Washington Square. On air is the audio town square for the Washington Square Review. Lansing Community College's literary journal. Writers, readers, scholars, publishing professionals, citizens of the world, gather here and chat about all things writing. Hey there. This is Melissa Ford Lucken, editor for the Washington Square Review. I'm here today with Quintin Collins, assistant director and alum of the Solstice MFA program which is housed in Lasel University. Hey, Quintin.

Hey, good morning.

It's nice to see you. So tell us a little bit about yourself before we kind of get into the whole MFA program stuff.

Sure. So I currently live in Boston. I've been writing poetry since 8th grade and I earned my MFA between 2016 and 2018, and since then I've been able to publish two full length collections of poetry and I'm currently shopping around a third.

Nice. What, what about poetry intrigued you? How did you get started with that?

So the funny thing about me and poetry is that I actually started it because I was planning to sing as part of a talent show in eighth grade and I luckily had some friends who either were very caring or very uncaring to tell me I can't sing. So right before the audition happened, I had to figure out what exactly I was going to do. And I wrote a poem in about five minutes and very terrible in rhymey love poem that somehow catapulted me into just writing poems for years to come. And it started off with stuff like that. Then I got into high school and got angsty, as we all do, and wrote some stuff that was more related to social issues. And then once I got into undergrad, I was originally a psychology major. And when I figured out that as much as I loved a lot of the theory of it, I didn't really want to do the practice to make a livable wage, I somehow thought that going to be an English major was going to be much better in terms of that. And so, yeah, I ended up switching to creative writing as my major in undergrad and then worked in marketing and then ended up going to grad school. So it's been a long time, a long time of a start, but it really kind of just began with an accident, I guess a lucky mistake, and then turned into a passion I decided to pursue.

In the early years when you were still in high school and writing poems, did you share them with people?

Oh, yeah, quite a bit. And that was maybe, maybe depending on, depending on the case, it was either a good thing or a bad thing. But I, I, I really did get to a point where I started to focus a little bit more inward around high school because I was focused on this idea of getting better and like taking it seriously. And I didn't believe that a lot of people around me had that kind of knowledge or interest. We did have like a lit mag at my high school and we did have meetings and we shared work then, but that was probably the extent of it. I didn't really start doing open mics or anything until I was in undergrad, which in the Chicago area, when I went to undergrad, there is a very vibrant slam poetry scene that's been going for years. That's supposedly the birthplace of slam poetry in terms of the competitive sense. And there's also a big youth poetry scene out there, which I had no idea existed until I went to college. So. So for me, it was kind of weird being that interested in poetry and then getting there and realizing there have been so many people who are my age who've been like performing poetry since the time they were like 14. So, yeah, you know, it took a while, but that was kind of the point where I really started getting out there, reading my work in front of people more and trying to pop up at open mic scenes where I. Where I could and maybe fail or succeed. But that's kind of what comes with the territory.

Okay, that sounds a little bit like a happy accident number two, just landing in the right spot. You mentioned the competitive aspect. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah.

So slam poetry, I mean, I, I love the nature of performance. I'm not really big on competition, weirdly, although I submit my work to competitions now. But in the way that slam works, you essentially have potentially multiple rounds where you read a poem and then a, a panel of judges. In the time I was going, it was like they just picked 10 people or however many from the audience to say, hey, do you want to be a judge? And after you read your poem, they rate you on a scale from 1 to 10. Kind of like a gymnastics meet or something. So, yeah, for me it was, it was a little institutionalized in that sense. But yeah, I mean, people, they did this, you know, and they still do. They go and they read their poems. Usually there's a three minute limit on your poem and people judge your work. And if you win, maybe you win some money, if there was a collection taken, or maybe you win a stack of books or.

Yeah, sounds pretty exciting. A little bit stressful, but also exciting. And it's a good opportunity to get kind of instant feedback.

