aheather

This is such a kind and generous message, thank you! I'm from the PNW, so I've spent a lot of time in the lushness of the west, but never the desert. I've had this very, very specific fixation on the desert since my senior year of college. I think I saw one too many Georgia O'Keefe paintings and decided I belong in New Mexico, which is obviously a total fantasy, but the chance to actually live it through is super compelling. I imagine myself staring at the desert and all the fantastical landscapes within it. Side note, if you're a desert person, you should read Dorthea Tanning's Chasm. That said, I also love seasons, and I love close study of a place as it changes over a year. If I'm spending so much time thinking about the physical environment, it feels like I should go to the program that is explicitly about that (ISU), to nurture the critical part of that work. I can always move to the desert on my own later, I keep telling myself (but then I start daydreaming about it all over again...) I feel lucky beyond all reason that this is the choice I get to make, I know either option is just glorious, and will serve me in so many ways. If I could airlift ISU's program onto UNLV's location, I might have an easier go of it, but also, so much depends on all the intangibles! I need to know the vibes of the programs, how empowered people feel to have real conversation in workshop, if professors are secretly jerks, if the teaching load feels unbearable. It feels like I need to know everything so that I can map out these two scenarios before picking the right one, and I'm grateful to have some time to learn it all, but also feeling a bit aimless as I parse out where to start. The most beautiful, satisfying thing is knowing that I could be happy at either. I'm so grateful I didn't get into the programs that I didn't get into, I think there are quite a few that sounded like good ideas but wouldn't have been the place for me to thrive. I hope everyone on here gets where they're meant to, when they're meant to, even if that route looks nothing like what you'd expect. Thank you!!!!! mostly, like, will I get hate crimed if I kiss my girlfriend in public? (granted, she's not even my girlfriend yet, but I am trying hard on that part of things and would like to feel safe with her.) Is there queer community, like bookshops and bars and such? The Vegas I imagine is so transient due to tourists, I don't know much about the culture of people who actually call it home. Thank you! This is a thing hugely on my mind, the access to a good international airport so I can escape places as needed! But ISU has its (very large) perks as well, so the decision is going to be prolonged, unfortunately. WEST COAST BEST COAST! your side of the Rockies is the definitive Better Side of the Rockies! I've been in six years of iterations of Draft (I know, I need real hobbies) and genuinely adore all the mods as human beings. They've been busy with real life stuff, and they do a lot of work to vet people who have requested to join (there have been past issues with programs trying to get in the group to see what people are saying, and the mods understand that allowing that to happen would ruin the core purpose of the group). They're all super, super kind, if you're finding yourself waiting for way too long and do want to reach out.

Thank you!!!!! My undergrad was a very, very, very strange place. We didn't have grades, and course requirements were super loose, so I was taking senior-level lit classes as a bright eyed and bushy tailed 17 year old. I tried dropping out after my second year because I wanted to move to Paris and be an au pair (I had spent the winter term living at Shakespeare and Co in Paris, writing about the tradition of American writers going to Paris, and fell so in love with the place and the people that I decided I needed to leave college immediately). The classes via correspondence were the compromise my professors and I created so I could stay enrolled, go to France, and learn in a more organic-to-me way than a traditional study abroad. ALLLLL my writing derives from those kinds of experiences, getting to live somewhere new or come at the traditional way of doing things a bit sideways. I was so lucky to be able to do these kinds of things in college, and I think I love ISU because I imagine having similar freedoms, but UNLV seems a little stricter on The Process, and I just haven't had that structure since high school.

Thank you! I am, I'm genuinely really, really proud of myself. Also an unfamiliar feeling! Institutional validation should not mean everything, but whew, it meant a lot to me this weekend. It's funny because I think I'd rather live in Vegas than Ames? I'm Jewish and gay, and worry that a small town in a conservative state may not be the best place for me. And I loooove the easy access to every gorgeous national park ever. Ames scares me a bit, I've lived in a more rural place (my small town in Malaysia) and I know I am not more productive when I'm bored, I'm just bored. BUT the possibility of interdisciplinary work from ISU is super exciting! And, on top of that, the programs themselves (ISU has an environmental bent, UNLV has an international one) are so different that I don't know how to weigh it! Which do I care about more, travel or nature?! AHHHH!

Thank you!!! This was MFA application round 2, grad school application round 4, grad school dreams and trying round 5. It's been a LOT of years of wanting this. I have no idea what to do with myself now. I genuinely am at a loss. I didn't think I'd get in anywhere, let alone have the luxury of choice. I'm especially thrown by the fact that both programs have specializations, deciding between them feels like two entirely different options. What kinds of questions are people asking current students and professors to get a sense of things? I've gone through all the Draft files and everything, but I'm still struggling to imagine myself in either place enough to figure out where I'd be best served.

