Reasons Why Not All MFA Horror Stories are True: WVU’s MFA Class of 2012
by Rebecca Thomas

When I started the MFA program almost two years ago, I was scared. I had heard horror stories about MFA programs: the people were mean, snooty, back-stabbers. I was told that everyone thought very highly of themselves. Then, I went to the Meet-and-Greet at Kelly Sundberg’s house and realized that my fears were for nothing. These people were lovely. I went to workshop and marveled not only at how wonderful their writing was, but also how generous everyone was with their feedback. I have had the pleasure of workshopping with each of the Third Years, and I loved reading their work, getting to know their voices, and valued their feedback on my own work. Now, as the semester is coming to an end, I’m starting to have to come to terms with a life sans these fine Third Years in workshop. It seems unimaginable, and it’s enough to send me spiraling into gym shorts and bags of Chex Mix, but then I remember their writing, I remember their theses, and I remember that I’ll still get to keep on reading their work when it inevitably gets published. Thank you marvelous Third Years for your warmth, generosity, and everything that you have brought (and still bring) to WVU’s MFA program.

Please join us on Thursday, April 26, at 7:30 in the Rhododendron Room in the Mountainlair. Our wonderful Third Years will read from their thesis and get hooded. There will even be refreshments, too.

Poetry

Lisa Beans
Lisa Beans knows that whatever her future holds (possibly teaching, possibly living in Poland—she’s a Fulbright finalist!), she will write poems. (Update: Lisa wont he Fulbright. She will be traveling to Poland this fall to read, write, and teach for a year!) Wherever she ends up, she will miss all of her peers, past and present, at WVU who have become her best friends. She counts “getting a cat and caring for its life [and] learning how to write poems” as two of her biggest accomplishments here. One of her favorite memories was at the beginning of this year. She said, “we had a reading on the rooftop deck of Hotel Morgan. It was warm, but not hot. The sun set as we read. We could see all of Morgantown. Beautiful.” It’s that beauty of Morgantown that she advises future MFA students to be aware of among other things. She tells them to “Pursue friendships. Cherish writing. Look outside a lot.”
Read about Lisa more in depth in her student spotlight.

Micah Holmes
Micah’s future involves accents and probably a lot of tea. He says that he has “accepted an offer?to study Medieval Lit at King’s College London, so as long as everything goes according to plan, [he’ll] be taking a second master’s from an awesome English college.” As awesome as a future at King’s College is, it’ll be hard to top the wonderment of workshop. One of Micah’s favorite memories is in his “first workshop when Mary Ann asked [everyone] to bring in some other type of media that [they] wanted to write ‘like.’ Aaron Rote brought in this little recording device that he used to record the things [they] said during workshop. Then he did some crazy loop thing with the audio and mixed it all together. The machine (whatever it was, it all sounds more mystical now) had lights on it, so [they] turned off the lights and let it light up the room with color. How many classes do something like that?” he asked. He admits that he will miss his “extended MFA family. Everyone here has been amazing,” he said. He counts his biggest accomplishment as being “a poet, like for real, not just a cat that writes every once in a while. [He] feels really connected to [his] work, and that wouldn’t have happened if [he] didn’t spend the time here.” His advice for future MFAs: “try to get to know everyone in the department and to stick close to your classmates. We have a tight knit program here and its one of our biggest strengths. Most importantly though, enjoy it!”

Matt London
Matt London’s future plans are more of school and also the pretty big step of marriage. One of Matt’s favorite memories is “seeing one of [his] favorite books on his office mate’s desk the first day [he] arrived. It was a good omen.” Reading is definitely one of the things that Matt holds most important. When he leaves here, Matt admits that he will probably “troll the WVU Bookstore for the reading lists the professors assign.” Matt says that his biggest accomplishment is “getting out of [his] own way” in writing. One of his favorite pieces that he workshopped was ” ‘All they left was a phone book’—it was the time [he] wanted to achieve a certain experience in a poem and the class had just that. It was that moment where all this (writing, reading, endeavoring) clicked and something said ‘Hey, you might be doing the right thing here.’”

