Rebecca Kaplan: In what ways does travel writing differ from creative nonfiction?

Stephanie Elizondo Griest: We commonly think of travel writing as being a very much external exploration so you’re pushing your own limits, you’re venturing off in the world, you’re venturing out into the unknown…The challenge is to first, be as open as you possibly can and be as receptive as you can to everything that you see, and then to describe it in as visceral detail as possible. Those were the guidelines under which I wrote Around the Bloc and Mexican Enough. Now I’m working on a book about my hometown in South Texas, so it is a different type of travel.   Rather than an external travel it is an internal discovery, and I feel like that is still a form of travel writing.  Travel Writing should itself be a large category, under which there is the internal and the external. And I think in internal writing you are trying to do both.  You are trying to fuse both.

RK:  Around the Bloc has its journalistic moments, are you still putting in that sort of objective, news-like atmosphere in your writing? Or is it more in the form of memoir?

SEG: When I was actually living in Moscow, and then later in Beijing, I had absolutely no idea that my experiences would ever be a book.  I mean, that wasn’t even on my radar screen.  I was only twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three years old.  I knew that at some point in my life that I would love to write a book, but absolutely had no idea that I was writing a book at that moment. In Moscow, between the Mafia, and the war with Chechnya, and then the ruble plummeting, there was just great strife. When I first arrived, I really had a hang up; I was like, ‘What am I doing here? I’m just taking up space on the subway, and I’m not contributing to this in any sort of meaningful way.’ I felt really bad that I didn’t have medical skills, engineering skills, or something that could actually be of some sort of service. Then only later, did it occur to me ‘Wait, what I can be, what I can do is be witness. I felt my time in Russia was really a time to be a witness to this amazing transformation, and so I thought my duty there was just to be out on the streets every single day and taking notes—mad notes, mad crazy notes. Even though I had no idea what would happen with them, I just wanted to serve as witness. I just recognized that it was important to document this some way, shape or form.  And I felt the same way in Beijing.  Every night I would just transcribe. I came home, and then when it actually occurred to me to write a book about that, it was this really big life epiphany. I originally intended my book to just be a documentation of these acts of witness.  I was not going to be a character in it at all. I was just going to be a man in the street, like a little fly buzzing around the Kremlin. The problem is, you can’t do journalism after the fact.  You can only do journalism in the moment.  What I mean by that is that I did not do the kind of interviews that I would need to write a truly meaningful journalistic enterprise type of work. Anyway, this did not occur to me, when I first wrote the book…I spent several years writing the book, and I even found an agent, and she agreed to sponsor it, and we sent it out into the world—the publishing world—and editors at different publishing houses got hold of the manuscript and they were all, ‘Yeah, the girl can write but there’s no story here. There isn’t enough research here to be a journalism book, and besides, why don’t we learn about her?  She’s what the book should be about.  She was this little girl from South Texas that’s Mexican and she’s obsessed with Communism and that’s weird and interesting and why doesn’t she write about that?’ There wasn’t enough of a plot to be a plot-based book and there wasn’t enough journalism to be a journalism book. I was just—I was a journalist. I was working for the Associated Press. I believed in journalism. I loved journalism from my heart, and I had never written in the first person.

SEG: My agent and I realized the only way this book could be a book was if it was a memoir.  Due to market forces, Around the Bloc became a memoir. I had no desire to turn it into a memoir. Editors said this book will only work as a memoir, which was devastating to me because I was a newspaper person. I didn’t believe in writing in the first person.  I felt writing in the first person was egocentric and narcissistic, and I didn’t want to navel-gaze in any way. I had all these idealistic reasons why I didn’t want to be a memoirist. I took a year off the project, which is the best thing you can do for a book, which is to write it and put it away for a year literally, and that year happened to be a  very transformational year for me.  It was a year that I spent driving about 45,000 miles around the country, making a documentary of U.S. History for an organization called The Odyssey. When I returned, I sat down and read the manuscript and was like, ‘Ohhh that’s why nobody wants  it.’ They were totally right. The journalism wasn’t rich enough to be a journalistic book, and furthermore, as a result of having spent a year documenting all these people’s voices, I began to realize every voice has its own merit and maybe mine does too, and so I literally surgically implanted myself in Around the Bloc. Through many, many rewrites, I mean. There’s literally not a paragraph that I didn’t rework twenty to thirty times.

SEG: That’s how I developed my own kind of fusion of creative nonfiction. So every work that I do is really a fusion of literary journalism, memoir and travel writing. It’s this immersive type, this experimental type writing, which I personally find very exciting. It is very exciting to do. It is very exciting to read. I really admire writers that do it—writers like Ted Conover; writers like Adrian Nicole LeBlanc.

RK: in Around the Bloc, you visit Beijing, and write for China Daily, censorship played a major role in your article selection and language.  How does censorship work and how is the best government, or freedom of speech compromise for writers of censored material?

SEG: They say censorship has truly been achieved not only when you self-censor but when the idea doesn’t even occur to you, when you internally suppress it before it even begins, and I never really understood if that was happening among my Chinese colleagues or not. Just as I thought they were operating under this brainwashed realm, they thought the same thing of me. Still, I was like, ‘No, but you guys are really brainwashed.’  And they would say the same thing of me: ‘You think you have all these freedoms and privileges in the United States, but you’re even worse than us because you won’t even admit it. At least we are very aware that we are operating under an oppressive regime, but everyone is aware of that so that we work around it. Whereas you are far deeper in it than we are, and we are smarter than you because we recognize that we have to operate under this ridiculous paradigm.  We acknowledge it, and we deal with it, and we get around it. Whereas, you, my friend, are going through it—you are totally in it.’ Also, while I was in China, I started to get paranoid. Back in the 90s, a lot of foreigners I knew were often paranoid that their phones were tapped and censored, so I was always really nervous with my notes.  I kept them locked up. I was never worried about myself because—at the end of the day—I could just get up and leave, but I was terrified for my friends that were confiding in me and telling me things.  I was so concerned that I was somehow going to endanger them, I started writing my notes in a fusion of Spanish, Russian and slang. I cannot understand any of my notes from China.  When I sat down and began writing Around the Bloc, I realized all these censoring practicing I had witnessed in Beijing I had really absorbed myself, started doing myself, and I feel like the China section of Around the Bloc is a disappointment to me. It is a weak section to me because I was so afraid of telling what really happened that I censored too.

