Why did you choose your MFA program?

Full funding, cross-genre experimentation, teaching opportunities, multi-genre queer and female BIPOC faculty and alumni, and a small program size!

When you were applying to MFAs, how many programs did you apply to and did you have any sort of an application strategy?

My initial strategy was to read The Creative Writing MFA Handbook by Tom Kealey, audibly groan at the recurring practical advice that I take the GRE (which, at the time, many MFA programs still required as part of the application), complain to my friends that I not only did not want to take the GRE but also would not take the GRE—and whittle down my initial list to 10 schools, mostly in cities on the east coast, that explicitly did not require the GRE.

Once that was sorted, The Creative Writing Handbook helped me figure out how to manage my time before the application deadline, figure out who to ask for recommendation letters (and how), and make a budget (because application fees are expensive—one of many reasons why I was anti-GRE). I took a 3-hour workshop at Grub Street (a community writing center in Boston) on how to write a personal statement specifically for the MFA (which, 7 years later, I now periodically teach!), and I went to my university’s writing center for feedback on my initial drafts. I also reached out to my undergraduate creative writing teachers for feedback on my school lists as well as on my creative writing sample.

After I got my acceptances, I chose the program that offered me the most financial support. I was very lucky that it also checked off many other items on my wish list for a school.

Was there something you wish were different about your program or time while you were there? If you were running that program, what would you have added/removed/amended?

During my time at Virginia Tech, I was considered a full-time student and a part-time teacher. It was a really heavy workload. Most semesters I taught two classes in exchange for tuition remission and a stipend.

Unlike other graduate students in other departments who, as teaching assistants, assisted a lead teacher with the leader teacher’s class, students in the English department were instructors of record: this meant that we were teaching our own classes on our own.

We were in charge of lesson planning, teaching, grading, office hours, email communications, and administrative tasks. We were told to keep our teaching obligations to 20 hours/week, but this was never realistic. Especially in my first semesters teaching, I spent on average 30 hours/week on teaching, which meant that some weeks I was spending 40 hours on teaching. I felt angry that our teaching mentors responded to our obvious burnout with suggestions for “better time management.” I also internalized that I was not working efficiently enough.

Capitalism sucks. Universities are exploitative. Working that many hours was very unhealthy. My understanding is that the assistantships at Virginia Tech are a LOT more reasonable now, but a lot of MFA programs still require students to take on an unrealistic teaching load to pay for their tuition and stipend. If you are accepted into a program that requires work-study of any kind, make sure that you ask current students about their sleep, mental health, and free time—in addition to asking about how they’re balancing work and classes.

How did you choose your advisory/mentor? Did that choice change over time. If so, why?

Our program assigned each of us a temporary advisor for our first semester. Knowing that during our second semester, we would submit requests for who would serve on our thesis committee, I took classes with different faculty members and showed up to office hours to get a sense of their aesthetic preferences, feedback style, and personality. I made a guess at which faculty member I’d feel the least embarrassed crying in front of as well as who would be the most likely to keep in touch after graduation and remember to submit a recommendation letter on time on my behalf.

I was lucky to be in a position where I felt like I couldn’t make a wrong choice. I ultimately asked Carmen Giménez to head my thesis committee because she was a cross-genre writer and, by the end of my first year, I’d realized that I loved writing creative nonfiction as much as I loved writing poetry. I was writing about my experiences as a queer woman of color, and I was excited to work with someone whose writing interests aligned with my own. I also thought I had a lot to learn from Carmen’s background as an independent publisher.

What was the highlight of the program? Something you remember the most, or that left the greatest impact on you.

I forever will gush about how grateful I am to have met Sarah Hansen on the first day of the MFA. She is still the first reader of my work. Go read her poems.

How did you manage money during your MFA? What about immediately afterwards? Was there support?

I didn’t leave the MFA with savings, but I also didn’t leave with debt. I intentionally chose a fully-funded program in a location with an affordable cost of living (compared to where I’d lived grown up at least). I lived with another student in the program, and I walked or took the bus to class instead of parking on campus. It certainly helped that I didn’t eat out and that I didn't drink alcohol; I cooked all my meals and shamelessly hogged the freezer space.

