The Best Part

A brief address to the Warren Wilson Winter 2024 graduates

 

Thank you for that kind introduction. And thank you, too, for all those who made this residency possible; they can’t be thanked enough: Alyssa and Caleb, Alex and Carlos, Deb and Rita. Let’s also thank the YMCA Blue Ridge staff who fed us, banked fires in the cold, and kept us safe and dry.

I want to save my biggest thanks, though, for the beloveds. The partners, the friends, the children, the parents, in the audience, out in the world, all of you who saw the graduates through. We spend graduation day celebrating the graduates and rightly so, but we should spend every day celebrating you, the people who made it possible.

You know who you are. You made dinner the night before a packet was due. You delivered tea and soothing words when the thesis wasn’t going well. You shoveled the driveway clear of snow at 5 a.m. in Wisconsin while your partner was in North Carolina, and then shoveled it the next day, and the next, and then, though it was hard to hold the phone since you were developing frostbite, you listened attentively when your writer called from Blue Ridge and said things were going ‘okay.’ That’s great, you said, and they said, ‘you don’t get it,’ and you didn’t, because you didn’t really have time to, because your daughter’s school was calling: she has a stomachache. It’s probably just gas, your writer in North Carolina texted, adding, BTW, I am EXHAUSTED #dance #gymnight #cocoanight #party, hashtag something else, who knows, you’ve stopped reading, it turns out it was appendicitis, and when you finally do text back your writer in North Carolina, you’re sitting on the couch with a glass of your own favorite anesthesia, using your final grams of strength to pick out, ‘no don’t come home, she’s fine now, we’ll see you soon enough anyway.’

Or that’s what my wife texted toward the end of a winter residency seven years ago, and my daughter did make it through her emergency appendectomy just fine without me, the neighbor helped with the snowblower, AAA was super handy when the car didn’t start, and –

Can I just say, though—spouses, partners, kids, parents, friends in the audience today? The dances, the receptions, the workshops, the bookshops, the thesis interviews, the lectures, the grad classes, the conversations that go so late into the night, that—look, it’s morning!—it really is exhausting, this experience. And wonderful.

Especially today. I once got into a debate that, like many of the best conversations at Warren Wilson, ended without a clear answer. The debate was this: what part of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers is the best. Not just good or great, but the best, the very peak.

Again, this may be a place where I must explain to the friends and family here why this is a debate. If you’ve spent money and time to travel all the way to western North Carolina to see someone graduate, this better be the best part of the program. At what school is graduation not?

Maybe…this one. Ask a dozen Warren Wilson grads for the best part of the whole experience and you’ll get a dozen answers. More than a few will say, ‘the call.’ When Deb, and now, Rita, called you to say you were admitted, and said the magic word, “congratulations,” and said it again when you insisted that it couldn’t be true.

Other people will tell you the best part is the opening lecture, everyone buzzing with excitement. Others will tell you about a favorite class or workshop, one that left them mouths agape, forty-five to sixty minutes that changed everything for you.

Some will say the very best part of the Warren Wilson experience was the part they were least looking forward to: the dreaded essay. Some will say the best day was the day the essay was done.

Or, no, it was the thesis, the day when, armed with a mug of coffee, a pencil, and a tenuously cleared calendar, you went through your thesis a final time and allowed yourself to think—shyly, not going to shout about it, but you know, from a certain angle, in this early light—this thesis was all right. You did good. This was time well spent.

Family, friends, that day when your writer came downstairs, circles under their eyes, not necessarily able to form words—and apparently unable, for weeks now, to do a single basic chore around the house—that day when they came downstairs with a quiet smile on their face and gave you a hug, that may have felt like the best day.

Well, it wasn’t.

The best day is what some fear is the worst day. It’s not.

The best part of Warren Wilson is tomorrow.

The best day is the day you leave, walking stick in hand, and return to that other life. To be clear, it’s not easy. It feels lonely. True, it feels amazing to read a book and not have to wrap your head around how you’re going to get an annotation out of this—and two others besides in the next few weeks—but it also feels a little nostalgic, a little empty. Where is everyone?

The best part is that they’re here. The friends you’ve made, the readers you’ve gained, they go with you, stand with you, read with you, write with you. Then there are the other friends you may not even know you have, the 1,150 Warren Wilson graduates worldwide, who, the instant you discover your connection—you’re a Wally, too?—will widen their smile. I guarantee this. In Paris. In Shanghai. In New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Boston, and even Milwaukee, someone already knows you, gets you, eagerly roots for you in all that you do.

Partners, parents, siblings, children, uncles and aunts and grandparents and friends, your writer is going to be a little confused tomorrow morning. It’s going to be the first day in a long while when they wake up and say, “what’s next?”

Here’s what you tell them—what’s next is the best part, the very best part. Getting back to work. Back, when all of us have your back.

Congratulations to you, then, supporters, for getting your writer to the cusp of this wonderful new life, and congratulations to the graduates, too. You have taught us all what ‘best’ really means.

 

Liam Callanan

Black Mountain, NC 

January 2024