Writing Conditions

Writing Conditions is maintained by the Student Organization of Southampton Arts (SOSA) which promotes creative collaboration between students in the MFA Program at Stony Brook Southampton.

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Ransom Riggs at Barnes & Noble Tribeca, 9/28/15

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Some words of wisdom for your Tuesday morning 

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PROCESS

Sectioning your story.

Numbering the sections.

Cutting the sections.

Taping them to the wall.

Asking yourself: Where’s the tension? Did I begin the story in the right place? What is each section doing for the story/character/plot/theme? Is it doing what it’s supposed to? How can I fix it?

Rearranging as needed.

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MFA candidate Emily Smith Gilbert's creative nonfiction piece, "The Cigarette Game," published by CONSEQUENCE Online

CONSEQUENCE Magazine is "an international literary magazine focusing on the culture of war."

We’ve been in Israel for only a few days: beautiful women carry guns on every street corner and the men wear denim jeans, back pockets embroidered with fleurs-de-lis. A group of us watch Italy win the World Cup on a TV at an open-air bar next to the Mediterranean. When the game is over, the streets flood with cars full of people hanging out of the windows, waving Italian flags and blowing air horns. Later that night, I drunkenly kiss Ben on the cheek.

I call my parents. I tell them how much fun I’m having.

We go swimming in the ocean and throw beached jellyfish at each other. We’re here for a five-week Hebrew language intensive at the University of Haifa. Ben wants to make Aliyah and join the Israel Defense Forces. I’m studying International Relations with a focus on the Middle East because I’m nineteen and I think I know what’s going on in the world.

In the beginning of the second week, Hezbollah fires Katyusha missiles across the Lebanese-Israeli border and down onto the city of Haifa. Israel retaliates. The university where we study sits atop Mount Carmel. Ben and I sneak up to the dorm rooftop to watch the bright flashes and smoke rising in the distance. He puts his arms around me. “Don’t worry,” he says.

Read the full piece here.

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Oh crap.

Nora Decter, an MFA candidate at Stony Brook Southampton, on her first day of teaching undergraduate creative writing. 

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“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” ― Jorge Luis Borges

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We agree!

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TSR: The Southampton Review Spring 2015 Proofreading Party

[Students in the Publishing Practicum gather at Editor-in-Chief Lou Ann Walker's house to proofread work that will be published in the Spring 2015 issue of TSR: The Southampton Review, due out on March 30th.]

Because we love grammar and hate smart quotes!

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I was thirty minutes late, soaked, covered in mud, out of breath, and flabbergasted at the sight of all 29 of them still waiting in their seats.

Ali Simpson, MFA alumna of Stony Brook Southampton, on her first day of teaching undergraduate creative writing.

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Stony Brook Southampton MFA candidate, Antoinette Martin, writes about her experience living with metastatic breast cancer and the Camino she will walk in Spain this summer

[Antoinette and her daughter Robyn.]

I have been living with the metastatic breast cancer for three years, now. Although the PET scans confirm…its insidious presence, I have been incredibly blessed with a very lazy invasion that allows me to live my life, well. I take great pride in being Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s most boring Stage IV breast cancer patient. This is no small feat. The power of love and prayer plays a significant role in keeping me brave, optimistic and focused on the awe and beauty surrounding me. I have all of you to thank for that. The miracle of medical science and technology cannot be overstated. Because of the advances, living with this disease and living well, is my reality. Women, just a generation ago who were diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer, were not offered this hope. All too many women walking beside me, today, do not share my experiences and struggle daily to keep the beast at bay. Metastatic breast cancer remains a forever condition. There is currently no cure; but that does not mean it has to be forever. Three years ago, my youngest daughter, Robyn, took off for Spain to walk the Camino de Santiago. This is an ancient pilgrimage honoring St. James’ faith and strength of faith. His symbol is the scallop shell; a strong metaphor for “all paths lead to one”. Robyn walked for three weeks; sometimes alone, other times alongside fellow pilgrims with the same visceral mission. She followed through on this “thing” that seemed to call her. Robyn arrived at the Santiago de Compostela in time for Easter Sunday Mass, inspired. She returned home armed with inner strength to trust her heart in directing life choices. Although Robyn walked 200 miles, she saved a leg of the trail to the sea for me and her to walk together. Three years ago, I was not certain the treatment protocols would work. This aim to take on such a challenge- a pilgrimage to honor faith, strength and perseverance, seemed like a  reach. Well, treatment has been working. I’m fine (did I mention I am the most boring patient at MSKCC?). The time is right. We have our tickets, backpacks, new sneakers, and a guide written in English. We will arrive in Santiago on Good Friday, tour for a day or so, attend Easter Sunday Mass, then begin our Camino. It will be a three to four day trek to Finisterre where we will reach the shore. It will be a week of reflection, adventure, and love.

