Voices of VCFA

VCFA Writers Blogroll–Dynamic and Static

Sarah Marian S. — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 19:30:52 +0000

Whew! Residency was fabulous. Writers, here is all the information for creating your very own VCFA blogroll or simply for following along with fellow writer-bloggers via a feed service. If you want to add your blog, as always, do so in the comments.

If you use google reader, subscribe here:
https://www.google.com/reader/bundle/user%2F02913675885427999542%2Fbundle%2FVCFA%20WritersIf you want a single RSS feed delivered by email–or to plug into a wordpress sidebar, look here:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/vcfawriters

Live-Tweeting Residency!

VCFA — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 20:45:50 +0000

This year, with so many of our writers, artists and YA writers on Twitter, we hope you’ll get involved in telling the world about your residency experience… and stay abreast of each others’ movements, by using the hashtags #vcfa and #residency and maybe #vcfaresidency, too (why not?).

You can tweet about lectures, social time, friends, whatever, but if you use those hashtags, there will be a continuous live-stream of updates from our beautiful Montpelier campus. Let us know if you’re blogging about residency during or after, as well.

If you haven’t joined Twitter, or you’re not that interested, now is a great time to get involved… just go to Twitter.com and sign up. Don’t forget to follow VCFAand our list of VCFAers on Twitter, too. And tweet at us if you want to be added.

VCFAers Talking About Craft At TeachingAuthors.com

VCFA — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 13:46:09 +0000

A group of Vermont College of Fine Arts students and graduates in both the writing and YA programs joined together — and took time from busy schedules — to produce and market a Blog Initiative raising awareness for both MFA writing programs. The Blog Initiative offers a 5-Daycation to bloggers willing to host us.

The First Blog to invite us aboard is www.TeachingAuthors.com–please head over and check it out!

Teaching Authors Blog is a group effort of six children’s authors who also teach writing. Some of them are even VCFA grads and have participated in this project as both hosts and bloggers. Their blog features writing tips and exercises to sharpen the skills.
Please stop by their blog, check them out and check out the posts of our visiting authors as well. They will be posting there on the schedule below. Stop in. Say hello, and if you like what you see, PLEASE facebook, tweet and pass the link to this blog on to your friends.

Here’s a preview of what’s coming, with the description below.

6/13

The Point of Point of View
By Jodi Paloni

“In my first semester I generated a pile of papers with various characters all telling the same story at the same time…”

6/15 Decide vs. Discover: How to Figure Out What Happens Next

By Cynthia Newberry Martin

There’s more than one way to figure out what happens next in your story. Here, on Wednesday 6/15, will be Cynthia Newberry Martin, whose MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts is just a few weeks away from fruition. Her blog post, Decide vs. Discover offers some useful tips. Please stop by and read what she has to say.

6/17 What Happens Next: Inch Forward in the Dark

By Sion Dayson

Every writer has a different method for figuring out the next turn in their story. Tune in Friday 6/15 for a technique by Sion Dayson, another Vermont College of Fine Arts colleague, as she shows us how to inch forward in the dark.

6/20 What You Can Learn By Critiquing Others

By Lyn Miller-Lachmann

Why is it so difficult to see the flaws in our own work, when they literally jump off the page in the work of others? Please join us on Friday 6/17, as Lyn Miller-Lachmann, currently entering her third semester in the Vermont College of Fine Arts Writing for Children and Young Adults program, describes the VCFA workshop structure and how you can adapt their techniques to your own critique group.

6/22 Finding the Heart in Your Story

By Pam Watts

Exciting plot… great characters… exotic setting… a good story will invariably have at least one of these things going for it, but a GREAT story will always have heart. For a look at how one writer learned to find heart in her story. Please check back here on Wednesday 6/22, when Pam Watts, a recent graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults reveals her journey.

Ed note: Thanks to Sheryl Scarborough for putting this together!

Interdisciplinary Arts Conference Headed Our Way!

VCFA — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 16:42:39 +0000

Just as this blog, and our tumblr, are meant to bring the communities together, we’re going to have a physical gathering of the tribes in just a few weeks!

Vermont College of Fine Arts

is pleased to host its first Interdisciplinary Conference

July 7-9, 2011

Click here to register.

The conference is designed to address a growing interest among artists, graphic designers, and writers in crossing the boundaries and merging the commonalities of the various disciplines.