RK: What brought you to the creative nonfiction program at the University of Iowa?

SEG: After Around the Bloc came out in 2004—which is my proudest accomplishment; I spent a decade working on that book, all of my twenties, it came out right before I turned thirty—I was stepping off the stage after doing an event when I realized, ‘Wow, I could potentially be doing this for the rest of my life.’ I hadn’t had the typical life experiences that people in their late twenties or early thirties have.  I was still living very much living in an undergraduate living situation. I had all these roommates. I had all these jobs. I had never been in a relationship. I didn’t have a 401 K. I didn’t know what 401 K was. All I could think about was this book.  So, mentally, I think I just stayed—I didn’t really regress, I just didn’t progress. I was just caught in the middle of this career life. And when the book came out, I was like, ‘Shit, I need to get a life.’  I had spent a lot of my youth recreating, reworking and reworking my own history, which is a really, really, really strange way to live a life, and I essentially lived all of my twenties, all of my late twenties, backward.  It was a very scary realization, and that’s when I decided to go to Mexico. I needed to learn Spanish, I needed to come to this cultural understanding, but I also needed to do something different—something completely different. Otherwise, I would be living in the shadow of Around the Bloc forever. That’s how I made it to Mexico. After Mexico, I was sent on book tour for several years, for my guidebook and for my Mexico book, and that’s how I was physically making a living.  I was living off the income I would get when I would do events at universities.  But, 2008 was what really changed everything for me. That was the year the stock market collapsed, and suddenly university endowments were shrinking, and they started cutting things, and one of the first things they cut were speakers’ budgets. So, all these schools that I had lined up for 2009 suddenly lost all their income. So, within a couple of weeks, $20,000 of my budget for next year cancelled.  And I was like, ‘Oh my god, what am I going to do?’  I hadn’t thought of the next idea for the next book.  What was I going to live on in between? I called my mentors. There’s no money coming in and no ideas for the next book project. What’s a writer to do in this situation? They were like, ‘Go to grad school.’

That’s what you do when the economy goes to Hell: Go to grad school. Go teach for a couple of years. That’s the superficial reason I went to grad school. But since I’ve been in grad school—my God—it has been an oasis for me.  I’ve learned so much about the genre that I’m a part of—so many things that I did not know previously. I’ve learned so much about the history of the essay, and it’s been fantastic. I’ve also come to realize that I deeply love teaching, so that’s the direction I’m actually moving in now. I applied for several tenure track jobs to be a professor of creative writing and I’m waiting to see how that pans out.  It’s really taken my life in a new direction.  I’ve always wanted to be a writer, but the way that I’ve been a writer—the only way I’ve been able to get writing to work—is to be a vagabond and crash on people’s couches and live in the stories, which I loved doing, but it gets more difficult as one gets older to literally live your stories and relive your stories and not do anything else. This has been a bittersweet decision to focus on other aspects of the writing world, instead of just being in it—every minute—as I’ve previously been.

RK: Do you have any advice for emerging writers?

SEG: First of all, I think writing—to me—is the most human way to live. I can’t imagine not writing. If you are meant to be a writer, you will know it.  Writing is a vocation. It is incredibly similar to being called to the priesthood, or being called to a monastery; to be called to a nunnery. I’ve been working on a book about silence for many years.  I spent a lot of time in monasteries, and silent retreats, and I’m realizing, what we do and what they do is really not too far between.  They spend their time beseeching God and we spend our days beseeching the muses. They are incredibly similar. I see writing as a calling, and I see it as sacred. Truly, truly sacred, and so if you feel yourself being called to it, there isn’t much you can do but answer it because you’ll never be living your true self if you don’t. I think the first thing to do about being a writer is accept that you are a writer, honor the fact that you are a writer, and pursue the life of a writer, and, unfortunately, or possibly fortunately, the life of a writer is a life of tremendous obstacle and hardship.  It is so incredibly challenging to be part of this field. I don’t want to say it isn’t valued. I want to say that people value literature extraordinarily when it is presented in a way that they can relate to.  I think stories do everything, can be everything, do everything, be social movements in the world, but it isn’t something easily transferable to income, which, unfortunately, we need. To be a writer is to live a life of tremendous sacrifice. Just to figure out how you can feed yourself and feed your writing, and often, those two things are not mutually compatible.  The hard part about being a writer is figuring out how you can create a recipe that is both good for life and that is good for writing.  Inevitability, the majority of writers don’t succeed in that.  They absorb themselves completely in their writing and completely abandon their families, or completely abandon their health. They drink too much. They eat poorly. They do desperate things to continue on with the writing. And then if you spend too much time feeding your life by running out and having these wonderful families and having these wonderful careers that earn you incomes you are not feeding your writing.  It is really, truly a struggle. My advice is just, first of all, if you’re a writer, you first have to accept that you are a writer, and by default, you have to accept that your life is going to be one of struggle, and how you are able to weave those two together. Everyone has their own way, everyone figures out their own way, but not without a lot of blood, sweat and tears. Every time I am on the brink of giving up, I get a sign from the universe saying that I’m doing the right thing. I think the universe really wants you to be living your dharma—be living what you are really, truly meant to do—but it’s going to push you at every moment. You have to constantly justify this to the universe, but if you do it long enough and hard enough and strive deep enough, it will in the end work out. The people in the end that succeed in the writing world are the people who want it the most.  There are people who are exceedingly lucky, but luck is a whole other ball game. For the rest of us, it is sacrifice that gets us where we are going.

Readers can learn more about Stephanie Elizondo Griest by visiting her website.

