Overview

The Solstice Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program hosts 10-day, on-campus residencies at the start of each semester. A select number of classes held during this time are open to serious writers who wish to audit graduate-level Craft, Criticism, & Theory courses. Each class is two hours long and costs $125.

Auditors must complete preparatory work and required reading for each class attended. Please double-check the reading requirements when you sign up, as we don’t necessarily have handouts for all texts. Unless the description notes that handouts will be provided, auditors must seek out these items.

Registration is generally open in May/June for July’s residency and November/December for January’s residency. Subscribe to our newsletter to ensure you’re alerted when our registration form is available.

Below find sample classes available for audit.

CCT700G: CRAFTING PERSONA IN NONFICTION (includes Graphic Narratives)

Cost: $125                                                                                                 

Date Offered: July 13, 1:15-3:15 p.m., Donahue Center for Creative & Applied Arts Room 214

This class will explore the facets of persona as described by Vivian Gornick from her work The Situation and the Story through examples from “straight” prose writers alongside graphic memoirists Art Spiegelman, Roz Chast, Lynda Barry, and Ben Passmore.

Goals & learning outcomes: Writers will learn a variety of techniques to create persona(s) which may allow for more effective writing into complicated and traumatic subjects. We will examine how these tools are especially accessible in graphic nonfiction (which includes a visual aspect of persona), and how persona is essential to all memoir writing, both in comics and traditional prose.

Required Readings (available on Canvas; more will be provided in class):

  • “Prisoner From the Hell Planet” by Art Spiegelman (CW: Suicide)
  • “Two Questions” by Lynda Barry
  • “Your Black Friend” by Ben Passmore

Reading Question: What persona is appropriate for your particular essay topic, and how do you access that persona through techniques in style and approach to subject matter?

Instructor: Jennifer Murvin

Jennifer Murvin is the author of the forthcoming chapbook She Says and story collection Real California Living. Her stories, essays, and graphic narratives have appeared in The Southampton Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, DIAGRAM, The Florida Review, Catamaran Literary Reader, CutBank, Indiana Review, Post Road, American Short Fiction, The Sun, Mid-American Review, The Cincinnati Review, Phoebe, and other journals. She was the winner of the 2015 American Short(er) Fiction Contest judged by Stuart Dybek and in 2017 was a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers Conference. Jen is an Assistant Professor of English at Missouri State University, where she teaches graphic narrative, fiction, and creative nonfiction. She serves as recurring faculty for the biannual River Pretty Writers Retreat in the Ozarks. Jen holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific University and is the owner of Pagination Bookshop in Springfield, Missouri. Find more at her website.

CCT700H: ACT YOUR AGE (fiction cross-genre)

Cost: $125

Date Offered: July 13, 1:15-3:15 p.m., Donahue Center for Creative & Applied Arts Room 317

 We’ve all read stories in which children speak like college-educated adults, 20-somethings have the perspective of 40-somethings in the throes of a midlife crisis, and older adults speak like Obi-Wan Kenobi. How can we avoid writing such clichéd and inauthentic characters?

Goals & learning outcomes: The purpose of this class is to closely examine the ways writers depict characters of diverse ages. While the focus might particularly interest those writing for young people, we won’t restrict ourselves to discussing child characters. We’ll explore what “age” means in terms of a character’s chronological age and years of experience, as well as in terms of the eras that have informed that character’s perspective. Indeed, perspective and point-of-view will be essential aspects of this exploration. Please come prepared for a presentation, discussion, and writing exercises. 

Required Reading (only one available on Canvas):

  • An Na. A Step from Heaven. (Any edition and format.)
  • Strout, Elizabeth. “Pharmacy.” Olive Kitteridge. (Available on Canvas.)

Reading Notes:

What is your largest challenge in portraying characters of varying ages? What strategies have you tried when crafting characters of differing ages? Which of these strategies have been successful, and which haven’t?