You're in the wrong place, friend! This is a thread for MFA applicants in creative writing. Sorry about the self-doubt purgatory, though, it's horrible ❤️

Holy cow!!!! congrats!!!!

Hello! I got an acceptance for poetry via portal and then phone call for Iowa State University on Friday (portal)/ Saturday night (phone call). I was taking the weekend to be offline and heal from what I thought was just a suite of rejections, so the good news was SHOCKING. I was so overwhelmed, and then got a phone call from UNLV on Sunday night to throw me for a whole second loop. I couldn't be happier with these two programs, I write exclusively about place and space-- I spent a LOT of my undergrad abroad (I did my classes via email correspondence and lived in France for a year, went to Berlin multiple times for my thesis, and then wrapped up college and moved to Malaysia for a year), and then I literally started a journal of ecopoetics. So! Having one international program and one environmentally focused program is bananas. I feel like these two acceptances, more than any acceptances anywhere else, shows that what I'm trying to do in my work is legible. I am a genuine fit for these places, and the fact that they see that shows that my work is doing what I've been working to make it do. So much love for this forum, I wish I could make everyone as deliriously happy as I've been this weekend. (and now, I have the most terrifying, overwhelming decision of my life)

On the fee waiver convo: if you're a Fulbright grantee, or have done Teach for America, the Marshall Scholarship, or Peace Corps, there may be special waivers available! I don't qualify for a fee waiver based on income this year, but that didn't mean app fees weren't very, very painful. I was grateful that UNLV waived my fee and it makes me feel even better about their stated commitment to an international focus/travel/etc.

Hell yeah, here's to hoping I see you in Corvallis in the fall!!!

I've been WLed by Oregon State for poetry, and I know of at least one CNF WL as well. I think first rounds of acceptances have gone out to at least poetry and cnf, though I can't speak to fiction.

Waitlisted at Oregon State University! The waitlist email truly couldn't have been kinder, and now I'm in the nicest back and forth with one of the professors. I'm hoping beyond all words that other poets accepted to OSU get into their dream programs with all the funding they could ever wish, leaving me an open slot so I can go live in Corvallis like my little Oregonian heart desires

Oh absolutely. My UMass Amherst rejection was crushing because I just had this (unfounded) feeling that I was meant to be there. My other big one is UNLV. There are other programs I adore, programs that may be objectively better fits for me once I start looking at logistics more, but my heart has been with UMass and UNLV since the start.

pls let me know if you want more! forcing people to read my favorite books recommending books is my top hobby!

Hello! Congrats on Phase II! I also made it to that. I've noticed a lot of people didn't, which indicates that it is good news and not just a thing that happens to most applicants. I've tried to figure out how many people make it to Phase II before being ultimately rejected, and I haven't seen much (it seeeems like most people are WLed or accepted from Phase II), but I don't actually trust the data bc it's sparse and people underreport their rejections. If you hear anything, please report back! I am at the edge of my seat about Ole Miss.

Wahoooo! As a former bookseller, this is my JAM! If you're cool with YA, Crier's War (Nina Varela) was a really fun lesbian fantasy. You're a former lit major, so you may have already read Song of Achilles (Madeline Miller), but if you haven't, that's a phenomenal place to see old stories merge with new voices (also GAY). I just read Chasm (Dorthea Tanning, yes, the surrealist painter), which was horror and off the wall and just amazing-- also relatively recently published (2003? 2004?) despite Tanning's age. I liked The Water Cure (Sophie Mackintosh) for its deeply unsettling, psychological elements. And now is not the moment I'd necessarily re-read Station Eleven (Emily St. John Mandel), but if you want some fictionalized plague in your life, that book was one of my favorites the year I read it. Oh! And the biggest rec (in size and quality): The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton. I deeply believe that Catton will wind up being one of the largest literary voices of our generation, her talent is just unbelievable and her output is already tremendously impressive. The Luminaries is a why-done-it, an unraveling of a murder mystery. It's MASSIVE, so buckle up, but it's so artfully crafted that every little bit of length is done for a reason. I love the books mentioned (Dillard! ah!) and want to tack on The Poet's Companion (Kim Addonizio) to the list of good craft books. Usually I find my next one by seeing who is being cited and talked about, and then reading their stuff, so I've found that it pays to start with something general and entry-level and hone in on forms/eras/critics that are interesting. The book I'm reading now referenced George Steiner's On Difficulty, and it sounded fascinating, so I plan to read that next