The Finer Points of Writing

Release date: May 14, 2008 |

By Heather Harris MFA '05

For the past ten years, writers have been coming to Goucher’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction program to learn the art of the narrative. Frequently, they also forge lasting friendships.

The first time I read my work in public, I told the audience members that they looked demented. At least that’s what my husband says. I don’t really remember. I only remember approaching the microphone and taking a deep breath to try to slow the hurricane of blood in my head and my throat and my chest. I guess the mic amplified the groan when I let that breath go. I didn’t hear it -- the blood’s pounding was really loud. My husband’s face, had I seen it all the way in the back of the room, would have shown that he was thinking, "Dear Lord. She is unraveling." But I didn’t see him. I saw a room full of students and alumnae/i and mentors and sundry guests, all gathered in Goucher’s Alumnae & Alumni House for the senior readings on that August evening in 2005. And all smiling. I believe him that I blurted out, "You know, you all look demented." I mean, honestly, why were they smiling? Why weren’t they looking puzzled or curious about the spectacle before them? Who, in real life, is that nice?
I’ll tell you who.

Ten years ago, the Goucher College Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction program welcomed its first degree candidates. Larry Bielawski, the program’s founder and first director, had created a two-year, low-residency curriculum in which students come to campus for high-intensity blocks of classroom and workshop time, then return home to complete writing assignments and participate in group discussions via the Internet.

During the past 10 years, 146 writers have graduated from the program, and in spite of the proliferation of MFA programs and low-residency graduate programs, Goucher’s remains the only MFA program in the United States devoted exclusively to creative nonfiction.

Several alumnae/i of Goucher’s undergraduate program have returned for their MFAs. Jeanne Lemkau, who received her bachelor’s degree in 1969 and her MFA in 2003, has perhaps the most dramatic returning alumna story.

“The first meeting of the program was in the Alumnae & Alumni House," she remembers. "The last time I had been inside was at my wedding reception in 1968! While the faculty were orienting us, I kept thinking about where the table was that held the olives wrapped in bacon and where we had stuffed wedding cake into each other’s mouths."

Lisa Matt, who earned her bachelor’s degree at Goucher in 1991 and her MFA in 2005, says one thing both programs have in common is support. "It comes down to an atmosphere of cooperation vs. competition. Other writers in the program who’d either attempted or finished other writing programs outside of Goucher, remarked to me on several occasions that they felt Goucher’s program was the most encouraging, positive program they’d found."

Ask most MFA students and alumnae/i about their memories of the program, and you’ll hear stories about the two weeks each August students spend on the Goucher campus. The days are long--beginning before 9 a.m. and often ending well after 9 p.m.--and most stories involve fast friendships and writerly epiphanies. But at least one involves nudity.

“In my previous academic incarnations, I’d never lived in a dorm," wrote Stephen Kimber, MFA ’01, in an essay he published in the Halifax Daily News. "So there were some basic rules I didn’t understand when I moved into Room 203, Alcock House, Froelicher Hall. Such as the obvious-to-everyone-but-me fact that you need to carry your key at all times."

“I discovered this one morning after--unfortunately after--I had stumbled down the hallway for my wake-up shower. I was returning to my room, clad only in my college-issued teensy towel when I realized I’d closed the door on my way out and it had been set to automatically lock behind me."

As you might expect, Kimber set out in search of assistance, and mayhem ensued. "I forgot the lobby had been turned into a daycare for the summer. As I opened the door, a dozen kids, most under five, streamed past me. ‘Look at the naked man,’ one said to the others. ‘Look at the naked man,’ he repeated again, more loudly, perhaps for the benefit of any passing policeman."

For those of us who don’t get caught without pants, the two-week residencies still are intense times. Most first-year students report at least one common emotional reaction: Intimidation. It seems that almost every first-year student, at some point during the residency, says to him or herself, "What am I doing here? I’m in way over my head."

Mary Richert, now a second-year student, confronted her self-doubt during a typical exchange: Someone approached her at the end-of-the-day social affectionately referred to as "study hall" and said, "My book is about..." Richert recalls thinking, "I can write a thesis. But when people used the word ‘manuscript’ or ‘book’--it kind of freaked me out."

If the chest-tightening realization of the first residency is that you are in the company of some very accomplished, very serious, and very talented writers, the chest-crushing realization of the second residency is that the faculty quite seriously expects you to produce a book-length manuscript of publishable quality by the spring. And while some students have already published books before enrolling in the program (see realization No. 1), this is many students’ first encounter with a project of that magnitude. "Goucher’s emphasis on a sustained narrative is important," says mentor Laura Wexler. "Most people learn that on their first book."

