We Have Extended the Deadline!
Dear Poet: An Anthology of Essays on How Correspondence between Poets and Mentors Fostered the Writing of Poems
Dear Community of Writers:
Friends of Writers seeks essays, short craft memoirs, and excerpts of letters for a new anthology that will explore the central and unique teaching tool of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College: the exchange of letters between students and their faculty mentors. We are looking for edited exchanges, essays, and other writings that capture a lively, moving portrait of the program. Unlike prior anthologies, this one will be the first to include work by poetry alumni about their apprenticeship.
We are inviting poets to submit an abstract describing the way in which a set of letters between you and a faculty mentor illuminated your work, changed your process, or otherwise affected the making of a poem. In this abstract, please make reference to any supporting material pertinent to sections of letters between you and a faculty member. Ideally, your essay will demonstrate how an exchange of letters fostered your writing and deepened your understanding of craft.
The anthology will comprise a collection of essays. These will include letter excerpts demonstrating how the exchange of letters and evolving drafts helped you to understand and develop yourwork as a poet. The range of topics may be capacious: from, for instance, “how my poem evolved,” with examples from exchanges as well as portions of the revised poem, to “advice from my mentor,” commenting on larger aesthetic issues and the work of the imagination. If you considered but rejected a mentor’s advice, we’d like to know about that as well. A possible essay might include selections from two or three teachers with differing views and mention of how those perspectives changed your process. Another might be how the correspondence about reading poems affected your understanding of your own poetic process.
The essay should put forth an idea, illustrate a craft issue, or show the development of a poem into its final incarnation. We will be especially eager for exchanges that introduce a variety of craft elements and processes, thereby illustrating the depth and breadth of the dialogue.
The abstract should be between one and three pages; the finished essays should be between 10 and 25 pp. double-spaced, roughly 4000 to 12000 words, inclusive of quoted material. The final essay will be double spaced in a 12pt. common font (such as Arial, Times New Roman, and Garamond).
We welcome facsimiles of annotated manuscript pages. If your example includes a published poem, we will be asking you to secure the permissions necessary to reprint, as well as permission from your prior supervisor/s to publish excerpts from the letters. As with Friends of Writers’ previous anthologies, we will ask contributors to allocate all royalties to the scholarship funds. We hope the anthology will comprise 15 to 17 pieces. However, the publishing house will make all the final decisions regarding acceptance of essays. Alums Ellen McCulloch-Lovell ’12 and Abigail Wender ’08 will serve as Managing Editors of the anthology, with editorial help from Annie Kim, Maeve Kinkead, Joy Manesiotis, and others from the Friends of Writers community. (Look for periodic announcements about who’s joined the editorial board). We anticipate an introduction by one or more poetry faculty members, who will serve as Executive Editors.
We are confident that this anthology, like the others, will serve as an important resource to writers and teachers and that it will become a text to return to, again and again–in much the same way that you return to your seminal trove of letters. And like the other anthologies, this collection will be an important asset to potential students who are considering application to the Warren Wilson College MFA Program.
We are very excited to launch this new project. There is really nothing out there like it. Questions? Issues? Thoughts? Send to the email address below and Abby or Ellen will respond. Those of you who have already submitted, thank you, we will respond to you individually.
Please submit your abstract by August 15, 2018to [email protected]and expect a response by October 15, 2018.
With appreciation and thanks,
Ellen Bryant Voigt
Founder of the MFA Program for Writers
