Whidbey Writers Workshop
Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing
A program of the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts
The Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA Program is the first in the country - and perhaps in the world - to be offered not by a college or university but by an organization of writers. In this, it resembles many free-standing arts institutions offering degrees in music, art, dance and theater. Authorized by the Washington State Higher Education Coordinating Board, WWW MFA classes began in August of 2005. In August of 2007 the Workshop celebrated its first graduation.
Students may focus on any of four areas: fiction, poetry, nonfiction or writing for children/young adults. The program requires three workshops, one of which may be in a second genre. Students also take at least two craft courses, one of which must be in a second (or third) genre. Two directed reading courses in the core genre are required. A third directed reading or a third craft course may be taken in another genre. The program is capped by a book-length creative work of publishable quality. For details, use the Program Catalog link at the top of this page.
As a low-residency (also known as brief residency) program, the WWW MFA requires students to attend intensive ten-day residencies on Whidbey Island each August and January. Residencies are followed by sixteen-week online semesters. For current and recent residency schedules, use the Residency link at the top of this page. Residencies are available on a continuing education basis to those who don't wish to study for an MFA. See the Residency-only link on the Residency page.
The Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA Program is one of the most flexible low-residency MFAs around. Many other brief residency programs require fifteen-credit blocks each term and must be completed in two years. Ours will offer five-credit individual courses so that students may work at their own pace, taking from two to six years to complete the program.
The WWW MFA has a limited number of scholarships available. For application forms including scholarship application forms use the Admission and Registration Forms link at the top of this page.
Recent Student and Alumni Publications and Acceptances
Laurie Junkins, poems in Poet Lore, Apple Valley Review, Literary Mama and Shark Reef.
Caleb Barber, poems in LA Review, Stringtown, Cascadia, and the international anthology The Fulcrum.
Sharon Mentyka, a story in Columbia Kids.
Lois Brandt, a short story in Highlights magazine.
Stefanie Freele, a piece in Writers Journal; a story in SmokeLong Quarterly.
Stefanie Freele has been named SmokeLong Quarterly's writer in residence for 2008. Here's part of the announcement, which may be read in full at http://smokelong.com/news/labels/Stefanie%20Freele:
"After poring over 90 applications, the editors of SmokeLong are ecstatic to announce that Stefanie Freele will be our Fish Fellowship "writer in residence" for 2008. This was not an easy choice - the quality of the applications we received was outstanding."
"Stefanie Freele was born and raised in Wisconsin and currently lives on a river on the west coast. Her recent fiction credits include American Literary Review, South Dakota Review, Permafrost, Westview, Hobart, and Contrary. She will have forthcoming work in Talking River, Etchings, and in a speculative fiction anthology titled Futuristic Motherhood. She has completed a novel and is working on her MFA thesis with the Whidbey Writers Workshop in Washington."
Kelly Davio, a poem in The Broome Review and a poem in Pank magazine.
Tanya Chernov, a poem in Rattle.
Two poems accepted by Stringtown.
Nancy Boutin, an essay in Dream and Memory, an essay in Portland Review and a story in Halfway Down the Stairs.
Want to see what our students are up to? Visit our student site at http://www.whidbeystudents.com - student publications, student blogs, interviews with writers, agents and editors, and lots more besides.
Faculty Honors
More honors for David Wagoner
David Wagoner will be the featured speaker at the Theodore Roethke Centenary Celebration at Penn State University on November 6 and 7, cosponsored by their Institute of the Arts and Humanities, the English Deptartment and the School of Music. The program will include musical settings of Roethke's poems as well as a reading by Wagoner of his own poetry.
More honors for Carmen T. Bernier-Grand
The Oregon Library Association's Children's Division 2008 Evelyn Sibley Lampman Award "For Significant Contributions to the Children of Oregon in the Field of Children's Literature."
Frida: ˇViva la vida! Long Live Life!, written and illustrated Carmen T. Bernier-Grand (Marshall Cavendish), has been named 2008 Pura Belpré Author Honor Award Winner and has also been named an American Library Association Notable Book Award.
"Frida: ˇViva la vida! Long Live Life! uses lyrical free-verse poems which comprise the heart of a well rounded biographical work for older children. The poems, written in impassioned first-person voice, follow the arc of Frida Kahlo's life from birth to death. The opening birth poem and the closing death poem set a tone of self-determination firmly placing her in history, in her family and in her country."