Presenters including faculty and alums from various programs along with special guests, will offer presentations, workshops, panel and round-table discussions on various topics from off-the-pag e writing, writing and image-based communications, book arts, graphic literature/illustration, writing across age groups, visual art and other related topics. This conference will also serve as a “think-tank” to help determine future offerings in interdisciplinary areas…

Residency is Coming! How Would You Describe It in 140 Characters?

VCFA — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 14:17:25 +0000

As June heats up and writers, artists and more get ready to storm campus for their residencies, VCFAers took to Twitter to answer our question: how would you describe residency in 140 characters–the length of a tweet?

Here are some answers… now get thee to Twitter and to the comments below and share your own thoughts!

MelanieFishbane Melanie J. Fishbane Residency @VCFA is like the best writing retreat you’ll ever take. Exceptional faculty. Supportive classmates. New friends. Profound change.

mikeblairmusic Mike Blair @VCFA Residency is a time to study who we want to become as writers. Plus, hang with friends we aren’t able to see the rest of the time.

ingridsundberg Ingrid Sundberg @VCFA Residency is sweet sweet literary pie. Plump berries of craft sprinkled with inspirational sugar and feeds you all semester long!

heidilphelps Heidi Landry Phelps @VCFA It’s like the most fantastical Roller coaster in the entire universe; you want it to end and yet you wish it could go on forever!

nicoleva Nicole Valentine @VCFA like coming home to your 200+ brothers & sisters who love words as much as you do. It’s being lit from within for 10 days. #residency

parisimperfect Sion Dayson @vcfa Residency is stimulating, inspirational & where I recharge my creative juices & commune w/ great writers. Tiring, 2 – but so worth it!

fellowette Sarah Marian Seltzer . @VCFA Nerdy-artsy grad-school summer camp for grown-ups.

This’n'That: Hunger Mountain Auction and VCFA Tumblr

VCFA — Wed, 04 May 2011 17:00:46 +0000

For the next few weeks, the wonderful literary and art journal Hunger Mountain is offering an amazing online auction for manuscript critiques and other goodies. Check it out on ebay if you’re an aspiring creative type and want some personal guidance, as well as helping to support the arts and literature with your bid…
And head on over to our Tumblr to see the first few entries. Remember students, alumni and faculty, you can submit by emailing vcfamedia@gmail.com.

Call for Bite-Sized Submissions: VCFA’s Tumblr

VCFA — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 15:27:19 +0000

This is what our tumblr looks like now, without your work on it!

Part of our big project this semester is to create online spaces for VCFAers across the genres to share ideas and information and to create a community… to that end, this blog project. (If you have ideas for it, please share them in the comments or email vcfamedia@gmail.com). But to share our actual work, our actual creative processes in our own genres and others, wouldn’t that be nice too? That’s why we’re starting a tumblr, which is a micro-blogging platform designed for short bits of information, links, quotations, chats, images, and bits of sound.

From Wikipedia: Tumblr is a blogging platform that allows users to post text, images, video, links, quotes, and audio to their tumblelog, a short-form blog. Users are able to “follow” other users and see their posts together on their dashboard. Users can “like” or “reblog” posts from other blogs on the site. …

In order to make this work, we need VCFAers to submit their work. Here are some basic guidelines: medium-size images in jpg form and medium-size jpgs, blocks of text under 350 words, quotations of a few sentences or two, a link to somewhere where your work has been published… you get the idea. And if you’re on tumblr, follow us! UPDATE: Also, in your email PLEASE let us know exactly what genre, semester, and program you’re in, or when you graduated.

Don’t feel limited to your genre, either.

Send submissions to the following email: vcfamedia@gmail.com. Please help us out and send your work in!

Low-Residency MFA in Music Composition

VCFA — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 19:21:16 +0000

A beautiful (pdf) brochure for this brand-new program can be found here.

And the Winner for Blog Title Is…

VCFA — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 13:54:47 +0000

“Voices of VCFA.” Nice and simple. We added the tagline “a virtual portal to the steps of Dewey” in honor of the close second-place finisher.

Now, to get the content moving… more on that shortly.

Vote on a Blog Title!

VCFA — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 17:51:37 +0000

VCFAers have suggested a number of fabulous titles for our blog-in-progress.

Vote below for your favorites before Friday, March 25th at Midnight!: