the model for storytelling; the subject matter is what gives each piece its vibrancy.  If I were to read a piece of flash fiction about a man standing on a street corner, begging for a cigarette, I’d not be able to tell fact from fiction. I don’t distinguish between the two, nor do I think there should be. If I’m reading a novel, and reading a full memoir, then sure, there’s a difference; but again, I believe that comes from the format, and not necessarily the writing. We all seek imagery; we all wonder what climax waits. It’s not something that’s exclusive to fiction writing, nor flash fiction. In my eyes, the two have different titles for no other reason than to publically state, I am true / I am false.

NM: As part of the redesign (the website looks great) you’ve also begun 6MM on Kindle. Will there ever be a print edition of 6MM, or is the idea to stay online and provide good (and free) reading to as many people as possible? What’s next for 6MM Magazine?

BM: I love the website that we have, and I love the forums. I love that they are free, and that people can come and go as they please, ponder and critique, and dream to create, just as we do inside a museum. Printing copies of 6MM isn’t in the spirit of what we started, and to be honest, a print magazine of this nature probably wouldn’t be overly successful. And to do that, it’d require an investment, and that falls back to the readers. And to me, that’s unfair. So for the time being, 6MM will remain an online magazine, available on Kindle for those interested in reading on the go. 

NM: What’s next for 6MM?

BM:  I love where the magazine is now, and I love that people are interested in it. I hope that the future brings more readers; more importantly though (and I don’t mean to imply my readers are not important), I want to inspire more people to write, to gain the courage to submit to magazines. If not ours, then to others. For me, I had to create a magazine so I could feature some of my work. I had to create a forum so that people would share their work with me and I with them. But if some place already exists, like 6MM, like our forums, then perhaps others will try. We are all creative people, and we all love a good story. If there’s something that 6MM can do to foster that community, then I hope to do it. 

NM:  What has changed for you as an editor from issue 1 to 5? What challenges have you had to overcome? What’s been the most rewarding?

BM: The functionality of the magazine has changed over the five issues, both in creation and in staff. And we are very grateful for those members of the staff that are no longer with us. It was a challenge to keep going; that I will not try to hide at all. Summer months can be very difficult in the online world of writing. It’s sunny out, weather is beautiful; not a lot early evening writing going on. At one point, we considered shutting down the magazine, due to lack of submissions, but somehow we pulled through. It’s a difficult thing to talk about, because I so very much want to see it grow and reach a wide audience, but there are days when we worry about making it as strong a magazine as we want it to be. It’s not unlike a piece of fiction. We’re sharing something with the world, and when it doesn’t come together as smoothly as possible, doubt hits hard. But I think that’s what has made it so rewarding. We’ve created five editions of our magazine, and have shared some intriguing fiction with our readers across the globe. And on occasion, I’ll get an email telling me that they can’t wait to read the next issue. That clears the clouds, and lets the light in. I forget about everything else. It’s a very rewarding process.  

NM: Are there any authors or pieces that you’ve published that particularly stand out in your mind?

BM:  To say that any one author comes to mind would single them out, and I really do love all the pieces that we showcase in our magazine. I have a fondness, I’ll admit, for Charles Bukowski. And when a piece of flash fiction comes across my email with the hint of pragmatic Bukowski bitterness, I almost always say yes.  

NM: What advice would you give to aspiring short form writers?

BM: You have words. Use them. But use them appropriately, and for God sake, don’t waste them. Paint a picture I can lose myself in, but don’t get lost describing the frame. Lastly, I know it sounds silly, but hear me out: you owe it to us to believe in your own work. If you’ve got an image you want to share, share it. Don’t be afraid to offend someone. Don’t be afraid to write something that’ll embarrass you. Someone out there wants to read it.  I promise you that. 

NM: Is there anything else that you would like our readers to know about 6MM?

BM: Don’t be shy to submit to our magazine. We serve as a showcase for all writers. We respect everyone that sends work our way, and understand that not everyone has the same writing background or formal training as others. That’s what the forums are for. It’s important that everyone have the opportunity to read what creative minds are writing. Our only hope is that we get the chance to read it. 

I am very pleased to welcome  Lauren Espinoza to Niche,'s blog. I want to take this opportunity to thank her very much for sharing her experiences and insights about the MFA Program offered at Arizona State University.