Yeah, it definitely is. I think that for for the. For the vibe. For the vibe alone, it's great, you know, and I think that in terms of bringing in a lot of younger individuals into poetry, expanding the space of which people can hear poetry, like where they hear poetry, and then also teaching people that poetry is a lot more than what they typically get in grade school, which is very narrow, very white centric, very male centric, giving them a sense that, like, oh, hey, there's more poetry being created and it can be created by you. This is something you can do. It was definitely a way that kind of opened things up. And I think beyond slam being what it was at that time when Deaf Poetry jam was around, you know, people being able to watch performance poetry on HBO was like a big deal. You know, you had a lot of folks who, for many reasons, you probably never think in their life they'd have a national audience for their homes, you know, watching at home. And that really brought it to a lot of people, myself included. I. I do credit to hip hop music is like my big inspiration in terms of what my approach to poetry would be. But my first experience with poetry outside of the classroom was my parents watching deaf Poetry jam at night. And I was like, all right, if I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do that. I wanna do that thing that they're doing.

I was thinking when you were talking about the slam poetry, the sense of community that would come from an experience like that. And also it sounds like people could participate to the degree that they are called. They might go and listen, they might read their poems, they might be a judge. So they kind of get to step into it at the rate that they're called to do it. Instead of, like, compared to what you were talking about, like, in school, when you're basically told which poems you're going to read and you're kind of told how to interpret them. So those two environments to me sound really different. And I could see how somebody would feel much more excited in a slam poetry community than they would, you know, at school being assigned a particular poem.

Oh, for sure. You don't even have to compete. They have what are called sacrificial poets who, like, there's maybe like two or three of them who read beforehand. And they're not there to compete, but they will be judged. It's kind of like giving people a sense of, like, the run of the show. Like, you know, all right, so here's what's going to happen. Poet's going to read a poem. You're going to be really Loud, really supportive, and then here's how the judging is going to go. And yeah, I think it's a, it's a nice entryway for people who, like, are kind of shy at first to get up there and read without feeling like they're being evaluated too heavily until they can get over to the point where they're ready for that kind of thing. So, yeah, I think it's, I think it's definitely still a dope space for people who want to get started.

If someone's listening and they're thinking, that does sound pretty neat, I want to do that. How could they find any of that of thing near them?

So usually in terms of slam spaces, you're looking for some very small venues in a lot of, a lot of places, especially if you're outside of a major city. So the thing about Chicago is again, like, there's just, you know, there, there's, there's a, a history there, particularly at the Green Mill, again, another place where supposedly specifically slam poetry started, the venue being the Green Mill. But if you're in any other major city, it's really just, you know, you kind of have to hop on Google and find out what are your lit spaces in your city to figure out if not only is a local slam listed, but maybe to connect you with some people who might know about it. Or depending where you live, if you don't have a slam already in your city, then you can actually just host one yourself, which is the way that a lot of these start and expand. There's also slam communities at college campuses. A lot of colleges may have teams. They may be like, you know, student organizations or clubs. So not like official like teams. But yeah, they put together like four people who were, maybe have like a faculty advisor who coaches them or they coach themselves and they compete. So, you know, but the thing is someone has to start all these things. Someone has to start it somewhere. So maybe it's you, maybe you're the person who starts the local slam.

I like that. So you participated in these communities and then what is it that made you decide to go and get your mfa?

So the crazy thing about like living in Chicago and living in a city with such a vibrant literary scene, especially because by the time I graduated undergrad, the Poetry foundation had finished its construction. It was open, they were having events there. It's like this is like the premier poetry space in the country in terms of like everybody you could think of who's a big name poet, who you'd want to see read poems, is going to come through this space. And there's a lot of poets who live in Chicago. And all this is to say that it's very shocking that you could find a point where you're writing a lot of poems and you have no one who you can talk to to share your work, get some feedback, read their work, and get some feedback. So I was working at this marketing company at the time, and in the office I was in, there were about at least 80 writers who worked in that office. But the thing is, a lot of the people who came to that job, because this is at the end of, like, the Great Recession, a lot of the people who came to that job were not people who studied writing. They were not people who planned or ever intended to be writers. At the time when we were writing for content marketing, what Google needed for the algorithm was just as many 200 word stories as you can pump out on your company blog. So you didn't really need people who really knew how to write that well to do that job. So I'm in a room full of 80 writers, but I'm really probably in a room full of, like, you know, 75 people who write for this job and five writers. And talking to my friends from undergrad, I was like, hey, like, no, we got Google Docs. Let's, like, swap some poems, give each other notes. And what happened is I realized over time, not only which I cared a little bit less about, was I not getting any notes on my work, but they weren't even sending me work of theirs to read and give them notes on. I was like, hey, I want to read your stuff. And so I kind of had this overwhelming feeling of like, wow, I'm in such a huge city, which is a vibrant literary community, and I'm also in this office space where I'm working with, you know, 79 other people who are calling themselves writers while they're sitting in these chairs. And I'm not really talking about writing, which is really insane. So that was the point where I decided to really look into MFA programs because I knew that I was like, all right, not only do I need to seek a community of people who are really serious about this right now and put myself in that space, but there are things that I don't know and I want to know. And for me and how I operate, the best way to do that would be in a very confined and very structured environment for two years of my life, which is what made me decide to do it. And so, yeah, that's what made me look into Programs. I started looking at low res programs, in particular, low residency, meaning that students are only on campus two times a year. The rest of the time they're working remotely with faculty from home. Because I liked having a job. I liked having money, even though it wasn't that much for what I should have been making. And I liked having health insurance. So, you know, those are reasons I was like, I have to look into programs that allow me to keep my job. Although I did apply to some full rest programs, particularly one in Chicago is, well.