Nick Sansone is a soon-to-be graduate of the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He is the author of the novel Shooting Angels (2009), and his second novel, The Calamari Kleptocracy, will be released this year. His short fiction has appeared in a number of journals, including PANK, Pear Noir!, NANO Fiction, Bartleby Snopes, Word Riot, and The Los Angeles Review. His work has been nominated for the AWP Intro Journal Award and the 2012 Pushcart Prize. For more information, including a complete list of publications, visit his website at http://nicksansone.yolasite.com.  If our readers have any follow up questions they may reach him via email at nsansone@english.umass.edu.

NM: You did many things before applying for an MFA. including AmeriCorps and being part of NASA search and rescue team after the destruction of the Space Shuttle Columbia.  Can you give a brief account of how you ended up attending the MFA Program in Fiction at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst?  Was writing something you've always wanted to do?

NS: I have been writing ever since I was a kid, although the notion of making an academic study out of creative writing never crossed my mind until my years as an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence College. While there, I studied with extremely talented faculty, including Melvin Bukiet and Brian Morton, whose passion and excellent creative feedback inspired me to imagine a wider audience for my writing. In high school and college, my creative writing classes took the form of workshops, which heightened my awareness of the value of reading other people's work, both polished and in-process. It was the workshop model, more than anything, that made me want to study writing in a formal academic setting. I knew that I would be receiving a wide spread of feedback from careful, intelligent readers, and I knew that by reading the work of a diverse set of peers, too, I could challenge myself to undertake new creative exploration. While we all hopefully have friends and family who are willing to read and offer careful criticism of our work, it can be difficult outside the institutional setting to establish an entire community of writers who are closely involved with one another's development.

NM: Who at Amherst did you study with and why?

NS: The fiction faculty at UMass-Amherst is relatively small, and so most students have the opportunity to study with every faculty member during their time in the program. Each faculty member is obviously a different reader, and so most students welcome the variety of perspectives available. I was lucky enough to study with Chris Bachelder, a warm and generous person with deep sensitivity to each student's individual goals, before he moved to teach at the MFA program at the University of Cincinnati. The two other faculty members are Noy Holland and Sabina Murray, both of whom I have studied with, and both of whom are excellent readers and teachers. Noy has been especially helpful in encouraging ever greater scrutiny and experimentation at the level of the sentence, while Sabina has an exceptional eye for the overarching problems of structure, pacing, and point of view. I took a novel workshop with Sabina, and having the opportunity to workshop 250 pages of a longer work-in-progress, as well as reading other people's long-form fiction, gave me a chance to think about some of the elements of craft that are specific to the novel form. The program is currently undertaking a search for a third fiction faculty member in order to replace Chris Bachelder, but we have had a variety of replacements in the interim, including Sam Michel, Stanley Crawford, and Jed Berry.

NM: What sorts of opportunities and benefits does Amherst  offer their students? What opportunities in particular did you find beneficial?

NS:  As is hopefully apparent, the real appeal of an MFA has more to do with the opportunity to develop artistically in a community of peers than with any credential. The sad truth is that the job market is not great and an MFA, even from an excellent program, is unlikely to impress, except in very select and limited circles. I encourage you to think about time spent on an MFA as time to be funded while writing rather than as a means to a career. With that in mind, one of the best things UMass offers its MFA students is time. While most MFA programs are two years, the UMass program is three, which simply means more time to write. The reason for the additional year is that the MFA program has the expectation that every student will graduate with a book-length thesis, and having this expectation looming has been a great impetus to productivity. Further, the graduate programs in English Literature and Rhetoric & Composition at UMass are excellent, and as an MFA student you have full access to the entire roster of courses. In fact, with Amherst College, Mt. Holyoke College, Smith College, and Hampshire College right nearby, UMass students have access to the resources of those schools as well: the libraries, the courses, the professors, and so forth. In addition to my workshops, I have taken classes as wide-ranging as 16th Century Literature, Introductory Arabic, a Bulgakov class taught in Russian at Smith College, Literary Theory, and Modern Poetry. If you want to take a rigorous academic load, you are able to; if you prefer to keep an open schedule with minimal academic requirements so that you can devote your time to writing, you are able to do that instead. Most students, myself included, go semester by semester, planning out semesters in which we challenge ourselves to broaden our knowledge base and semesters in which we challenge ourselves to produce. There is great flexibility in this regard. Finally, the Pioneer Valley is almost defined by its colleges, and so there is no shortage of readings, guest lecturers, concerts, and events. We've recently had George Saunders, Judith Butler, Sherman Alexi, and Colm Toibin on campus, among numerous others.

NM: Would you describe the learning environment in workshop as supportive?  What did you like about the workshop structure?  What did you dislike?

NS: As I have mentioned, one of the primary advantages to the workshop structure is simply the opportunity to receive feedback from a diverse spread of readers and to expose yourself to the writing of other students who are working on projects that might differ dramatically from your own. The limitation, of course, comes once the community of readers is no longer able to surprise you-- when you feel as though you already know, going in, how people are going to assess your work. After three years in the program, I have come to the point where workshopping my writing is no longer as helpful as it once was. I am not certain, however, that this is a dislike of the format so much as a sign of its efficacy at developing us as critical readers: at this point, I feel confident that I am better able to read my work from an outside perspective and know my own habits and patterns well enough that I can discern for myself where the piece in question could benefit from revision. As for the environment, it has been universally supportive. Though my aesthetic inevitably differs from my peers', the students at UMass are generally sufficiently well-read that we are able to differentiate between stylistic divergence and incompetent writing. One great credit to the program is its emphatic lack of a competitive environment. Because styles differ so dramatically between writers, it is absurd to think that we are in direct competition. A piece that would be perfect for The New Yorker, for example, would be unlikely to appear in The Collagist, and most writers with an eye to the profession can recognize that one person's success in one niche does not diminish another's success in a different niche. I have heard of programs that enforce a particular aesthetic or that encourage students to "tear apart" one another's work. At UMass, we are much more likely to begin with the question "What is this writer attempting to do or explore in this piece? Who is s/he trying to reach, and how?" before moving to the question "How can s/he accomplish this goal more readily?"