Currently, a graduate student in the M.F.A. Program in Poetry at Arizona State University, Lauren Espinoza's poetry has appeared in an anthology selected by Naomi Shihab Nye entitled Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25, online at The Acentos Review, is forthcoming in NewBorder: Contemporary Voices from the Texas/Mexico Border and The Mas Tequila Review.  She is a member of The Trinity, a poetry clica from the Rio Grande Valley and holds a graduate certificate in Mexican American Studies from the University of Texas-Pan American.

Niche Magazine: Tell us a little bit about your personal journey to the MFA. What was your application process like. Why poetry, and why Arizona State University?

Lauren Espinoza: My personal journey to the MFA was a little turbulent.  I'm one of those repeat offenders that didn't get the offer I wanted the first time around and had to go at it again. That was probably the hardest thing for me, to know that I was "good enough" to get in somewhere, but to realize that I didn't want to be paying off school loans for the rest of my life. So, I made the decision to turn down the offer and put my fate out into the universe and reapply the next year.  I'm glad I did, because I got four offers to go to poetry prom, and ASU offered to pick me up in a limo and pay for my dress.  You know, if your date picks you up in a limo you kind of have to "go all the way."

NM: Does Arizona State fully fund their students? What fellowship opportunities does Arizona State offer?

LE: As of right now ASU does fully fund their students.We have teaching assistantships that are tied directly to teaching so we are contractually obligated to read theory/pedagogy/heuristics/epistemology of Rhetoric & Composition during our first year. The first years come to ASU three weeks before the start of school to participate in TA Training Seminar during which we develop our syllabi for English 101 and complain about how hot Arizona is.  We don't have to teach rhet/comp all our three years here as during our second and third year we are given the opportunity to teach creative writing. Also, one student each year, a second-year or a third-year, has a graduate assistantship where, instead of teaching, they manage our literary magazine, Hayden's Ferry Review. There are also opportunities to work directly with creative writing faculty members as Research Assistants.  As an extra bonus to the teaching/graduate assistantship, we also receive a fellowship from the Piper Center.

NM: What do you know about the Hayden Ferry Review? How much do the students participate? 

LE: This year is the first year that HFR is entirely student run. Students can get involved immediately as readers and then apply to be Editors at the end of their first year. It's a really great opportunity because HFR is internationally-distributed, in it's 26th year, and has published writers like Joseph Heller, Haruki Murakami, TC Boycle, Rita Dove, and many others.  

NM: Tell us a little more about the the teaching opportunities that Arizona State offers.

LE: Through the English department, in the fall of your second year, you can apply to teach a self designed course in your third year. Through the Creative Writing department, you can apply to teach an undergraduate creative writing workshop also in your third year.  Plus all the English 101/102 we get to teach between our first and second years.  Our teaching load is 1/2 for the first year and 2/1 for the second and third years. all.the.teaching

NM: Who have you had the opportunity to work with?

LE: I will get to work with Norman Dubie, Alberto Rios, Cynthia Hogue, Beckian Fritz-Goldberg, Sally Ball, Jeannine Savard, or T.R. Hummer.  That's 7 poets!!!  All.The.Poets

NM: Along those same lines, what can you tell me about the visiting writers that come through Arizona State?

LE: Michael Ondaatje came through in November - that was exciting. When I came to visit last year, Rita Dove was here in a special MFA people invite-only Q&A.  It was wonderful. Also, there are some other poets/fiction writers that stop by and do readings - just last semester poet Richard Garcia and fiction writer Jennifer Speigel.  The neat part is that the MFA students are invited to introduce these poeple.  And I know it doesn't technically count as visiting writers - but there is a faculty reading on Valentine's Day this year. Eee!

NM: Can you tell me a little bit about how workshops at Arizona State? How are they the same or different from other programs that you looked into?

LE: Last semester I was workshop with Norman Dubie - he wears crocs. He's such an amazing human being.  When he tells you he's been reading poetry his whole life and then tells you a story about John Berryman and the Dream Songs, you really believe it. His attention to the detail of your poem and what it's doing is phenomenal. Sometimes he knows what's happening in a poem even when you don't.

