At the 2017 summer residency, CWLA's low-residency MFA program celebrated its 10th anniversary. In days of yore, the department operated as a traditional three-year program. For several reasons, the faculty proposed shifting to a low-residency model and university administrators immediately understood the brilliance of their plan. The low-residency program opened for business in Summer 2007 with a lot of enthusiasm, the faith of a brand-new group of students and mentors, and (let's be honest) a teensy bit of trepidation. Twelve days later, Director David Stevenson and his merry band of faculty celebrated the residency's success and then took a long nap.
 
Alumni of the low-residency and original program joined current students and faculty for a celebratory reception. 

In any creative writing program, successes and accomplishments come every day in ways most others don't see. Anybody who keeps writing after graduation is hugely successful. So are those who find and contribute to a literary community. The simplest way to track these kinds of accomplishments is to take note of the number of students who have published short stories, essays, poems, anthologies, articles, and books. We'd need  another 10 years to list every single publication, but here are some highlights.

Nearly all of these books by graduates are based on thesis work:

• Chaun Ballard, poetry, Flight, which won the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, judged by Major Jackson. He'll be reading at the Sunken Garden Festival in July alongside current U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith (!).

• ​Marie Tozier, poetry, Open the Dark (Boreal Books, Red Hen Press, 2018). Marie recently wrote about her hometown in "Nome--Beautiful Yet Dysfunctional" for We Alaskans. 
• Raquel Gilliland, poetry, Dirt and Honey (Green Writers Press, 2018). She also won the prestigious Rattle Chapbook contest for 2018.
• Marilyn Sigman, nonfiction, Entangled: People and Ecological Change in Alaska’s Kachemak Bay (University of Alaska Press, 2018).
• Kersten Christianson, poetry, Something Yet to be Named (Aldrich Press, 2017).
• Vivian Faith Prescott, fiction, The Dead Go to Seattle (Boreal Books, 2017).
• Mary Kudenov, nonfiction, Threadbare; Class and Crime in Urban Alaska (University of Alaska Press, 2017). Mary's book was also a UAA Book of the Year choice.
• Seta Kabranian-Melkonian, nonfiction, The Consecrated Ones: Garlen Ananian’s Path (Abril Books, 2017).
• Lisa Stice, poetry, Permanent Change of Station (Middle West Press, 2018) and Uniform (Aldrich Press, 2016).
• Heather Lende, nonfiction, Find the Good: Unexpected Life Lessons from a Small-Town Obituary Writer (Algonquin Books, 2015).
• Allison Williams, nonfiction, Pacific Northwest Road Trip (Moon Travel, 2015).
• Hannah Lindoff, fiction, Mary’s Wild Winter Feast (University of Alaska Press, 2014).
• Justin Herrmann, fiction, Highway One, Antarctica (Madhat Press, 2014).
• Sara Loewen, nonfiction, Gaining Daylight: Life on Two Islands (University of Alaska Press, 2014), which earned a starred review by Publisher’s Weekly and the Willa Literary Award for Creative Nonfiction.
• Vivian Faith Prescott, poetry, The Hide of My Tongue: Ax L'óot' Doogú (Plain View Press, 2012).
• Vivian Faith Prescott, fiction, Keeper of the Directions (Euterpa, 2012, under the pen name L.K. Mitchell).

A few recent accomplishments and awards include:

• For the third year in a row, Matt Komatsu has organized and taught in Danger Close Alaska, a joint 49 Writers and Alaska Humanities Forum program to build a literary community of civilians and veterans.
• Charles Boyle, who is graduating in 2018, recently published "Would I Want My Kid to Turn Out Like Charles Wohflforth? Maybe Not," in the Anchorage Daily News. 
• Vered Mared opened The Writer's Block Bookstore & Cafe, a huge supporter of writers and artists in Anchorage and elsewhere.
• Tamar Bolkvadze’s play was accepted into the 2017 Last Frontier Theatre Conference, and she received a Women Writer’s Fellowship from Oregon Literary Arts.
• Pamela Kearney’s thesis novel, The Sunflower Wife, was a runner-up in the 2012 The AWP Award Series for the Novel, a national contest that attracted at least 10,000 entries.
• Ben Toche’s novel Dispatches from the SpEd Department was a finalist in the 2017 Knut House Press annual contest.
• Teresa Sundmark won the Nicole Blizzard Short Story Contest.
• Cass Crandall was the 2015 Grand Prize winner of the Anchorage Daily News creative writing contest (and the winner of the Nonfiction Open to the Public category).
• Poems, essays, and fiction by several students have been named as finalists or runners-up in literary contests at Fourth Genre, Ninth Letters, Nimrod, The Iowa Review, and the Next Gen Indie Book Awards, among others.
• Matt Komatsu, Sara Loewen, and Vivian Faith Prescott each won $5,000 Literary Awards from the Alaska State Council on the Arts in 2016 and 2017.
• Sarah Mouracade was an honorable mention winner in the nonfiction public category in the 2017 Creative Writing Contest sponsored by the Anchorage Daily News.
• At least two students have been nominated for prestigious Pushcart Prizes based on published work in literary journals (one of them twice). 
• Three graduates have been awarded individual artist grants from the Rasmuson Foundation to complete a children’s opera, a novel, and a poetry manuscript.