NM: On the Amherst website it says:

Writing Program Teaching Associate positions provide a stipend of approximately $14,516.00 per year, plus tuition, fee, and health waivers, bringing the total value of an associateship to approximately $40,594 for out-of-state candidates. In addition to providing funding for up to six semesters, many candidates find the experience of teaching in the Writing Program to be of great value to their pedagogical and professional development.

NM: Did you teach while you were at Amherst?  Did you find the teaching experience beneficial?

NS: Teaching has been a fundamental part of my experience at UMass. I have taught College Writing for three years through the University's Writing Program, and in my second and third year, I have worked as a Resource Staff mentor, responsible in part for the ongoing training and development of new instructors. The most important thing to know about the teaching positions, however, is that they are not guaranteed. Many, even most, incoming MFA students are employed as instructors for the Writing Program, but the teaching application is separate from your application to the MFA Program. If you do not receive funding through the Writing Program, it is theoretically possible-- though in practice frustrating and uncertain-- to find another assistantship on campus. The teaching itself has been a pleasure: infuriating at times, of course, but overall an opportunity to develop pedagogical skills and connect with students at an early stage in their intellectual development. I found myself learning a lot through interacting with my students, many of whom neither enjoy nor are used to critical reading and analytical writing.  It is possible to become so insulated in the MFA bubble that we start to talk about writing always and everywhere using the same vocabulary and the same common assumptions; working with young adults who possess varying attitudes toward writing forces you out of those assumptions and requires that you develop new ways of talking and thinking about craft. The actual program is quite supportive of its teachers, providing an extensive orientation and ongoing training. The Writing Program also does an excellent job of allowing its teachers flexibility. There are detailed syllabi that break down the College Writing course day-by-day; databases of exercises and activities developed by former and current instructors; and opportunities to get involved in groups such as the Curriculum Committee or Diversity Committee for those who prefer to be continually engaged in their own development as teachers. On the other hand, for those who do not wish to prioritize teaching or for those who prefer to "stray from the script," the Writing Program has basic goals that it would like its classes to meet, but it allows you enormous liberties in how you elect to meet those goals. In other words, ample support is available, and you are free to take advantage of it or not. Finally, the UMass graduate employees are unionized, meaning that your medical care, compensation, and job security are all closely guarded.

NM: Can you tell me a little about Amherst in general?  Did you like living in Massachusetts?

NS: I have loved living in Northampton, about 7 miles from Amherst with easy bus connections. Although the Pioneer Valley is rural, it has a lively cultural scene for an area its size. Northampton is loaded with good, reasonably priced bars and restaurants, and there is an abundance of excellent hiking trails and other outdoor activity right nearby. Because of the influence of the five colleges in the region, people tend to be younger and well educated. I have never lived anywhere with so many bookstores! Of course, this demographic has its drawbacks as well: at times, the area can feel like a monochromatic wash of caffeine-driven graduate students, all of us with our MacBooks and craft beers and copies of The Infinite Jest, and of course the high turnover rate in the area means that people are constantly packing up and moving on, which can generate a sense of rootlessness. One thing I appreciate most about this region, however, is that I have not had a car for three years and have never felt as though I needed one. Everything in town is within walking distance, and there are several buses daily to New York and Boston. 

NM: What advice would you give to prospective students or current attendees of an MFA program?

NS: My biggest piece of advice would be to make sure that now is the right time. Some students enter graduate school because it is an easy next step; it obviates the need to hit the job market. There is nothing wrong with this, but, as I have said, an MFA is not particularly valuable in the job market, especially as more and more colleges are looking exclusively to hire PhDs, even in Creative Writing. Therefore, your motivation for entering the program should likely be that you want the time and the community. Do you really want to spend the next 2-3 years focused primarily on your writing, aware that your job prospects will likely be the same after the program as they are now? Is this a degree that wouldn't be more useful to you later on in life, after you have amassed more experience and have a clearer sense of yourself as a writer? An MFA is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity-- the chance to write without having to worry (too much) about money-- so be sure that you are in a place to derive the maximum benefit from it.

NM: My understanding is that you are continuing onto law school (Congratulations.)  Do you plan to continue writing as well?

NS: Thank you for your congratulations! Yes, I will be entering Boston University's School of Law this fall in the hope of pursuing work in international human rights. I absolutely plan to continue writing. I have found that I am more-- to use a pithy term-- "inspired" by learning about events and relationships in the realm of non-fiction than by exclusively reading fiction. Obviously, it's hard to imagine a decent writer who doesn't also love to immerse him or herself in a good novel or short story, and it's nearly impossible to develop an appreciation for the niceties of craft and style without having read broadly and voraciously. However, when I feel impelled to put pen to paper (or finger to laptop keyboard, as is more usually the case), it's because of something I've seen, experienced, or heard about in the "real" world. I'm as likely to kick back with an issue of The Economist as withThe Best American Short Fiction because my writing stems from a place of inquisitiveness and, sometimes, incredulity, about the way we as people live, communicate, and imagine. Perhaps this is my inner Marxist speaking, but I choose to write not in order to retreat into an solipsistic aesthetic realm that finds inspiration within itself but because I want to examine an external problem, question, or observation. A study of law is a study of conflict, of procedure, of interpretation (and misinterpretation), of institutions, of politics, of maneuvers, of power, and of the conjunction of theory and practice. Though I anticipate a precipitous decrease in the amount of time I can devote to writing in the upcoming years, I don't doubt that I will have more fodder than ever before!

Despite the fact that the tradition of poets performing their work aloud for an audience is not new, as poets as far back as Homer have been doing it, it still seems to be considered revolutionary by people outside the poetry community. It makes sense then that there’s a thriving species of poets who are writing today with their main priority being to read their poem aloud for an audience gathered for the very purpose of hearing poetry. This new practice is aptly called ‘spoken word,’ since, literally, it’s poetry meant to be spoken, and not just read from a book. For the poets, they’re not just reading a poem out loud, they’re performing their poem or ‘spitting a piece’ as it’s called in the most colloquial context. While, it’s not unusual for a spoken word poet to publish their work on paper or online and to encourage people to read it, they write with the intention of a vocal reading.

