squarkshark

Anyone who hasn’t heard back from Iowa it doesn’t hurt to call the Dey House phone number and ask about your status! Unless you really plan to ask for a refund…😂💖 P.S. coping with the director of my top program saying I’m runner up for funding… what are the odds 1 out of 7 turn down a spot before the 15th? This is so stressful!

Rixor, I finally heard back from USF after contacting the right person, sellersh@ usf . edu she is the director of creative writing programs and has access to the waitlist. It is tiered. I hope that brings you some clarity, if you haven’t contacted Heather…idk what they’re on😭

All y'all in waitlist and funding purgatory I SEE YOU! I HEAR YOU! I FEEL YOU! Today I got my Tin House summer workshop and Iowa rejections (yay!) and found out GMU is funding 14 students instead of 20-24. It was a dose of Squid Game reality to put 30 admitted students in a Zoom and say "Nice to meet you, congrats! Half of you will make it!" Genuinely thankful to be in this position, and thrilled for everyone with acceptances and funding, but it also gives me so much anxiety I wanna throw up

Hi, third year fiction applicant here and FINALLY getting bites (1a/2w/3r/4p) I usually write 100% new stories in June-August, and workshop them until December application deadlines. Last year I took Melissa Febos' Queer Week workshop at the FAWC. It was DAMN EXPENSIVE, but I slapped it on a credit card. FAWC and Lambda Literary are awesome. The problem with my very first cycle was not my excerpts. They were technically good. However, they were formulaic, and my SOP... SUCKED. It did zero work to sell me as a candidate, connect my stories to my overall craft mission, or say anything about me. I started going to therapy and realized I was nonbinary. This year's SOP took me 20 drafts using Jess Silfa's Vanderbilt example. I talked about my gender journey, why I write, what scares me, why I write it, and why NOW. We're talking sex, death, boobs growing out of control, and Polly Pockets running ASMR channels. First sentence of the SOP was "This summer I was a Midwestern sea cucumber in an ocean of sexy trans Bostonian dolphins." Can't say this formula works for everyone- but fuck it! I hope this helps and/or excites you. The process is brutal, but it's a great chance to generate fresh content that feels authentically YOU