More honors for Kathleen Alcala
Kathleen Alcala is reading at 5:30 on March 5 at Benaroya Hall as part of a series of readings by readings by twelve selected recipients of the Artist Trust/Washington State Arts Commission Literary Arts Fellowships from the last 20 years. Seattle Arts & Lectures, Artist Trust, and the UW Simpson Center for the Humanities, in celebration of their 20th anniversaries, are co-sponsoring the readings.
Kathleen Alcala's The Desert Remembers My Name: On Family and Writing was recently selected as one of Margaret Guerrero's "Top Picks" in the 2007 Southwest Books of the Year competition. Southwest Books of the Year is a prestigious award in Southern Arizona sponsored by the Pima County Public Library, Friends of the Pima County Public Library, Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records, and the Arizona Historical Society.
Recognition for Susan Zwinger
Susan Zwinger has an important essay in a new book, Teaching About Place, edited by Laird Christensen and Hal Crimmel, University of Nevada Press. The book focuses on teaching students about their local ecology, geology, economics, community planning and sociology in order to, as Susan says, "restore a powerful belief in our connection to the landscape which holds us."
Bruce Holland Rogers continues to put his time in Europe to good use
Rogers has been invited to read and speak at an English-language literary festival in Vienna which is funded in part by the U.S. Embassy.
At the invitation of the U.S. Embassy in Lisbon, Whidbey MFA instructor Bruce Holland Rogers in November spent four days in Portugal speaking about creative writing. He was a guest at the Universidade Lusófona's annual conference on the fantastic where he debated the future of the short story with Portuguese authors and read from his award-winning story collection The Keyhole Opera (just published in Portugal as Pequenos mistérios). Helectured on "The Creative Writing Workshop" at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa and on "The Psychology of Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular" at the Universidade Clássica de Lisboa.
Recognition for Bonny Becker's latest
Barnes and Noble has selected Bonny Becker's new picture book, A Visitor for Bear (Candlewick), for its picture book wall for the month of March. A Visitor for Bear will be on display at all major stores across the country. The wall of face-out books features about 25 new picture books each month.
A Visitor for Bear will also receive a *starred* review from the upcoming February issue of School Library Journal.
Honors for a member of our Governing Board
Lorraine Healy, MFA (New England College), the newest member of the MFA Governing Board, has recently been awarded the Lois Cranston Poetry Prize by Calyx Press as well as the PostRoad Poetry Prize, awarded by the journal of Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass. Ms. Healy, a native of Argentina and a resident of Freeland, Washington, teaches poetry at Antioch University in Seattle and through the Whidbey Island Writers Association's community classes.
More Honors for Carolyne L. Wright
Carolyne L. Wright will be the next Thornton Writer (Poet) in Residence at Lynchburg College in Virginia, for eight weeks from January - March 2008 (latter half of January till late March). She will live on campus, teach a weekly reading-based workshop, hold individual conferences, and give a public reading..
That post will be followed by serving as the Distinguished Northwest Poet at Seattle University for spring quarter (end of March - mid-June). Both of these short-term posts, she says, will leave time for her own writing and for Whidbey courses.
David Wagoner appointed a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow
Poet, novelist and dramatist David Wagoner has been appointed a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow, one of about 100 from all disciplines—ex-cabinet members, diplomats, writers, retired judges, the head of the ACLU, the director of the League of Women Voters, etc. Under the jurisdiction of Princeton, their bios and curriculums are posted for the delight of about 250 independent colleges all over the country. The administrators of those colleges select a visiting fellow and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation finances the week-long stay of that Visiting Fellow on campus, giving a lecture, tutoring or work- shopping students, reading his/her own work, and so on.
Burning Word Festival on Whidbey
The Washington Poets Association's annual Burning Word festival of poets and poetry will take place on Saturday, April 26, 2008, at Greenbank Farm on Whidbey Island. For details, visit the Burning Word web site at http://www.burningword.org/.
Nominations are now open for poets to appear at Burning Word. To nominate someone as a reader, speaker or workshop leader, use the online nomination form at http://www.burningword.org/burning_word_nomination.php.