So how are the poems of poets who identify as spoken word poets different than those of the writers who identify as normal poets? It’s hard to tell on paper. We’ll focus on the poem, Blue Blanket, by Andrea Gibson, who has published her work in the form of books and albums, and has placed at many state, national, and international poetry slams. 

When reading Blue Blanket, a couple things stand out as they do with any poem on the page: line breaks, punctuation, and capitalization, etc. Then there’s the rhyme scheme: the poem is not controlled by a central scheme. When reading it, the lines seem to unpredictably change from free verse to rhyming then back to free verse, and even when the lines do rhyme, they don’t always rhyme in uniform ways throughout the poem. Still, the emotion in the poem comes across, through strong syntax, and uses of imagery that will stay with the reader long after the poem is read. 

However, when you listen to it, Blue Blanket seems to be a completely different poem. Gibson’s breaths fill the gaps between words where silence would have been, and bring across all the energy she performs with. The way Gibson uses her rhythm on stage is similar to her use of the rhyme scheme on paper in that it is eloquently inconsistent; her rhythm has stops and starts, building in tempo early in the poem only to pull in the reins and pause on and then repeat the word, “stop” in the first half. When she starts speaking again, her voice is softer, but you fall back into her rhythm once more as it increases, her enunciation impeccable despite the emotion remaining thick in her voice. The varying rhyme scheme, or lack thereof since the rhymes don’t seem to be scheduled, suddenly becomes the rhythm that carries the poem through changes in tempo. The internal rhymes are far more pronounced, and rhymed lines and unrhymed lines cooperate in a way that’s unpredictable. The poem is simply not the same poem on the page as it is on the stage. 

Spoken word poetry doesn’t just change how the poem is received by the audience; it also changes how the poet thinks when he or she is writing. I wrote spoken word poetry full time for two years when competing in poetry slams, and now go between both spoken word and poetry meant more for the page. From my experience, the writing process changes between the two just like the experience each gives; priorities change, and so does the method of writing. With spoken word, I start thinking about the way words sound together, how they sound alone, the weight on different syllables, and the unintentional rhymes that can happen when slang is incorporated, or the way the sound of vowels can change when they’re said with a different emphasis or speed. Words appear in the mind as sounds instead of visual pictures of letters, and phrases are like lines of music with specific beats and lilts to syllables. When writing a poem, I make something that is going to be seen with the human eye and read with the mind. Alliteration is processed by seeing the same letter among groups of words, whereas when a poem is performed, alliteration is processed by hearing the letters. Most often no one thinks of how a poem would look on the page, or how words would look written down when listening to a piece. There is the added pressure of knowing that I will likely only have one chance to make my piece have an emotional connection with the audience, therefore, my poem must gain and hold their attention; not only must I put emotion into my poem, but I must channel it correctly so that it can stay with the audience and not dissolve into noise. 

 A reader can read the poem at whatever pace they like; I naturally read poems slowly. This is, I think, the largest difference between spoken word poetry and normal poetry: when listening to a poem, the audience gives up all control they had on the poem. They must go at whatever tempo the poet takes the piece, they cannot go back and reread a line multiple times, and they cannot skip over a poem or decide to stop halfway through. In a performance, the poet fiercely owns the poem, and has control of the rhythm it takes, the emphasis on chosen words, the quickness or slowness of its tempo and any increases or decreases in said tempo; the audience is on a roller coaster and the poet is at the control panel. It can disorient an unfamiliar audience at first, but I’ve seen people cry and laugh in the same performance, literally hold their breath through parts of a poem, and scream when the poet finished as if they were at a rock concert instead of a performance.

When it comes down to it, the two methods are really just different mediums for the same art: poetry. Both focus on the intricate arrangement of words in a relatively small space to create a form of art, and both aim to communicate with an outside audience, to invoke an emotional response. I have read and listened to both, and written both to get myself through tough times. Though a poet will think about them differently when they are writing, they are still doing it as a somewhat fundamental form of self expression. That feeling of breathlessness when a poem finishes can follow both a reading and a performance, and a poet can still agonize over a single word in both. I’d encourage poets who have tried one of the two and are considering trying the other to jump in and do it. Writing with both mediums continues to impact the way I write poetry and gives me a greater variety of ideas when I’m stuck. It also opens poets up to new circles of writers to connect with and share ideas with. I was unsure about spoken word at first, and even less sure about the idea of performing, but it turned out to be the best thing I could have done for my writing. 

You can buy an MP3 Blue Blanket from Andrea Gibson's album Swarm from Amazon.

Buddy Wakefield: http://buddywakefield.com/
Kevin Coval: http://www.kevincoval.com/
Jon Sands: http://www.jonsands.com/
George Watsky: http://georgewatsky.com/
Marty McConnell: http://martyoutloud.com/

I am very pleased to welcome Cheryl Wright-Watkins back to our blog, and want to take this opportunity to thank her again for agreeing to conduct this interview about the MFA program offered at Vermont College of Fine Arts in continuation of Niche Magazine's MFA Spotlights.

NM:  What made you decide to peruse an MFA in  creative nonfiction at Vermont  College of Fine Arts after retiring?  What drew you to VCFA, and why creative nonfiction in particular? According to an article published by Seth Abramson in Poets and Writers Magazine last year, VCFA is ranked as the number one low-residency program.  Did ranking influence your decision at all?  Or did you want to study with someone in particular?

CWW:  My story is a bit unusual. I'm so fortunate to be studying at Vermont College of Fine Arts, which continues to be ranked among the top five low-residency writing programs in the country, but the ranking had little to do with my decision to apply there. I've wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember, but the schedule and stress during the twenty-five years that I worked as an air traffic controller left me with little time or energy to devote to creative work. After I retired, I attended Carol DeBoer-Langworthy's Lifewriting workshop, part of the Writers Symposium at Brown University, and she and the program director Larry Stanley encouraged me to pursue a creative writing MFA. While working with Carol, I recognized that I was most interested in writing creative nonfiction. The low-residency option was the best fit for my life, and Carol suggested that I apply to VCFA, which had recently absorbed her alma mater, Union College. I called to request an application packet, returned home, and spent several days completing the required creative and critical work. Two weeks after I sent the application, the program director called to tell me that I'd been accepted. The next day, Sue William Silverman, a core faculty member at VCFA in creative nonfiction, whose memoirs I had read and admired, sent me an email to welcome me to VCFA. Every member of the faculty is a respected, published writer in the genre in which he/she teaches. I've been in workshops led by Sue William Silverman and Connie May Fowler, Patrick Madden and Douglas Glover (praised in the WSJ a few days ago as a "master of narrative structure"), and Robert Vivian.  Abby Frucht and Patrick Madden were my first two semester advisors, and Connie May Fowler is my current advisor.