If you wish to be part of Antoinette's Camino by donating, all funds raised will go directly to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Metastatic Breast Cancer Research. You can make an online donation by clicking this link: http://mskcc.convio.net/site/TR?pg=fund&fr_id=1590&pxfid=47141.

To learn more about Antoinette's journey, you can visit her tumblr, A Camino for the Love of Life, which she will be updating during her preparations for—and throughout—her pilgrimage.

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Knocked knees, nail biting, and stories oh my!

Mary Ellen Walsh, an MFA candidate at Stony Brook Southampton, on her first day of teaching undergraduate creative writing.

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introducing #UbeRaindrops, our newly formed Pinay R&B singing group! 😈😇😈😇

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Yay Toni!

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bookmania:“The Carousel of Light or Cărtureşti Carusel is the new bookshop in Romania’s cultural and financial center of Bucharest. This six-level architectural wonder features all-white intricate...

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Stony Brook Southampton MFA alumna Elena Gorokhova's new memoir, Russian Tattoo:

An exquisite portrait of mothers and daughters that reaches from Cold War Russia to modern-day New Jersey, from the author of A Mountain of Crumbs—the memoir that “leaves you wanting more” (The Daily Telegraph, UK). In A Mountain of Crumbs Elena Gorokhova describes coming of age behind the Iron Curtain and leaving her mother and her Motherland for a new life in the United States. Now, in Russian Tattoo, Elena learns that the journey of an immigrant is filled with everyday mistakes, small humiliations, and a loss of dignity. Cultural disorientation comes in the form of not knowing how to eat a hamburger, buy a pair of shoes, or catch a bus. But through perseverance and resilience, Elena gradually adapts to her new country. With the simultaneous birth of her daughter and the arrival of her Soviet mother, who comes to the US to help care for her granddaughter and stays for twenty-four years, it becomes the story of a unique balancing act and a family struggle. Russian Tattoo is a poignant memoir of three generations of strong women with very different cultural values, all living under the same roof and battling for control. Themes of separation and loss, grief and struggle, and power and powerlessness run throughout this story of growing understanding and, finally, redemption. “Gorokhova writes about her life with a novelist’s gift,” says The New York Times, and her latest offering is filled with empathy, insight, and humor. 

Buy the book here.

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Stony Brook Southampton MFA Candidate Adrian Bonenberger reviews American Sniper for Deadspin.com

American Sniper will likely be the most controversial and divisive movie of 2015, and it's mid-January. From concerns over the baldly anti-Muslim social-media rants it has inspired to titular real-life protagonist Chris Kyle's debatable status as a hero to his notorious unreliability as a non-fiction narrator to the confusing use of a robot doll rather than a human baby, the film has inspired both harsh criticism and lavish praise. It has also smashed box-office records, largely thanks to the conservative-leaning South and Midwest. You either love this movie or you hate it, and by extension director Clint Eastwood, star Bradley Cooper, and especially Kyle himself; there isn't much room for dialogue between the two positions.

This reflects a truth that the movie itself seeks to avoid: War is political, and a movie about war is bound to make political pronouncements. When you sit down to enjoy American Sniper, you are committing a political act, and your evaluation of the movie, and Kyle as a person, reflects your political attitudes. But it's more complicated than the simple equation that progressives dislike it and conservatives enjoy it. Politics notwithstanding, those who've seen it tend to describe the experience in religious terms: awe-struck congregations of Americans seeing the Iraq War the way it happened, traveling down the path to PTSD together. Ask around: Be it Texas or Williamsburg, it's not uncommon to hear of packed theaters with the patrons filing out in reverent silence after the closing credits.

I'm a U.S. infantry combat veteran of Afghanistan, and I witnessed this phenomenon firsthand. Personally, though, I found the movie to be factually probable, visually and emotionally stimulating, but curiously aimless: like walking in a shallow pool looking for a place to dive and swim, expecting depth and finding none. I found the audience's reaction both inspiring and depressing. On the one hand, Thank god people are finally responding to the horror of war. On the other hand, This is not quite true.

Read the rest of the review here.

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Part III: MFA Holidays

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Part II: MFA Holidays

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Part I: MFA Holidays