Nominations will close on January 15.
Whidbey Writers Workshop a distinctive program says Poets & Writers magazine
Whidbey Writers Workshop has been named by the respected magazinePoets & Writers as one of nine distinctive Master of Fine Arts programs in the nation.
The magazine’s annual MFA issue (November/December) publishes articles on master’s programs and lists noteworthy schools. This year the Whidbey Writers Workshop is the only low-residency MFA program included and one of the youngest in the group.
A program of the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts, the WWW masters in creative writing is the first in the United States to be offered by a nonprofit organization rather than through a university. The Whidbey Writers Association is the nonprofit that founded the program in the fall of 2004 and continues to manage it through the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts.
“To be included in this list with well-established university departments is a genuine milestone for our young program,” said MFA Program Director Wayne Ude. “This distinction reflects well on our independent status operating outside the university system. Ude said that courses addressing the profession of writing, which bring editors, agents and successful writers to discuss the business as well as the creative side of the writing life, are part of what set WWW apart from purely academic programs.
“In a country with 300 graduate writing programs and only 100 teaching positions opening each year, we feel it’s essential to prepare writers to make a life outside the university,” said Ude. “In fact, our entire program has its life outside the university and rooted in the craft and practice of writing.”
In addition to core writing, literature and workshop classes taught by instructors who are all professional writers, twice yearly intensive residencies include varied workshops by noted authors and publishing professionals.
Whidbey Writers Workshop is a low-residency Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing that meets twice yearly on Whidbey Island in Washington state. The semester continues in an online classroom, allowing students to work together regardless of geographic location. For more information about WWW, see www.writeonwhidbey.com or contact mfa@writeonwhidbey.com.
2007 MFA graduate Nina Bayer's Lunch Hour Stories magazine takes off
Nina Bayer was one of nine pioneers who made up the first group of students at the Whidbey Writers Workshop in August of 2005. While working toward the MFA degree in fiction, she started her own fiction magazine, Lunch Hour Stories, in addition to working on her own collection of short stories. Two years later, Bayer has completed the MFA program, and her Lunch Hour Stories has published stories from writers in India, Italy, Bulgaria, Greece, and Moldova as well as, of course, the U.S. For more about Bayer, see http://www.uwb.edu/alumni/insight/2007/09/19/ninabayer.xhtml.
MFA Grad's Thesis Project to be Published
Ann Gonzalez, a member of the first graduating class of the Whidbey Writers Workshop Master of Fine Arts program, wrote, submitted and sold her thesis project, a young adult novel – and she still had a few weeks to spare before donning the gown and balancing the mortarboard upon her head as part of the Workshop's first Commencement on August 25, 2007.
During the program’s intensive residency on Whidbey Island in January, Gonzalez had the opportunity to read the first chapter of her young adult novel to an audience of students, faculty and visiting authors and agents, including New York literary agent Regina Brooks. The chapter captured Brooks' attention, and by April Gonzalez had signed a contract with Brooks to represent her now-completed novel. On July 12 she received a publishing contract from WestSide Books for Running for my Life, the story of a 14-year-old girl with a schizophrenic mother.
The book is expected to appear in the spring of 2008. You can read more about Ann in this South Whidbey Record article (Adobe PDF file, 160kb).
CLOCK HOURS
Teachers: Intensive residency Clock Hours are now available in cooperation with Heritage Institute of Clinton, Washington. Details and application procedures
FINANCIAL AID NOW AVAILABLE
The Whidbey Writers Workshop has established a financial aid program. For details, click here.
Financial Aid Application Forms
Applications are now being accepted for the MFA degree program beginning with the August, 2008, residency and fall semester. Applications for August and the fall semester will be accepted until April 1, 2008. Further information and a downloadable application form are available through the Admission link on this page.
Applications for the residency-only option will be accepted May 15-June 15 2007. Further information is available on the Residency-Only Page. A downloadable residency-only application form is available through the Admission link on this page. August residency dates are Saturday, August 16-Tuesday, August 26. August 16 is a travel and orientation day; August 26 is a travel day.
Try Us Out at a Residency
Interested in our MFA program but would like to give it a trial run? Why not experience one of our residencies as a residency-only, non-credit participant and see for yourself what we're really like? See the Residency-Only Page for further information.