NM: One of my former teachers, in addition to teaching at UIUC, also teaches at Vermont College of Fine Arts.  I remember him mentioning that in a VCFA Workshop he encounters people who had many experiences, careers, traveled through many lives and continents, before deciding to peruse an MFA.  What sorts of people have you encountered in workshop?  What's the environment at VCFA like?

CWW:  I have met talented and wonderful people from many varied backgrounds. Several of my VCFA friends have published in journals, and some have published award-winning books. Two of them teach English to students in South Korea. One lives in Australia. One spent four years volunteering with the Peace Corps. 

In the workshops that I've attended, the student whose work is being discussed begins by reading aloud a paragraph or passage from the piece, then each member of the group responds in round-robin fashion, and the writer is given the last few minutes of the session to ask questions or respond to the comments. This system seems to encourage maximum participation and affirm the value of each person's input. Most people come to workshop prepared to accept honest critique of the work, which is usually presented in an encouraging, positive manner, and understand that the criticism is not personal but is intended to help the writer improve his/her writing. 

Another aspect of the atmosphere at VCFA is the sense of community that inevitably develops during the ten-day residencies during which we live in two-person dorm rooms on campus, share meals in the cafeteria, attend workshops, lectures, and readings together. Also contributing to the communal atmosphere are, during the summer residencies, special July 4th events including a faculty and student softball game, a catered barbecue and picnic, a crafts fair, and a talent show, and during the winter residencies, a talent show and an auction. On New Year's Eve, after the city parade downtown, members of the community gather with VCFA students on the quad outside College Hall to light and release 300 paper Thai lanterns, another event that fosters community among the students as well as interaction with the people of Montpelier.

NM: What sorts of opportunities, benefits, and resources does VCFA offer their students, and what opportunities in particular do you find beneficial? 

Each residency features two or three special workshops, and students are offered the opportunity to volunteer for these several weeks before the residency begins. My first workshop included both fiction and CNF writers and was led by one faculty member from each genre. My second workshop included only CNF writers with a focus on writing memoir. Last residency, I participated in a special workshop on the Meditative Essay, which was led by two faculty members who are both widely published essayists.

In addition to the special workshops, students may volunteer to attend small-group sessions with a distinguished visiting writer. Memoirist Patricia Hampl was one of several visiting writers during the most recent residency, and she met twice with small groups of creative nonfiction writers and offered suggestions on each student's creative work. 

VCFA's extensive library is an invaluable resource. Each student is given a user name and password and access to its online publications. The library will mail books from its own collection or from another library with which it shares resources. 

Students are encouraged to sign up to read aloud from their own work at student readings, which are held on several evenings during each residency. These readings are a great opportunity to practice reading in front of an audience, a requirement for each graduating student. 

VCFA students may apply for a dual-genre or translation MFA, which require an additional semester. The program offers a postgraduate conference and the opportunity to attend a postgraduate residency as a graduate assistant. Students may opt to attend winter residency in Puerto Rico or summer residency in Slovenia. 

One of the most interesting aspects of life at VCFA to me is the networking that the environment enables. A few months ago, I read on Facebook a review that one of my classmates had published in Hunger Mountain, the VCFA literary journal, on Brian Doyle's essay "Joyas Voladoras," which sent me looking for more of Doyle's work. I mentioned Doyle to my advisor Patrick Madden and learned that the two men are good friends. As a result of that connection, Doyle has agreed to an interview, which I will include as part of my critical thesis. 

NM:  Does VCFA offer instruction, venues, or help/encourage their students to seek out opportunities for publication?

CWW:  My advisor last semester required his students to submit, along with a critical essay and twenty pages of original work, a book review with each monthly packet, and he challenged each of us to publish at least one book review during the semester. He encouraged me to find a journal to publish the first book review that I sent to him, and I found Niche, met you (online), and, after some revisions, you published the review. I then sent a review to NewPages.com, and the editor asked me to write monthly reviews for the site, which I have been doing for several months now. The same advisor sent me a list of journals to which to submit an essay that I wrote a few months ago, which he believes is ready for publication.

During each residency, faculty and staff members conduct an informal discussion and question and answer session about "Life after the MFA," during which they suggest opportunities such as grants, fellowships, retreats, developing a support network, publishing, finding an agent. 

The editor of VCFA's literary magazine, Hunger Mountain, led a two-hour workshop on publishing during this past residency. She suggested resources for selecting journals for publication, recommended developing a submissions plan, and demonstrated her personal submissions tracking system.

The VCFA website announces every publication, award, and accomplishment of every student and faculty member, which fosters the sense of community and support. When I told the assistant director about this interview, she was delighted and asked me to please let her know when she and the staff could read it.

NM: What was one or two things that surprised you about VCFA? Or the Workshop experience in general?

CWW: I have been surprised, and a little awed, by the talent and work of every VCFA faculty member. I'm constantly inspired by the devotion that each of the instructors feels for VCFA. Most of them earn their livings by teaching full time at other facilities, but they come to VCFA during breaks from their other jobs to feed their creative spirits and enjoy the tight-knit sense of community. 

I didn't expect to form friendships with my instructors, but I enjoy a personal connection  with each one with whom I've studied. I don't think that is common in most places, but these friendships seem to flourish at VCFA. 

I've been impressed with the time and energy that my fellow workshop members have devoted to each other's submissions. Each time, I have gotten detailed comments, suggestions, and personal notes on my work from the instructors and the other students. All of my instructors have built teaching moments into the workshops, and I've been impressed by their preparedness for these opportunities.

