On Saturday January 12, 2013, I was awarded an MFA in Creative Writing from the Stonecoast MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine. (Pictured above, L-to-R: Allister Timms, Derek Hoffman, Jim Kelly, Amy Tibbetts, Kendall Giles)

There was much rejoicing.

Note: as backgrounders on writing and …

College is a place where a professor’s lecture notes go straight to the student’s lecture notes, without passing through the brains of either. — Mark Twain

While Twain’s tongue-in-cheek observation about the traditional college model held true in Mark Twain’s day–up until about ten years ago the …

Despite everyone being exhausted, sometimes speaking in incomplete or undecipherable sentences from lack of sleep, a murmur of expectation was building in the air.

Though everyone else had two days of the residency left, for the graduating class, today was graduation day.

In the morning, the last …