The difference between learning on your first independent book project and learning in an MFA program is not the work; it’s the support. In both cases, the writer must manage an enormous amount of material. But in Goucher’s MFA program, the writer has access to mentors who are intimately acquainted with this sort of project. Mentors can’t do the work, but they can prevent the writer from learning every lesson of that project the hard way. And when there’s no other way but the hard way, mentors can put the challenges in perspective and encourage the writer to focus on the next step.

During the residencies, the mentors share everything they know about writing and the writing life, often making themselves available for more than 12 hours each day.

At home, the relationship between the student and his or her mentor is one-on-one, more akin to a writer with his or her editor. "The Socratic method is more feasible in a mentoring relationship," says Wexler. "Two people trying to wrest something into the daylight."

Less obvious than the support provided by the mentors is the support provided by the MFA Advisory Committee. Seminal figures like Lee Gutkind, founder and editor of the journal Creative Nonfiction, and Gay Talese, renowned author of countless magazine articles and bestselling books, lend their expertise as Director Patsy Sims develops and cultivates the program.

Author Madison Smartt Bell, Goucher’s legendary undergraduate English professor, was instrumental in helping Bielawski start the program, and today he too serves on the advisory committee. When asked for his advice for students and alumnae/i of the MFA program, he answers with instructions that also could serve as example: "Tell the truth as winningly as possible."

But I still owe you a clear explanation for why a room was filled with writers who all smiled at me as I searched in vain for signs of disenchantment. Here it is: Patsy Sims and her faculty have managed to create an environment where no student ever feels that the amount of writerly success available in the universe is limited, ever feels that each time a peer or colleague experiences a success, there’s a little bit less available to the rest of us.

As Wexler says, "At Goucher, the zero-sum game, which you experience at many [writers’ gatherings], is noticeably absent. I will always love it for that."

That’s it. Perhaps the most magnificent thing about the MFA program at Goucher College is that the leadership fully expects that we view each other as colleagues who are all in this fickle world of publishing together. In worlds as competitive as publishing and journalism, it may be hard to believe, but it’s true.

That’s why I found no hint of duplicity in the crowd on the evening of my senior reading. It wasn’t there. So I read. The crowd came with me as I explored a subject that lives right between my heart and my rib cage. It was a risk--I knew going in that it would hurt if the audience misunderstood or rejected me, even unintentionally. Armed with a metric ton of chardonnay at home, I took the leap.

And they caught me. I could not have imagined a more unselfish response—I didn’t dare hope for it. A little bit of the cynic in me died that night in the Alumnae & Alumni House. Like Wexler, I will always love the Goucher MFA program and its people for that. §

Students and alumnae/i of the Goucher MFA program have published 25 books and have eight under
contract. Here is a brief sampling:

Margaret Ahnert ’00
The Knock at the Door: A Journey Through the Darkness of the Armenian Genocide
Beaufort Books, 2007
USA News’ Best Book of 2007 in World History
Larry Blakely ’99
Dust & Dreams: Stories of Life, Love and Baseball
Bear Creek Press, 2006
Valerie Boyd ’99
Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston
Scribner, 2003
2003 Southern Book Critic Circle Award for Nonfiction
Dale Brown ’05
Brilliance and Balderdash: Early Lectures at Cincinnati’s Mercantile LibraryMercantile Library of Cincinnati, 2007
David Copeland ’06
Blood & Volume: Inside New York’s Israeli Mafia 
Barricade Books, 2007
Geoff Gilpin ’00
The Maharishi Effect: A Personal Journey Through the Movement That Transformed American Spirituality
Tarcher/Penguin, 2006
Sharon Hatfield ’01
Never Seen the Moon: The Trials of Edith Maxwell
University of Illinois Press, 2005
2005 Weatherford Award for nonfiction from Berea College and the Appalachian Studies Association
Stephen Kimber ’01
Sailors, Slackers & Blind Pigs: Halifax at War
Doubleday Canada, 2002
The Atlantic Book Awards’ Dartmouth Nonfiction Award and the Evelyn Richardson Prize for Nonfiction for Sailors
Susan Kushner Resnick ’00
Goodbye Wifes and Daughters: The Explosion of an American Town
University of Nebraska Press, forthcoming 2009

For a complete list of publications, please visit www.goucher.edu/x1193.xml.