  • Consider two characters of different ages in the required reading. How have the authors portrayed the characters’ ages? What techniques have the authors used to craft characters who seem varying ages? What do you notice about how the authors use viewpoint to reveal ages, as well as how the authors reveal ages of non-viewpoint characters? Be prepared to discuss your answers with examples from the text.

Instructor: Laura Williams McCaffrey

Born and raised in Vermont, Laura Williams McCaffrey attended Barnard College of Columbia University, and then returned to Vermont to become a school librarian, answering to the names “Ms. Librarian,” “Library Lady,” and sometimes simply “Ms. Library.” A passionate advocate for the arts in education, she has taught writing and literature at Pacem School, an alternative school and homeschooling center, for fourteen years. Since fall of 2018, she also has taught at Champlain College in its Professional Writing division. For three years she was the Fiction Editor at YA Review Network, where she was honored to publish stories by established writers and teens. Laura’s speculative fiction short stories have been published in Solstice Literary Magazine, Soundings Review, Cicada, and YA Review Network. Her short story “Into the Vast,” published by YA Review Network, won SCBWI’s 2014 Magazine Merit Award for fiction. Her most recent novel, Marked (2016), is a young-adult dystopian fantasy as well as a mixed-format novel that includes comics story lines integrated into prose text. Laura is the author of two other young-adult speculative fiction novels: Water Shaper, selected for the 2007 New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age list, and Alia Waking, named an International Reading Association Notable Book. Alia Waking was also a nominee for the annual Teens’ Top Ten Books list and for Vermont’s Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award. Laura is currently at work on a number of speculative fiction projects. Visit her website.

CCT700I: A “NOVEL” WAY OF WRITING YOUR POETRY BOOK

Cost: $125

Date Offered: July 13, 1:15-3:15 p.m., Donahue Center for Creative & Applied Arts Room 315 

This class will explore the contemporary verse novel. We will review how postmodern poetry reclaimed its legacy of narrative (and escaped the long shadow of modernism) by adopting popular narrative forms—like science fiction, memoir, the Western, and crime genres—thereby giving rise to the burgeoning field of hybrid and cross-genre texts.   

Class goals & learning outcomes: We will discuss what distinguishes the verse novel from other book-length poetry and hybrid forms. We will review examples of novelistic elements—such as plot, dialogue, exposition, point of view, setting, characterization, and dramatic action—and discuss the unique challenges of incorporating these elements into our poems and our poetry collections. By the end of class, students will have a deeper appreciation for the verse novel, will have considered novelistic ways to fill the elliptical “gaps” of their poetry book manuscripts, and may even feel inspired to start writing a verse novel of their own.

Required Reading:

  • David Mason, Ludlow (Red Hen Press)

A handout with excerpts will also be distributed in class for those who don't have the book with them. 

Instructor: Craig Blais 

Craig Blais’ first collection of poems, About Crows (University of Wisconsin Press, 2013), was a finalist for the National Poetry Series and Walt Whitman Award before being selected by Terrance Hayes for the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. It was awarded the Florida Book Award gold medal for poetry. Craig’s second book, Moon News (University of Arkansas Press, 2021), was named a finalist for the Miller Williams Prize by former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins and also was a finalist for the Housatonic Book Award. His current book project is a long poem/memoir hybrid titled /The Vents/, which has had “chapters” published in Another Chicago Magazine, Arts & Letters, Gulf Coast, Harpur Palate, The Laurel Review, Mid-American Review, and Salt Hill. Craig lives in Massachusetts, where he is associate professor of English at Anna Maria College.

 

CCT700M: SPEEDING UP AND SLOWING DOWN TIME IN FICTION

Cost: $125                             

Date Offered: July 15, 1-3 p.m., Donahue Center for Creative & Applied Arts Room 315

We’ve all heard people talk about books they “inhaled” or, alternatively, books that “forced them to slow down.” What contributes to the way we experience time when we read? How can a story’s pacing impact our overall understanding and impressions of the story? And how, as writers, can we use pacing to enhance a reader’s understanding of the narrative and emotional beats of a story? In this class, we’ll talk about how to maintain narrative and emotional tension in fiction, as well as how techniques such as flashbacks, backstory, and flash-forwards can shape our stories. 

