Shannon Cain (fiction, ’05): Shannon was recently interviewed for Bloom:
Bloom: You were 39 years old when you started at the Warren Wilson MFA program. What made you decide to enroll in a formal program at that time?
SC: Oh, once I got started writing there was no going back. Writing was home; the path was clear. The workshop, the culture, the conversation. The books, the other writers, the teachers. I started going to conferences and soon enough found myself at Bread Loaf, which happily for me is infested with Warren Wilson people. All the conferencing and workshopping left me hungry for more. An MFA program felt like a necessity to me. I liked the low-residency format for all the reasons I still do, and I liked the people I met from Warren Wilson, and so I applied. The day I started that program is when my education really began. Now I have the astonishing good fortune to serve as faculty for another stellar low-res program, the Bennington Writing Seminars, which feeds me the goodness of the writing life. In Vermont! Plus the continuing education is amazing: the lectures, the guest faculty, the readings, the wine, the dancing.
Shannon is the author of the story collection The Necessity of Certain Behaviors