Because we enjoy bragging, here's a partial list of places where our students have published their work:

Orion, The New York Times, The Citron Review, Vela, Chautauqua, The Southhampton Review, The Georgia Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Iowa Review, The Gettysburg Review, Foreign Policy, Tar River Poetry, Brevity, Fourth River, The Journal for the Association of Literature and the Environment, War, Literature and the Arts, The Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, The Millions, The Normal School, Paste, Shadowbox, The Southeast Review, Fredericksburg Literary & Arts Review, Portland Magazine, Alpinist, Southern Indiana Review, METER magazine, Journal of Florida Literature, Woman Overboard, StorySouth, Literary Mama, terrain.org, The Laurel Review, Cirque, Glassworks Literary Magazine, Pilgrimage, Arctica,Flashquake, Vanishing Point, Two Review, Windmill, Cardiff Review, Hetq.am, Meter, Alaska Women Speak, Tidal Echoes, biostories, Nature Writing, Rock & Sling, River Styx magazine, Dupe, Permafrost, Camas: The Nature of the West, Down in the Dirt, International Poetry Review, F Magazine, Gargoyle, Philly Flash Inferno, Sundog Literary Review, 300 Days of Sun, Four Ties Lit Review, We’Moon, Faeirie Magazine, Flyover Country Review, Digital Americana, The Doctor TJ Eckleburg Review, S/tick, tropmag.com, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Twisted Vine Literary Arts Journal, Kestrel, Sukoon, The Caribbean Writer, La Voz de Esperanza, Mused, Dark Mountain, On the Rusk, Stoneboat Literary Review, The Yellow Medicine Review, Gris-Gris, The Illanot Review, Pine Hills Review, The Fiction Advocate, Sediment Literary Arts Journal, Pacific Review, and Sierra Nevada Review.

(That doesn't even include the anthologies.)

Undoubtedly we've missed people and publications in this overview. If so, please mention them in the comments! 

And here's to another decade of great writing by good people.

Zack Rogow sends along this announcement for fiction students:

• This Side of the Divide Anthology Seeks Short Fiction 
• Deadline: October 31, 2017

Baobab Press and the University of Nevada, Reno MFA Program in Creative Writing are partnering to publish This Side of the Divide, an anthology of short fiction by emerging and established authors exploring the United States West. We’re seeking fresh, original views of the western U.S. Our aim is to capture this region’s unique essence in all of its cultural and geographic diversity. Selected writers will receive a complimentary copy of the book and a payment of $100. Stories should be 3,000-5,000 words, and will need to be submitted no later than October 31st, 2017. Please visit baobabpress.com/submissions for details.

Well, some fun ones, too. The program's Facebook page has photographs from the summer residency, as well as publication news from student writers and mentors and the occasional interesting link to stories about writing and such. You might also want to join the ultra-exclusive Blue Fox Literary Society, which posts news and links from current and past students and faculty. It's a closed group, but get in touch with one of the members (including your friendly faculty mentors) and you're in like Flynn. 

On the practical side, the Graduate School's web presence seems to shift through time and space, but here is the latest verified link: UAA Graduate School. Of supreme importance to you third-years is the 2015-16 Graduate Student Handbook. You'll also want to memorize every single page of the Thesis Formatting Handbook, revised in Spring 2014. Enjoy!

By Dan Branch
July 2015

It’s raining. I’m walking into a sea of middle-aged Motley Crue fans, each a stunning example of bad wardrobe choice. I am wiping rain off my glasses while wondering, “Did that woman ever look good in that cut away blouse with her breasts unsupported by a bra?”

It’s raining. I’m walking into a room full of MFA students, taking a seat in the Non Fiction ghetto. I’m wondering how the environmental movement survived Abbey, how many loggers ended up in hospital when their chain saw hit a tree spike, whether Craig Childs ever sleeps, ever slows down, ever sips tea while listening to Corelli.
It's still raining. I am sleeping, dreaming about Childs’ desert until the Blue Fox empties out and liquored-up writers jam up against the dorm door like salmon at a weir.

It’s never going to stop raining, not even for me, one virtuous enough to wheel my folding bike out of the dorm at 7 a.m. for a two-hour ride on the coastal trail that soon goes wrong.

I’m wet when I reach where the Sandhill Cranes fed yesterday morning. Their absence is the first of a string of unfortunate events that will deny me a chance to answer writing prompts at the Science Center. I will never ponder what it is like to be a mosquito just before the swat. Never watch a moose chase Rob Pockat into the teeth of a bear.

I wish I could blame a moose for making me late by blocking the bike path but none appears, even after a Cook Inlet wave soaks my left shoe, which a moose would have found funny. I can’t blame bears, brown or black. They didn’t even leave scat for me to swerve around.