Class goals & learning outcomes: We will examine how pacing and manipulating time can change a reader’s experience of a story. We will also look at different ways to move through time in our fiction and work on generative writing prompts based on these techniques.  

Required Reading: (All handouts can be found on Canvas and here.) Please read these excerpts in advance. 

Reading Question: What do you notice about your experience of reading these stories, i.e. does time seem to speed up or slow as you read them? In what places? How does your understanding of the way these stories are paced contribute to your overall understanding and emotional engagement with these stories?  

Instructor: Gina Chung

Gina Chung is author of the novel Sea Change, which was named a 2023 B&N Discover Pick and a New York Times Most Anticipated Book; it was also longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her short-story collection Green Frog—from Vintage in the U.S. and Picador in the U.K.—also garnered critical acclaim. A recipient of the Pushcart Prize, she is a 2021-2022 Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellow and holds an MFA in fiction from The New School. Her work appears or is forthcoming in One Story, BOMB, The Kenyon Review, Literary Hub, Catapult, Electric Literature, and Gulf Coast, among others. Currently living in New York City, Gina is Korean American writer originally from New Jersey.

 

CCT700U: THE END IN POEMS

 Cost: $125                                         

 Date Offered: July 18, 1:15-3:15 p.m., Donahue Center for Creative & Applied Arts Room 315

This class will consider the possibilities for ending a poem. In doing so, we will look for patterns, tone, and the unexpected in four to six sample poems. 

Class goals & learning outcomes: We will study how poets use repetition, rhetorical patterns, the volta, narrative development, and shifts to lead us to concluding a poem. We will consider how Gregory Orr’s essay “The Four Temperaments” could apply to developing and breaking our patterns and use part of the workshop to generate a new poem based on these ideas. 

Required reading (also on Canvas):  

Recommended Reading:

  • Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End by Barbara Herrstein Smith

Reading Question:

What qualities make closure satisfying or revelatory?

Instructor: Tara Betts

Tara Betts is the author of Refuse to Disappear, Break the Habit, and Arc & Hue. She teaches at DePaul University’s Peace Studies Program and serves as poetry editor for The Langston Hughes Review. Tara coedited The Beiging of America: Being Mixed Race in the 21st Century, an edition of Philippa Duke Schuyler's memoir Adventures in Black & White, and Carving Out Rights from Inside the Prison Industrial Complex. She is coediting Bop, Strut, and Dance, an anthology of Bop Poems with Afaa M. Weaver. Her poems, essays, and short stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies.

Registration

Please select the classes you would like to take. 


Audit Policy

  • Auditing of Solstice MFA classes is offered on a space-available basis and requires the approval of the Assistant Director. Only the classes featured on the Audit List are available to the public.
  • Priority in class enrollment is given to matriculated MFA students.
  • Should an auditor later apply and be accepted to the MFA Program, classes taken prior to acceptance will not be credited toward the degree. The university will not maintain attendance or academic records of classes audited.
  • Auditors are expected to complete the advance preparation requirements for any MFA class; this will ensure that all participants are “on the same page.”
  • While priority in class discussions must be given to matriculated students, individual faculty members will determine the extent to which auditors may participate in writing exercises/workshop-style discussions. Faculty members may welcome or encourage auditor participation, but the baseline expectation for auditors is that they will only spectate. 
  • A non-refundable fee per course of $125 for members of the public.
  • Fees are also non-refundable for missed courses. Auditors who miss their scheduled courses may be given the option to audit a different course during the current residency.
  • Auditors cannot view recordings for courses in the event of a virtual residency due to FERPA restrictions.
  • Solstice graduates may audit free of charge.