I'm currently in workshop with Sally Ball. This workshop is great because she opened the class saying that "we've all been through workshops where the poem is like a patient on the operating table and we, as poets, are the doctors trying to figure out what's wrong with it.  In this workshop we are going to look at the poem and articulate what it's doing well, and ask questions of the poem overall. In articulating those things, we will be able to also see what it's not doing" (Loosely quoted). 

NM: What other unique features, or opportunities does the MFA Program at Arizona State University offer that you feel prospective MFAers should know?

LE: Every year the MFAers spend a weekend in cabins in the Arizona wilderness.  I hear there is a fiction 
versus poets game of flip cup and a fiction versus poets dance off.  There is also a weekly reading where a 1st, a 2nd, and a 3rd year participate.The order alternates from fiction, poet, fiction to poet, fiction, poet - but it's a really nice way to get to hear how superbly talented the people in the program are.

NM: What advice would you give prospective, or current attendees of MFA Programs?

LE: It was really important for me to choose a three year over a two year program. I didn't want to be barely settling in just to hurry up and finish.  Also, one of my professors told me this - always say yes.  If you say yes, you can always go back and say no.  If you say no, you can't change your answer to yes.  Get as many book recommendations as you can, and don't feel like just because you opened a book that you're married to it.  If you've been on a couple of dates with the poems and they aren't your thing, then they aren't; but you have to be able to articulate why they aren't your thing.  After you read through a book write a page about why the book was moving to you, what kept you reading through to the end, and pick out certain lines that did this for you.

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I am very pleased to welcome Marcelo H. Castillo to Niche. I want to take this opportunity to thank him very much for sharing his experiences and insights about the MFA Program offered at The University of Michigan.

Marcelo H. Castillo is an MFA candidate at the University of Michigan. He was born in Zacatecas, Mexico and earned a BA from Cal State Sacramento. He has held residencies at the Squaw Writer’s Workshop, and served as artist in resident at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida. With CD Wright, he is currently translating the Mexican poet Marcelo Uribe. His chapbook, “This Side of Wonder,” was published in 2012 by Amber Moon Press. He lives in Ann Arbor with his wife Rubi.

NM: Can you tell us a little bit about your journey to the MFA. Why Michigan?

Marcelo H. Castillo: I began to seriously consider MFA programs during my first residency at the Squaw Writer’s Workshop which gave me a brief glimpse at the larger writing community out there. In a conversation with a friend I met at the workshop, and who I still keep in close contact with, she told me to look into MFA programs. I had no idea where to look or what requirements to consider, so I bought the Poets&Writer’s MFA issue and began researching.  2011 proved to be an unreal year because I got married in the fall, graduated from my undergrad in the early winter, and had to find time to apply to MFA’s. I missed the deadline to take the GRE and was only able to consider those schools that didn’t require the GRE. Recently married, and paying off a wedding, I was financially restricted to two schools: Michigan and Iowa. My plan was to work my way down to other schools the following year when I had more time to apply. Iowa rejected me with a very kind letter, and around the same time, I received a life altering call from Michael Byers, the MFA director at Michigan. I quit my job as a health club manager and made the 2000 mile trip to Michigan from California.

NM: Does Michigan support their students? That is, do they give tuition waivers, scholarships, or teaching assistantships? How much do they get? Do students receive summer funding?

MHC: Here at Michigan, before any Webster Reading series by a second year, or an Edwards reading by a first year, one person is consistently thanked: Helen Zell. She is the reason we have coined the term Zollers, and Zellows, and Zalary. Thanks to Helen Zell, after who the title “Zell Fellowship” is named, all entering candidates are guaranteed full funding which means a full tuition waiver, full health benefits, conference financial support, travel grants, book purchasing stipends, and considerable summer funding. Not all of it comes from Mrs. Zell, of course, but she is our biggest supporter. Most importantly, first years are not required to teach, though some are offered graderships. In terms of scholarships, each year, students enter the Hopwood literary awards in hopes of winning scholarships from the Academy of American Poets and others like the $5,000 Theodore Roethke prize. We receive $6,000 in summer funding to focus on our writing and not have to take up a job. Being married, funding was a significant concern and I am happy that Michigan accommodates.

NM: Do you have the opportunity to teach, and if so, how do you balance teaching responsibilities with writing responsabilities?

