Sample Texts for VCFA Students
MFA in Writing students…
at Vermont College of Fine Arts generally study for four semesters (dual genre students do five) in their chosen field, either fiction, creative nonfiction or poetry. Each semester involves a 10-day intensive residency on the college campus in Montpelier, VT, followed by roughly five months of study with a faculty advisor (usually five students per advisor per semester). Students are required to send their advisor five packets of written material including creative work and critical essays in response to readings. In the third semester, students are required to write a lengthy critical thesis as well as complete their creative work. In the fourth semester, they have to polish their creative work and present it in thesis form and write a lecture for delivery at their final residency. In any given semester, a faculty advisor can have a mix of first, second, third and fourth semester students. Summers VCFA offers an alternative residency in Slovenia for a small group of faculty and students. In the winter, there is a residency in Puerto Rico.
Sample Critical Theses
- The Consecution of Gordon Lish: An Essay on Form and Influence by Jason Lucarelli (fiction)
- Deforming Form: Outlier Short Stories and How They Work by Richard Farrell (fiction)
- A Visual Approach to Syntactical and Image Patterns in Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: Essay & Images by Anna Maria Johnson (cnf)
- The Use of Moralized Cityscape in Los Angeles Literature by Jill Glass (fiction and cnf)
- Shades and Mirrors: Character Gradation as a Demand of Resonance in the Novel by Vanessa Blakeslee (fiction)
- Techniques of Emotional Representation and the Construct of the Self in Three Short Stories by Rebecca Martin (fiction)
- Building the Maddening Dream: Techniques for Constructing & Conveying Fictional Worlds by Jacqueline Kharouf (fiction)
Sample Grad Lectures
- There’s a Theme for You (on thematic passage technique in Chekhov short stories) by Julie Marden (fiction)
- Plot Structure in Short Stories by Gwen Mullins (fiction)
- There’s a Reason They Call it Show AND Tell: How to Reveal Thoughts, Emotions, and Motivations Without Sentimentality by Laura-Rose Russell (cnf)
- The Mind’s Eye – Character Thought in Fiction by Erin Stagg (fiction)