His advice for future MFAs: “Find who reads your work the best and pay extra special attention to that person’s critiques of your writing. And, likewise, in workshop, it’s tough to be an expert on every person’s work. So be a leader in the field of one piece: find one piece that in that week’s reading for which you can really give sound critiques. Lastly, find out what everyone is reading, write down those books and authors, and go check them out. My library has expanded at an exponential rate over the 3 years I’ve been here.”

Fiction

Justin Anderson
While Justin Anderson might not be entirely certain about what his future holds (“university teaching jobs aren’t exactly falling into [his] lap right now”), he does know that he’ll “be trying like crazy to get [his] collection ( Gardeners ) published and writing new stories.” He would like to “try to buy a house with some land and maybe get a second car. Sort of get situated somewhere. Take a stand.”

Justin will miss the workshops here at WVU. He said, “the dynamics of these things are absolutely remarkable. Little microcosms of society.” In fact, his favorite memory is “probably the first time [he] got graduate-level feedback on work. That was really something. Extremely humbling and encouraging all at the same time. It’s always been a good experience since, but that first time [he’ll] not forget. [He] came home and read the comments over and over with delight.” His biggest accomplishment also ties into workshop. He said that “after three years, he finally wrote a story [“The Cosmological Constant”] that Mark didn’t think needed [to be] changed. That was a big one. Mark’s a sharp, honest critic.” That story ended up being his favorite piece that he workshopped. He says that the “story came together in an almost divine way. It grew out of this note jotted down in [his] journal: ‘Possible title? ‘Cosmological Constant.’’ And though the writing came fast, it’s one of the longest, most nuanced stories [he has] written. For [him], it sort of stands as the watermark of where [he] made it to as a writer during [his] time here. Nobody seems to want to publish it, though. But that’s nothing extraordinary.” I have a feeling it will only be a matter of time before we see the story in print. I was in that workshop; it’s good.

His advice for future MFAs: “Be humble. Be open. Listen to what people say about your work and listen to what they say about how and why they write. Listen and think about it, even if you don’t agree with it. You don’t have to agree with everything. Read widely. Don’t fall into research rut. Don’t come in to the program with a chip on your shoulder. There’s the danger that it’s glued on there too tight and won’t get knocked off somewhere along the line, no matter how badly it needs [to be] knocked off. And that is not good for a writer; retaining the chip.
“If you’re not already sure your work is problematic (it’s called “the artist’s reward”), then why join an MFA program? I mean, you already know it all, right? Great. Go forth and spin gold.”

Read more about Justin Anderson in his student spotlight.

Justin Crawford
Justin Crawford knows that in the immediate future he’s going to enjoy and “relish” the accomplishment of being an MFA. He also knows that he will be sending out his work as much as possible. He says that one of his favorite memories here is his first meet and greet: “It was at Elissa Hoffman’s old place out [in] Woodburn, and though I’d already lived in Morgantown for four years by then, it felt like a whole new town[.] It was a warm summer day, and people gathered in the house, on the porch, and in chairs in the lawn, most people drank the heat away. Children played. Bees got into everything. I was there with my wife, Jessica, and some familiar faces, but I didn’t know most of the people. But it didn’t matter. Everyone talked to one another, everyone was very welcoming. It was discovery. It was like I found some secret world that had always been there, but I had just recently got my invitation and I belonged.” He says that he will miss the people the most when he leaves WVU. “I’ve met so many extraordinary people during my stay: faculty, guest speakers, employees of WVU, colleagues, friends and family of colleagues, and just total strangers,” he said. He says that he enjoys the process of submitting work, and that he’s been riding high on his two publications, “Converge” in Inwood Indiana and “Death and Progeny” in The Meadow.