After I realized how expensive the nearby regional airport was, I got used to driving from southwestern Virginia to central Massachusetts instead of flying. Since Virginia Tech charged out-of-state students higher fees (alas, tuition remission did not extend to fees), I did the paperwork to become an in-state resident. I tutored and did occasional side gigs here and there. All that being said, I also came into the MFA straight out of an undergraduate program that I had managed to afford mostly on scholarship.

What the scholarship didn’t cover, my parents could and, what my parents couldn’t cover, I did through part-time work. I came into the MFA with some savings and, while I did not seek financial support from my family, I knew that if I reached out, they could help me. I had no dependents, and I did not have significant health costs to factor in. After the MFA? I graduated in 2020 right into the pandemic job market. Yikes!

Okay, serious question: how much writing did you actually get done during the program?

A LOT. My MFA thesis was the seed of three full-length manuscripts that are now in varying stages of progress.

Design your ideal creative writing program. Imagine you have all the resources and support in the world. What will this look like?

Let’s start here: free housing, food, healthcare, and education.

And then? After graduation, I felt especially unprepared to navigate the business of living a writerly life. I’d love to design an MFA program with a ROBUST workshop series on cultivating sustainable writing practices after graduation. This would include submitting to  literary journals, applying for arts funding, developing a financial plan as an artist (and business plan! Because as soon as you have a “profit motive” as an artist, the IRS considers you a small business owner. Congrats!), filing taxes as an artist, building literary communities, finding agents and securing book deals (& negotiating!), considering nontraditional publishers and self-publishing, understanding publishing contracts, marketing oneself as a writer on social media, creating a newsletter (and developing a readership), networking (for people who hate networking), deciding where to relocate (based on arts funding, state social safety net programs, and community), pursuing traditional AND nontraditional career paths (including self-employment)…

God, the list goes on. I’ve spent the past few years as a writer (and writing coach) educating myself (and others) about these topics, and I wish I had access to comprehensible business resources (and mentors) when I was an MFA student. This is expertise professional writers need to develop in order to live their healthiest writing lives, in my opinion.

And, if you are an MFA program director who wants to collaborate on a workshop series? Let’s chat!

What were your goals and ambitions before you applied? How did they evolve during the program? Where are things at now?

Before I applied for the MFA, I thought I’d leave the program with a finished, publishable poetry manuscript. (I already had a project idea fully formed!) I also thought I would continue onward to a PhD immediately. I wanted to do a PhD because I wanted more time to write and because I wanted to teach creative writing at the university level eventually.

During the program, I quickly realized that I was more interested in using the creative space the MFA cultivated to play and try and fail and try instead of gripping onto a preconceived notion of how I was supposed to use my time. I wrote not only a lot of poetry but also a lot of stories and essays and multigenre texts. I really valued process over product in a way that I never knew possible beforehand.

I was very productive during my MFA in that I wrote every day, and I was even more productive in the initial months after the MFA ended—but then I really burned out. I realized that the machine pace I was working at (even if I called it play!) was not sustainable. And I also left the program without applying for a PhD because I knew that I needed a break from academia in order to think through my values as an educator on my own terms as well as tend to my health.

Over the past few years since graduating, I’ve continued writing. It’s a slower process now, and my routines shift with different seasons (of the year, of my life). I’m learning that fallow periods are a necessary gift and that I find a lot of joy and fulfillment in teaching writers in community settings.

Tell us about something exciting happening in your writing journey or career right now!

After the MFA, I fell into freelance work full time. I teach (online!) creative writing and literary business skills through community writing centers, including Grub Street, Hugo House, and the Loft Literary Center. I also coach creative writers who are looking for extra support cultivating sustainable writing practices (which includes learning how to find funding, navigate publishing, manage project development) in addition to writing feedback.

I am really excited that in 2024 I will be teaching a free workshop on submitting to literary markets through MASS MoCA’s program Assets for Artists and a workshop on arts funding through Grub Street’s Muse and the Marketplace Conference.

Over the past few years, I’ve taught a multi-week class for MFA applicants through the Loft Literary Center; I am currently in the planning stages of redesigning the class so that it is more accessible to more people asynchronously in 2024. If you’d like to learn more about my work as a writing coach, you can visit my website. Subscribe to my newsletter to stay in the loop!

Any advice for MFA hopefuls and/or recent grads?

Whether or not you get into an MFA program is not a reflection of whether or not you are a “real” writer. You are already a real writer.

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