The bus picked everyone up at 7:45AM and took us to the Stonehouse. The road to Stonehouse weaves through Wolfe’s Neck State Park under arches of trees. It truly feels, when we emerge on the other side, like we are in a different, magical, writerly world.
For the graduate student presentations I went to “Virgins, Homosexuals, and Monsters, OH MY! – The Hows and Whys of Gothic Literature” by Angela Still.
She gave a wonderful romp through the origins and characteristics of gothic literature, along with discussing key gothic authors and reference/canonical stories.
Workshops followed–I can’t believe that after today, there’s only one more day of our first workshop left.
After workshop we had our “genre” lunches, which is when all the students for each genre (poetry, popular fiction, creative non-fiction, and fiction) get together to say hello and, more importantly, pick candidate workshop electives for the next semester. After much discussion, we (popular fiction) decided on two candidate electives: one on creating realistic villain characters (taught by Liz Hand) and one on young adult fiction (taught by Nancy Holder). Let’s hope these get picked to be offered next semester.
For the afternoon faculty presentation I went to a great presentation by Stonecoast director Annie Finch and Nancy Holder called “The PrOsE and POEtry of Edgar Allan Poe”.
Not only did we learn about Poe’s life, but more importantly we learned how Poe’s poetry and stories are meant to be heard as well as read.
There were three popular fiction graduating student readings this afternoon: Julie Day (introduced by Jim Kelly):
Mariel Morales (introduced by Nancy Holder):
and Taylor Preston (introduced by Jim Kelly):
After dinner, we had an absolutely awesome reading from her book Radiant Days 
We are all lucky to have Liz on the faculty at Stonecoast.
As an evening finale, we had a student open mic night, which gives students a chance to read their own works, with a 3-minute time limit. I read a poem (motivated by the earlier lecture on Poe and the audible qualities of his poetry and prose), and other students read poems, flash fiction stories, short story excerpts, memoir excerpts, non-fiction pieces, and novel excerpts.
Some students had never spoken in front of an audience before, and this was a perfect opportunity to speak in front of a warm, receptive audience. Everyone did a great job.
Did I mention that these residency days are packed?
Sleep for me, as soon as I can get this posted.