His advice for future MFAs is to “get out of Morgantown as much as possible. Take drives out Preston County. Go hiking at Coopers Rock or Dolly Sods. Go swimming at Tygart Lake in Grafton. Go eat pulled pork sandwiches at Big Mike’s in Smithfield, PA, or go eat pie and ice cream at Apple Annie’s in Point Marion, PA. Make yourself some Appalachian friends and travel far and wide, rural and populated. Get away from the routine that you’ll cling to as a first year because the stories, essays, and poems you’re trying to cultivate will not happen in your apartment or office. They sure won’t come from your students, and your colleagues and faculty are keeping their stories for themselves. Plus, Morgantown is a much better place when you leave it for a while.”

Rachel King
In the future, Rachel King will either be an editor or a bartender, and she will definitely write. Rachel had a hard time narrowing down a favorite memory here at WVU, but she said that a few of her favorites are: “stumbling upon The Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics while shelving books in the Wise library at 1 am, being trapped at a truck stop in Hancock on New Year’s Day, giving Kevin [Oderman] advice on the best places to retire in Oregon.” Like many people that have lived in Morgantown, Rachel will most miss the “pepperoni rolls, eggs from the co-op, distinctive light tones that occur when sunlight encounters West Virginia’s hills.” While here, Rachel was able to successfully rewrite a short novel for her thesis. She counts this as her biggest accomplishment. Her advice for future MFAs is to “write stories you want to read. Listen to readers who get what you’re trying to do. Utilize your professors’ knowledge. Find a lifetime friend or two among other MFAers.”

Read more about Rachel King in her student spotlight.

Nonfiction

Elissa Hoffman
Elissa Hoffman says that her future is “To keep writing!” She says that she will “Write and write and write. And read and travel a bit and live life—so [she] can write some more.” She says that she will miss “the rapt look on Kevin Oderman’s face when he likes an essay written by one of us.” Besides Kevin’s facial features, Elissa will also miss “the camaraderie of being in class with the writers and professors in the program, and the great feedback [she] always got from them.” She is proud that she has been able “to write from the inside, not the outside, to write from within a thinking trance, where all levels of consciousness are operating, and [she] really [has] no idea beforehand what’s going to fly out of [her] mind and into words.”

Her advice for future MFAs: “Take as many classes as you can, an interesting variety. Make lots of friends in the program. Don’t be afraid to write the hard things—those are what readers are most interested in, most touched by. Value your experiences, mine them for what they really say about you, and use it all in your writing.”

Kelly Sundberg
Kelly Sundberg’s future is writing. She said, “after finishing my MFA, I plan on revising my thesis further if needed, then submitting it to agents and book contests. I’d also like to push myself to write in different forms than I already have. I’m interested in writing more lyrical essays and incorporating more research. Finally, I’d like to try and attend conferences and writer’s workshops as a way of continuing the work I’ve done here.” One of the things that she will miss about WVU is actually her office, Colson 309. She admits that it “sounds cheesy,” but she’s had fabulous office mates that have shared conversation, coffee, food, plants, and writing. Of course, she’ll miss the community besides just Colson 309. She said, “WVU has a very warmhearted program—both the faculty and students—and we support each other a lot. It’s going to be hard to leave that.”

Her biggest accomplishment here was when she collected her collection of linked essays into one big undefined116122.undefined116123.undefined116124.undefined116731.undefined213152.document and realized that “someone might actually want to read this.” She says that “the amount of growth in my writing from when I started the program to now is immeasurable.” She counts her favorite piece that she’s workshopped as part of that growth. Her essay, “Demolition” was “a breakthrough essay, because that’s when [she] began understanding how to conceive of structure. Kevin [Oderman], [her] thesis director, often compliments [her] on [her] ability to conceptualize an essay, and [she] think that’s something he has taught [her] here. With nonfiction, once you conceptualize the piece, it feels like the rest comes organically.”

Her advice for future MFAs: “Start trying to publish your first year in the program. Don’t go crazy, and don’t submit before you think a story is ready, but we’re in this program to become publishable writers, and you’ll never know if you’re publishable if you’re too scared to send your work out. Rejection hurts, but it can also show you where you need to improve and put in that extra work. Getting a rejection is great motivation to revise, and getting an acceptance is an affirmation of the work you’ve been doing.”

Read more about Kelly Sundberg in her student spotlight.