Monday, March 26, 2018

Follow your dreams to Newport with me

I am so excited about being asked to be the director of a new low residency MFA program at Salve Regina University in beautiful Newport RI. If you aren’t familiar with low residency programs, let me explain why I think they are a brilliant way to fulfill your dream of writing that memoir or novel, poetry or short story collection, or historical novel. Unlike traditional MFA programs that require you to uproot your family, quit your job, relocate for two or three years, low residency programs allow you to live where you live and work where you work. Instead packing off to Iowa or NYC, you come to campus for a week in June and a week in January. During those residencies you get the benefits of a writing community full of students like you, our fantastic faculty, and lectures and readings by our guest writers like Tom Perrotta and Alice Hoffman. Your work will be read and discussed in a small workshop led by one of the faculty. You’ll hear craft talks and eat dinner with all of your teachers. And at the end of the week you will go home, inspired and ready to spend the next six months reading and writing under the mentor ship of one of the faculty. This model is a dream for teachers, parents, career people, or anyone who can’t stop their life for a few years. Low residency MFAs are for people who want to write and need the flexibility the program provides. And an added bonus—we offer an optional semester in exciting Havana. I’ve taught at several of these and helped create the Newport MFA with the best of the best in mind. Is it time for you to follow your dream?
http://www.salve.edu/graduate-studies-and-continuing-education/newport-mfa-creative-writing