NM: I know that each teacher has their own unique way of running Workshops, but is there a unifying method or philosophy of teaching that all the teachers at VCFA ascribe to?  For example, Columbia College in Chicago has something called "The Story Workshop Method."  Does VCFA have something like that?

CWW: All VCFA workshops are held simultaneously for 2 1/2 hours each session, and one hour is devoted to each student's work. Otherwise, the workshop leaders decide on how the workshop will run and how they will fill any "extra" time. Prior to the most recent residency, the instructors of the Meditative Essay workshop sent the participants a prerequisite reading list of several examples of the form, and we discussed them at the beginning of each session.

NM:  What advice would you give to those who want to apply, or are currently attending a program now?

CWW: I would recommend that prospective students first visit VCFA's website, which contains a wealth of information about how the program works, degree options, and the facilities. If possible, I'd recommend a visit to the campus. The VCFA website has information about an upcoming open house in March. Most students and graduates would be happy to talk about the program with prospective students as well. 

When Katya first started Niche, I already had plans to go abroad. No one could talk me out of leaving the United States to pursue a (possible) career abroad. Friends that possessed the same passion for writing told me that my time abroad would definitely influence my writing. I couldn’t disagree. I studied abroad in Beijing, China for six months during my junior year of college. My style changed. Where I used to use a very strong, English voice, I replaced with a hint of that gentle, almost passive-aggressive, Asian quality. My stories that were usually placed in America made their travels abroad and began to form in my extended family’s outhouse, eventually branching out into the vast countryside riddled with China’s turbulent and troubled recent history.

I graduated exuberant. 

I arrived in Thailand having transferred from the McCarren Airport in Vegas to Vancouver to Manila and then to Bangkok.  I wrote when I wasn’t eating or sleeping on the plane. A blast of humid air greeted me when I landed and nerves bubbled up in my throat.  I felt like I wanted to heave my recently ingested airplane food onto the scuffed tiles of Bangkok Airport. When I found out my organization didn’t plan on picking any more of us up at the airport until 4pm, I had half a mind to get back on the plane and fly home.  It was 1pm. Desperate, homesick, tired, with the thought of being stuck in a completely foreign country for the next 10 months looming over my head, I shook off the frustrated tears and headed to the taxi stand.

Thailand is – appropriately – dubbed the "Land of Smiles". The sweetest, smiling taxi driver greeted me. Rising floodwaters threatened Bangkok, and he told me that there was a possibility that we might hit floodwaters, but, he reassured me, he would drive right back to the airport to grab the van instead. Relieved that my first encounter with a Thai person was simple and friendly, I sat in the taxi, clutching my bags close to my chest. Our trip was uneventful, and I learned some Thai.

Fast forward a week, and I was overwhelmed. 450 of them. 450 9th graders. 450. I walked into my first class, possibilities of disaster sinking into my chest, and saw more than 50. (It was later confirmed when I asked for the roster that I have around 50-55 students per class.) The students weren’t as I imagined. They weren’t obedient; they were loud; they had no idea what I was saying. I wanted to go home.

At first, it was difficult to determine my students’ understanding of English, to slow down when I speak, to Keep It Simple, Stupid, to accept the differences in educational value and priorities. My first expectation was that Thai students (in general terms, Asian students) were studious, quiet, and respectful. Not quite true. What the school finds most important is keeping up appearances, rather than making sure their students are educated. I haven’t seen my Monday classes in five weeks. (Six next week!) Classes are 50 minutes long—there is no break in between classes, so the day’s schedule is out of whack, especially if the students have to change classrooms. There were times I'd struggle to keep my spirits up, and writing became too much of a rant-object for me to enjoy, develop, and grow as it should in a place of complete foreignness to me.

The beautiful thing about being in a foreign country and being thrown obstacle after obstacle is that eventually you  turn back to writing just to write. To write and forget, and in turn, accept. It’s no longer something I use to vent into my diary—it simply took a while for my writing to adopt and form according to my surroundings, just as I had to physically. As I had to experiment with language when it comes to communicating with my students who have never had a native speaker as their teacher before, my use of language became less hinged in conventional English, but a mix between native English and foreign English. I never thought that my writing would take shape that way because I was such an advocate for proper English grammar. My stories, too, have taken a different shape—I’ve started experimenting with stories regarding the relationship between people and their monarchy, and people with foreign people.

These new experiences sculpt new perspectives on human relations, on life, on writing. Living allows for more stories. Mine came out while I was teaching in a foreign country. Where will your stories emerge?

NM: How many programs did you apply to and what ultimately drew you to DePaul's writing and publishing program? 

CS:  I applied to two programs.  Honestly, DePaul wasn’t my first choice, and when I was rejected from the other school I was a little disappointed. I thought the other school was where I would find my fit, but it worked out for the best that I was accepted by DePaul. I applied to both programs because they both had writing programs that offered many different genres to try. I think the other school offered slightly more theater writing classes and that was what I found attractive about them. DePaul does have a diverse program of classes to choose from and I spent most of my time in workshop classes. Shortly after I started at DePaul I realized that [it was] an excellent school and I found it to be a great fit for me. 

NM: What was the other program you applied to?

CS: I applied to Roosevelt University for their MFA program. 

NM:  And was theater writing the kind of writing you were primarily interested in?

CS:  I wasn't primarily interested in theater writing, I thought it would be an interesting challenge and something new to experience. That curiosity was filled by my time spent at the Second City training center. 

NM: Did funding or ranking play a significant role in your choice?

CS:  I didn’t look at rankings at all. I looked at the specific program and took into consideration location more than anyone else’s ranking of the school itself. I knew that being apart of the Master’s program would put me in a small part of the overall university and it seemed to me that more focus is put into getting undergraduates to go to the school by the rankings than graduate or PhD students. 

By funding if you mean cost then that didn’t play a huge factor. I knew that I would need to take out loans to be able to attend either school. I believe both schools were similarly priced. 

NM:  How are DePaul's writing workshops run?   How would you describe the workshop atmosphere?

