#low-res mfa

[thew-mfacw]

Heading to AWP in Kansas City?

Stop by our table at the Book Fair — T1248.

We'd love to talk, and we'll have sample copies of our magazines Ponder Review and Poetry South, plus swag, candy, and flyers.

[thew-mfacw]

Congratulations to our Summer 2023 graduates!

Jan Hoover, Rich Sobolewski, and Brooke Sandlin (with Kendall Dunkelberg and Brandy Wilson).

Not pictured: Alana Benoit, Bailey Hammond, Léhana Lewis, Hannah Madonna, and Dana Xedos — we missed you, but you were with us in spirit!

[thew-mfacw]

See us at #AWP23

If you’re headed to Seattle next week, stop by T1221 in the AWP Book Fair to talk with us about our program, Ponder Review, or Poetry South. We’ll be there with our program director and four students, as well as a number of alumni of the program (and former editors!) who are bound to stop by our table. It will be exhausting, exhilarating, refreshing, and overwhelming. Whenever you need to see a friendly face, you can find one at our table, and maybe we’ll still have some chocolate or a great literary magazine to peruse!

[thew-mfacw]

See our new ad in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers, which will hit the newsstands in June. We opted for this size because of its placement in the magazine and the ability to highlight the program and our two literary magazines. 

In the copy, we hope to showcase the distinctive qualities of our Low-Res MFA, the combination of fully online classes with separate on-campus residencies. This allows students to be in the program without coming to campus every semester. It also allows a full workshop experience, rather than the one-on-one mentoring found in many low-res programs. Mentoring is great when you have a good mentor, but we find that working with small classes of up to 8 students and one faculty member gives us an experience that is more like a traditional MFA. We still do a lot of mentoring, but students also learn so much from each other. 

We are also able to offer literature and forms classes that expose students to works they may not find on their own, and again, we read and discuss together, rather than working individually with a mentor. Each model has its strengths, of course, but we find the online class model works well for us and helps us build a greater sense of community in our program. 

The practical side of our program is emphasized with internships, Pedagogy, and Literary Magazine Production, and of course, The W’s low in-state tuition for all students makes our program an affordable option for anyone.

[thew-mfacw]

Our Low-Res MFA Responds to COVID-19

It’s been awhile since I’ve gotten on Tumblr to post about our low-residency MFA program. In the meantime, we’ve been to #AWP20 with about half of our students in a class on the conference, and we’ve closed our university for face-to-face instruction. Since we had just had our Short Residency at AWP, this change has hardly affected us at all.

#AWP20 was one of the last major conferences to be held. Anyone who was involved at all knows that was a hugely controversial decision. I thought AWP handled it as well as they could. Everyone was offered a refund of registration, but the conference went on for those who chose to go. Given how little time there was for people to make a decision, that made sense. I estimate 40% of the conference attendees actually came, though I haven’t seen any figures. Some of our students were already on their way when the news broke. Some turned around and went home (or somewhere), some went on to the conference. I was the only faculty member who decided to go, since I was leading that class.

The first thing I did, though, was to reassure everyone that they could complete the class whether they went to the conference or not. I created alternate assignments, which I’m getting ready to grade this weekend. I expect it has been a learning experience for everyone, whether they attended or not.

We’ve had to be very flexible in the wake of COVID-19, but that is what we are good at. We care most about out students’ health (which usually goes without saying), then about their educational goals, then about our expectations for a class. We can react to any situation and keep students safe and healthy while also furthering their goals, even if we have change some of our expectations.

The same will be true this summer. Our university has already said there will be no summer classes on campus. So our residencies this summer will be taught fully online. We’ll try to do as much of the same things we normally will do, and we’re really good at working in Zoom already, so I have no doubt this will go off well. We’ll hold cross-genre workshops, professional seminars, and readings, and we’ll make time to be social and to have mentoring sessions. We just won’t all be in the same building when the air conditioning goes on the fritz. We won’t see wildlife on an otherwise empty campus (one year we marveled as a groundhog or nutria—there was much debate—sauntered across the lawn outside our window). We’re a tight group who all get along well. I think we’ll be fine.

And if this all continues on into the fall, we’ll be prepared. Our full-semester classes and our short and full residencies are completely separate. Someone who wants to wait to take a residency until they can actually come to campus will be able to do that. Someone who wants to take advantage of not needing to travel to residency or pay us for room and board will be able to do that as well. And when we are finally able to reconvene in person (hopefully in October!), we will be extremely grateful. In the meantime, we’ll stay safe, stay healthy, and make the most out of it every day.