So I think that having done a low residency MFA myself, I can say that that is one of the best reasons to do it is because it allows you to do what you want or need to do with your moving forward in grad school, but also, you know, maintaining your life and being, you know, a person that has rent to pay and that kind of stuff. So let's talk a little bit about what you got out of your mfa. So you went in with these expectations of being in a structured environment and being more committed and around other people who were committed. So talk about, how did that turn out once you got there?

Yeah, so as you mentioned, when you're kind of talking up at the start, like, I not only am the assistant director for Solstice, but I went through Solstice. And one of the things that the program really emphasizes is the sense of community. And for me, in terms of what I was looking for, what I was missing, that was what. What I really wanted to get out of it more than just writing some better poems, but that sense of community. So after I graduated, I not only had a better sense of intentionality with my writing, like, my first drafts are stronger first drafts. I can diagnose what's wrong without having to tear everything apart. But I also have some good friends who, you know, not only I can send work to, but they can send me work. We continue to push each other to write. So, like, my first, like, six months out of. Out of the program, I spent nearly, if not every day, at least once a week, sending publishing opportunities to a couple of friends and just saying, all right, so here's where you're sending your book. Here's where you're sending your book. And we were just doing that back and forth to say, like, all right, like, hey, here's where we're submitting our manuscripts. And that kind of. That kind of friendship and that kind of community among writers is the thing that sometimes we need most. Because even if you still live in a vibrant literary city, like I live in now, in Boston, a lot of the work we do writing is very solitary. You know, it's. It's not that we can go and see our writing group every day because we have to go to work, we have to pick up our kids from school. We have to cook dinner and wash the dishes and then go to bed and do it all over, over again. So it's nice to have someone who can say, like, you know, hey, I'm just going to text you if I see something that you should submit. Should submit your book to. And that's something that an MFA program can definitely give people that goes beyond, you know, am I going to publish a book in two years and then get a movie deal out of it and, you know, win a national book award? Really, it's just, you know, finding the idea of finding your people, people who are, you know, not only interested in this, but very committed to the amount of work that goes into getting your work published, and that work doesn't stop. Also, once you have a book, you know, you have to continue to promote your work. You have to reach out for all these readings. And sometimes it's nice when you have friends who are in other states who can tell you, hey, all right, you're. You're trying to put it together, a book tour. God bless you on that effort. But while, you know, maybe a higher power can help you in certain ways with getting this going, I know a local bookstore that I have a connection with. If you were looking to come to the state where I'm at. Those are the kind of things that, like, you know, I would say, are most invaluable coming from programs like, you have these people who are going to be your first, your second, your third, and your fourth and your fifth readers on your work. And again, you know, when you. When you touch down somewhere, anywhere, anywhere in this country, you can hopefully have somebody who's there who can link you into their local literary scene, whether it exists already or maybe they're trying to build it. Maybe they're saying, like, you know, I'm in the middle of Oklahoma and we don't have a slam poetry scene here. I'm trying to build it up. Would you like to come crash on my couch and maybe be, like, the first feature for it so that we can kind of generate some interest? Those are the kind of things you can. You can get with these programs.

So we've got connections, community commitment. Those are all good reasons to consider starting an MFA life and mfa, like, beyond the MFA lifestyle. I like. I like the way you put that. Can you think of any other reasons why you think that someone should look into an mfa? And I know we've talked a lot about poetry, but Solstice also has fiction and creative nonfiction. But everything that you said about your experience, I would echo myself and say that that is what I also got out of my MFA program was commitment, community, and connections. So what other things could somebody have in their mind when they start to look for a program?