MHC: Beginning my second year, I will teach either a creative writing or composition course each semester. Many of the second years that I have spoken with regarding their teaching responsibilities say to me that their biggest advice is to double up on courses my first year so that I am not overwhelmed my second year by teaching, the workshop, and on top of that, another lit class. Most agree that it is manageable, mostly because our entire time here is devoted to the craft, and our studies. I will teach my creative writing class in the Fall of 2013 and will enroll in workshop. The university begins training us since our first year in pedagogy to prepare us for teaching. I’m excited about it because we get to choose who we teach in creative writing.

NM: What unique opportunities does the MFA Program at Michigan offer?

MCH: Perhaps, one of the biggest, and to my knowledge, most unique opportunity in Michigan is the brand new third year Zell Fellowship awarded to all candidates. The program itself is officially a two year program with thesis work in your last semester, but now, thanks to Helen Zell, all candidates are awarded the Zell Fellowship in order to further support their writing with a full funding package. Before, graduating candidates applied but only a few were awarded the fellowship. “Zellows” as we call them don’t have to take classes, don’t have to teach, or, if they wanted to, nothing at all, though most “Zellows” that I speak to are vigorously finishing or beginning new work. I am especially excited about having that time to become a complete recluse and do nothing but write morning, day and night. Most Zellows are required to live within the Ann Arbor area, but a few are granted the liberty to live wherever they please and are still funded. There’s other opportunities that come with being a grad student in terms of travel. If there is extensive research that a candidate needs to do for a novel, or whatever, there are other grants outside of the MFA program that we are eligible for. 

NM: Which authors have you had the opportunity to work with? 

MHC: I’ve had the opportunity to work with Keith Taylor, A. Van Jordan, Laura Kasiskche, Lorna Goodison and my advisor, Linda Gregerson. It’s really amazing to have such a vast and talented bunch of professors to go to for conversation and larger issues about my own writing. 

NM: Tell us a little bit about the visiting writers?

MHC: The Zell visiting writers series (Again, Zell is a name that constantly pops up) brings great established poets and writers. In my first semester, they brought, among others, David Mitchel, David Shields, Carrie Fountain, Terrance Hayes, Clayton Eshleman, and Toi Derricote. This semester, Heather McHugh, Colson Whitehead, and Nicky Finney are coming to visit. The visiting writers, except for the distinguished writer who stay for a week, all stay for a couple of days and give readings, craft talks, lectures, and have lunch or dinner with four MFA students. Last semester I had lunch with Carrie Fountain and Terrance Hayes; it was surreal. What’s great about Michigan, though, is that it’s not just the MFA program that brings writers, last semester, different private reading series and other departments throughout the university managed to bring Traci K. Smith, Patricia Smith, Phillip Levine, and Charles Baxter among others. If you’re lucky, you might bump into Anne Carson who has been given unicorn status around the campus for her aloofness, save for the occasional reading she will do to entertain her cult like following of readers.

MCH: Does The University of Michigan have a literary magazine? If so, what can you tell us about it?

NM: The official literary magazine is the Michigan Quarterly Review. They are a very well respected journal and recently appointed Jonathan Friedman as chief editor who teaches in the English department. Throughout the university and in the city of Ann Arbor, though, there are many other up and coming magazines and reviews like Xylem, as well as a few presses like Canarium, and Dzanc Books.

NM: What advice would you give current or prospective students of MFA programs?

MCH: For those applying to programs, my advice is to try to stay sane because I know what a hell it is to write personal statements, academic statements of purpose, send dozens of transcripts to who knows where, let alone find some cohesion in a sample of work. After speaking with many other students in other MFA programs, I have come to believe that it’s what you bring to the program, your love for your writing that will make the difference. As one of my favorite poets, Robert Hass said to me, “never quit your craft, stick with it and you will develop a body of work.” To current MFA students, my advice is that it’s important to have a few drinks and enjoy your time while you are there. 

I am very pleased to welcome Lauro Vazquez to our blog. I want to take this opportunity to thank him very much for sharing his experiences and insights about the University of Notre Dame's Creative Writing program.