I can blame the rain that doesn’t stop. Without the rain, I might have brought a street map, might not have gotten lost in a South Anchorage desert where people suburb along streets with berry names, and bird names, and flower names; would not have found myself going the wrong way on Arlene, circling back to a busy berry street that I had left 30 minutes ago. I might have fallen in love with Arlene if she had led me to the Campbell Creek bike trail.

It’s raining and I am heading the wrong direction on Martin Luther King Junior just before the bus leaves and, to be honest, more important to me, just before someone grabs the last Cobb salad box lunch.

It’s raining, and I’m eating Cobb salad in my dorm room, listening to Corelli, thinking about how I am going to explain my absence from the science center, writing about Arlene, Cobb salad, an empty seat on the bus, feral writers, glam rock fans lacking glamour, and, did I mention, the rain.  

David is all that you could ask for in a mentor, director, teacher, writer, and friend. He is respected, respectful, prolific, and, by the measure of his students, extremely accomplished. His appreciation of the true art of writing is pervasive. On the subjects of beauty and struggle, David said, “It’s part of the deal we all signed up for when we were born; it’s in the nature of the contract: You have X number of years, the years will end and may do so at any time. It’s up to you to give the time meaning, to use it well. [And this is] all part and parcel of the great, usually unstated, directive of the artist. The first time I read Faulkner’s Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech (a classic artist’s manifesto) I loved it, but almost immediately was thrown into a quandary: how was Faulkner’s own writing working to embody these really lofty ideals? The answer is: indirectly and with lots of complications…Look, I probably can’t break your heart: the bar is too damned high. But, trust me, I will be trying to do it in the next, and every, thing I write.”

We all should look forward to having David crush us under the weight of such esteemed heartbreak. Because when he’s done, he’ll be the one to pick us all back up.

From our friend Zack:

Sassafras Literary Magazine is seeking submissions of poetry, prose, fiction, flash fiction, nonfiction and artworks. This online lit mag is looking for intense, clear, original and minimalistic writing. Complex and advanced styles and concepts also welcome. The magazine is looking to represent new voices, and promote new writing. Every issue is composed by mostly unknown (less known) writers. Sassafras welcomes unpublished writers. If your writing is dense, unexpected, peculiar, soft-spoken, or sharp and hard to forget, submit! No reading fee, and submissions accepted year-round. Please see the submission guidelines at: sassafrasmag.wordpress.com/submit/.

Megan McCardle answers that question and more in Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators. She thinks most writers went astray in English classes by being too good. The ability to whip through reading and writing assignments at the last minute produces the false sense that natural talent will always come through. Unfortunately, professional writers can't count on that advantage because they're competing with all of the other English whizzes, she writes:

So the fear of producing bad work can trap writers into paralyzing procrastination and even self-handicapping--"deliberately doing things that will hamper their performance in order to give themselves an excuse for not doing well." The only reason procrastinators  get any work done is that they're more afraid of not turning in anything at all.
 
The rest of the article explores related psychological syndromes, the role of the educational system, and the consequences for society.  It's an interesting examination of the roots of failure that will give all procrastinators a reason to avoid the keyboard for just a little bit longer. . . . 

Poetry mentor Zack Rogow sent in this call for submissions by MFA Students: 

The Masters Review is now accepting submissions from students in graduate-level creative writing programs. MFA, MA, and PhD students are asked to submit up to 7000 words of fiction or narrative nonfiction.  The deadline is March 31, 2014. Each year The Masters Review pairs with a guest judge to help select stories. This year, New York Times bestselling author and Time book critic Lev Grossman will help select stories. Chosen work will be printed for national distribution in The Masters Review’s third volume, available in October 2014. Be among the top emerging writers published this year. For full submission details see:www.mastersreview.com/submissions
 
Thanks, Zack!

Word thieves have been around since, well, words. As Ruth Graham points out, 

But 2013 seemed particularly rife with examples of this literary sin, she writes for Poetry Foundation. Oddly enough, most of the poets committing the major crimes were Australians or British stealing from Americans. One reason may be that poet Ira Lightman, who has been actively looking for and publicizing acts of plagiarism, is British himself.  One plagiarist was bold enough to use lines from Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath and then defend himself by calling his "new" form a "cynical experiment." 
 
Stealing poems or lines from poems may be bad enough, but rewriting them badly is worse. Returning to T.S. Eliot, Graham observes:

When you're in need of soothing words to inspire or a little kicking of the posterior, check out this compendium of writers on writing, compiled by Maria Popova of Brain Pickings. Reading through the collected advice from such writers as Joyce Carol Oates, E.B. White, Kurt Vonnegut, John Steinbeck, Susan Sontag and many others is like picking through a box of chocolates and eating all of the tasty ones.

• From Elmore Leonard: "If it sounds like writing . . . . rewrite it."
•  Joy Williams: “A writer loves the dark, loves it, but is always fumbling around in the light.”
  
• Zadie Smith: "Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand--but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never ­being satisfied."

Of course, reading about writing is not the same thing as actually writing, so once you've gotten your inspiration fix, get back to work. As F. Scott Fitzgerald said:  “Nothing any good isn’t hard.”