CS: Each instructor had a different way of leading workshops. Some had strict page counts, others requested that you type notes to the authors, and others used an online message board system.

I was one of those students who took multiple classes from the same instructors. I like being familiar with my teachers and in the workshop setting it helped me to be more open in class when I was reviewing the work of others because I knew what was expected.  In most of the workshops students would write two or three pieces to be workshopped during the ten week quarter. This would involve writing a piece, printing out copies for each student and the professor, and giving those to the class a week before the workshop date.

This got kind of stressful if you chose to do workshop early in the quarter, and there was no way around this, some students always had to go first. I participated in both early and later workshop dates, and there are advantages and disadvantages to both. 

Going first meant that you had to have a story written by week three usually, which gave you two weeks to write an 8-12 page story. In the beginning I didn’t think this was a huge page count, especially double spaced, but crafting a story that actually worked in that page count was hard. Sometimes getting to the minimum page count proved challenging and those last two pages were clearly thrown in last minute, but there wasn’t really time to fix this before workshop. 

If you waited and did your workshops later you were cutting it close when it came to revise for the final portfolio that was due at the end of the quarter. 

Workshops were discussion based and we were encouraged to speak critically about the pieces in a constructive way. We also offered reading suggestions that might help the author see technique that they could use for their story.  Most workshops ran pretty well.  If we ran short on time, or had to move to another story to get through all the others, the written comments were there to give us feedback. 

NM: Who was your primary instructor, and what drew you to his/or her method of teaching?

CS: I had several classes with Christine Sneed, author of Portraits of a Few of the People I've Made Cry, the Grace Paley prize winner in short fiction at AWP for 2009. 

She was very good about workshopping pieces in a fair way that allowed everyone to be a part of the discussion. She was always encouraging us to put in the time on our drafts so they were as good as they could be when we did have workshop. She assigned readings that included short story collections that we could use to really see how the technical parts of writing worked, so that we could use those technical skills in our own writing.  I think she has a very honest take on the profession, and she was always stressing that it was a life long journey that would take persistence and drive. 

NM:  Is there anything you would change about your MA experience? 

CS: I don’t think I would change my experiences surrounding my Master’s program. 

NM:  What did you like about DePaul's program?  What did you dislike?

CS:  I liked that the professors are all published authors. That was helpful as both a teaching aid and real world example of the writing and publishing process. It was inspiring to hear about a professor working on a new project or being published somewhere. There’s a sense that if they can do it with families and full time teaching jobs, then I could do it also.  

One professor would always tell us that it wasn’t going to be a quick journey and I think that was the most helpful real world advice I received. It gave me the freedom to breath a little when things weren’t happening as fast as I thought they should. It’s hard to remember sometimes that creating takes time especially when it seems we live in a world where people are throwing things online faster than the audience can keep up with it all. 

The students were all very serious about their craft. I felt like I was in a class with others who really wanted to pursue this as a profession. It was always intimidating when someone wrote something that was really good, and it made me want to work harder on my drafts. 

I think I disliked that it was a quarter system where classes were only ten weeks long. It sometimes felt like we were moving too quickly to really appreciate it all and to really absorb all that we were trying to learn. I know one downfall to this system is that there isn’t really time to work on pieces from class to class. Because students can start in any quarter, and genres are different from class to class, it’s hard to focus on the technique of revision in the way that it might have needed.   

NM:  By the end of DePaul’s program, did you feel like you had pieces that were polished enough to send out for publication?

I felt that I had a lot of pieces that were in good places for revision. Because we had to take so many classes to graduate there was only one offering that really focused on revision as a class. In that class we revised two pieces, but I'm still working on them. There is one piece that I wrote in the program that I have sent out, but it was the product of almost a year of revision. 

NM:  Is there any other advice you would like to give to prospective MA/MFA candidates or current attendees? 

I’ve always been told about the MFA that you should only do it if you are financially able, and that it’s okay to wait. I think this is sound advice; I’m waiting to pursue an MFA until I have some of my large school debt paid down. If you can get the MFA paid for by an institution all the better! 

I went for my Masters of Art a year after graduating with my Bachelor’s of Art because I knew that the program would strengthen me as a writer. Moving to a new city and really becoming self dependent while getting the Master’s has taught me a lot, too. I’m not saying you need to move across the country or to a big city, but I think if you feel like a change can help you creatively and personally, then getting the Masters degree or MFA in a place that is out of your comfort zone might be a good idea. 

NM:  When you applied to programs, how did you go about putting together a writing sample?

CS: When applying to the two Master’s programs I chose I went through my old writing from undergrad and worked on editing some of that to be included in my portfolio. I also used some from a class that I really enjoyed in poetry that was an advanced writing course from my senior year. 

I think I may have written a couple of new pieces in order to use all of the skills I had learned in the past four years to feel like I was giving them my best work. 

NM:  Do you find it hard to write now that you've lost the support of a workshop setting? How do you motivate yourself to keep writing?

CS: I do find it hard to write sometimes. I think writing full pieces has become a little more difficult without the academic deadline. They may have been all over the place, but I had something written every few weeks, and a few pieces started every two months that I could go back to and revise while in the program. 

I like to find contests to submit to. I think submishmash on twitter is great about posting information about new literary journals and contests that are currently running. Poets and Writers has a great list as well. 

Page counts are a great daily motivator for me. I like writing two or three pages each day. Notes, scenes, dialogue, outlines, essays. I feel like I’m getting something done.

I also find it helpful to hand write a to-do list and cross the items off as I finish them so I can see my progress for that day. I feel bad about myself if these tasks are still waiting for me after a week or two of being on my list. Some of the tasks are very specific longer term goals like, “write a first draft of essay by October 1st.” Some tasks are more general that can be accomplished in a day like, “write one page of notes for that short play.” I tend to have a few projects started at any one time so I can jump back and forth so I don’t get too burned out on any one. 

Finally, I’d like to encourage you to research and pursue programs that you might be interested in. There’s something really good for the soul about following your dreams. I’ve met amazing people in my master’s writing program who support me and understand what I’m going through on a professional level. There’s a strong community to be found from a writers program.