Born in Cosamaloapan, Veracruz, Mexico, Lauro Vazquez, grew up in the California bay area. He is a CantoMundo fellow and an MFA student in poetry at the University of Notre Dame's Creative Writing program. He is assistant editor and contributor at Letras Latinas--the literary program at Notre Dame's institute for Latino Studies and maintains a regular blog. His poems have appeared at The Ofi Press, Paragraphity, Pemmican Press and other journals.

Niche Magazine: Tell us a little bit about what led you to an MFA Program? 

Lauro Vazquez: I started writing while an undergraduate. I use to attend class in the morning and in the evening time I would work full-time at my university's dinning hall. I would daydream a lot, writing lines in my head, going over potential poems as I accomplished my tasks at work. By the time I would get home, I would have a draft written in my head and I would put it down paper. Slowly I began to conceive of myself as a poet and slowly but surely I learned of MFA programs. This seemed the next natural step. I wanted to be surrounded by an atmosphere of writers and also wanted to have the time and resources to be able to dedicate myself to my own writing. The desire to belong to a group that shared in the same values and that would value my creative endeavors drove me to pursue the MFA route.  

NM: Is Notre Dame a fully funded program? Tell me a little bit about the funding that's  offered to incoming students.

LV: Every accepted student receives a full tuition waver. This was one of the reasons why I finally settled for Notre Dame. Ours is a two-year program with ten poets at any given time (five per class). Not all of us get assistantships although all of us get the tuition waver. Some get to teach while others work in the administrative department; organizing the readings and program events. One special and unique assistantship is given to an incoming poet and it involves working with Action Books, a unique press founded by Notre Dame and MFA professors Johannes Goransson and Joyelle McSweeney.

NM: Are graduate students given the opportunity to teach?

LV: Yes, both in poetry and in fiction. This is, I believe, one of the assistantships offered to incoming students. That being said, there are also opportunities to teach despite not being awarded an assistantship. 

NM: Which authors have you had an opportunity to work with?

LV: Orlando Menes, Johaness Goransson and Joyelle McSweeney in workshop. But I have also had the opportunity to participate in private discussions with various other authors; some that come to mind are Olivia Cronk, Laura Mullen and Daniel Borzutzky.

NM: How do you find the workshop environment in Notre Dame?

LV: I think what makes the workshop environment unique here are the my peers and professors. They are all very passionate and hardworking people. The feedback I have gotten has led me to reconsider much of what I have been doing in my poems and has led me to find growth in my voice as a poet. I find the workshop here quite unique in many ways; for our discussions of readings and works of criticism we use an in-class blog which forces one to think deeply about our thoughts and also creates a democratic space where the conversation is not dominated by one particular person, as it often happens in more traditional classes. This also frees up more in-class time that can be used for workshopping poems. 

NM: What opportunities does this program offer that other programs don't?

LV: I think that the tuition wavers and  plus the caliber of the faculty are probably what distinguishes this program.  But from my own experience, and I know this is a cliche, it is the people--particularly my peers that has made this program stand out. The caliber of their work and the diversity of poetics and of points of view has really pushed me to think hard and deeply about poetry and that in turn has made me a better poet.

NM: What is the Sparks Prize?

LV: The Sparks Prize is a year's time to write for an MFA graduate. Every year it is awarded to a graduating MFA student. 

NM: Are there any downsides to this program?

LA: Yes, for me this has to do with the availability and diversity of literature classes. The diversity of subjects and the content of the class is quite poor. 

NM: Tell me a little bit about Re: Visions  and The Bend? Are the graduate students part of the staff there?

LV: Like the MFA student reading series, The Bend is one of Notre Dame’s creative projects, completely MFA students. The last issue of The Bend, #9, was edited by Margaret Emma Brandl, and graduates Ji yoon Lee and Seth Oelbaum. Submissions are open to current and past MFA students. I believe Re: Visions is the literary magazine run by the undergraduate students in creative writing here at Notre Dame and while it is autonomous from the MFA program I do believe a number of current and past MFA students serve as editors. 

NM: What advice would you give current or prospective MFA candidates?

LV: I think the most important thing is to choose a program where there are faculty that you want to work with; people's whose ideas and work inspire you and motivate you to want to write. That being said, I think that diversity of styles, points of view and backgrounds is also important as these always push you to reconsider your own ideas and to think deeply about your own work.