I think if you really want to teach creative writing at higher education level, it's, it's a step. It may not. I mean, it is a terminal degree, and MFA is a terminal degree, but depending on where you're looking to apply for jobs, how competitive that market is, the MFA may be a step. It may be a step to a PhD, and again, that just depends on your goals and your aspirations. But if you are looking to teach, you think that's something you want to do. You know, it's, it's a step you're likely going to have to take to get there. And in certain cases, it's a qualification criteria. In other cases, it's about giving you the knowledge to confidently, you know, teach a future generation of students to, to write. But the job market for any, any position to higher ed in any field, any discipline, is definitely very competitive. And so I usually tell people, like, I won't, I won't say that. Don't get the MFA and think you're going to get a teaching job immediately. Like, it can happen. It's going to be challenging, but it can happen. And if you learn not only the language you need to learn, as you know, as an educator, whether you are already or you're just starting off with what you're going to learn in this program, you also have to get to understand, you know, when do you need to apply for these jobs? There's a cycle, you know, it isn't just like you just send in an application any time of the year. There's a time at which you send it in. There's a time at which interviews happen. There's a time in which decisions happen. And you know about all these cycles and when to apply and all these things, like, these are the things that are going to make you having that degree to get a teaching job worthwhile, because it's not as easy as just saying, all right, I've got the degree, hire me. But because of those challenges and because of the fact that for a lot of us who do creative writing, it's not exactly something where we're going to just like off the bat, be making a ton of money on this. This is for a lot of us, not our day job. You know, go to an MFA program because you want to be the best writer you can be. And as cheesy as that can sound, like at the end of the day, that's the key thing that you can definitely take away from a program. You may not be able to get a job in creative writing right away. The type of community you form with your peers may be a little bit different, or depending on whether you're in full res or low reserve, the manner in which you're able to keep in touch with those people may be a little bit different. But ultimately, like that's the base level goal, right? You get this degree so that you can come in writing what you're writing and writing it better. And if you focus on that, everything else can. It has the potential to fall into place and it really sets a clear expectation for why you're supposed to be there. Right. Because you really need to focus in on, you know, not all the distractions outside, you know, not what's, what's happening with like this new hot best writer who's got like a six movie Netflix deal. Like that stuff is cool. And I think it's great that a lot of writers are getting these opportunities now because there's a little bit more wiggle room for it. But none of that can happen for you unless you really spend that time in that program trying to get better at your writing. And so, you know, if you're sitting there thinking like, I could improve, I could do a better job with the, the work I'm doing on my own, in isolation, that's definitely a reason to consider a program because for some people you need that structure. Yeah, that's actually a big piece too. Structure. If you need guidance not only in the craft of writing, but you need the program to provide guidance in terms of like when to write, how much to write at a certain time. Because hopefully by the end of your program you should have developed for yourself some kind of organizational structure for when you're going to write and how you're going to write and how you're going to protect your writing time. If you are somebody who needed a program where it allows you to have your life that you already have and do grad school at the same time, and maybe it helps you pivot because potentially you have a system that's in place and then a global pandemic happens that completely disrupts, disrupt your Structure, while at the same time you're becoming a father. And then after all that ends, you have to figure out, how do I get back to my routine? You know, my routine was writing at 5:00 in the morning. Well, for two years of my life, everybody was home all day for every hour. So writing at 5 o'clock in the morning and also when you're up at, you know, four, trying to feed the baby maybe isn't going to happen. So how do you build and structure within that chaos? And then when the chaos is over, how do you get back to some, you know, similar routine, the same routine, or something completely different? All things that you can gain in a program.

Yeah. Learning to be more intentional and plan and, and to, to be flexible. When your original plan doesn't work and you have to switch, but the intentionality is still there, you're, you know that you're going to do it. You'll just do it differently.

Indeed.

Yeah. I was thinking while you were talking about when a person is in an MFA program and they start to share their work, it can be a different experience because you're surrounded by other people who are also serious and committed and want to produce the best work. And so that can be the first time that somebody shares their work in that way, like in a workshop and they're getting feedback and they can get a different kind of feedback in an MFA environment than they would get at, say, like at a, you know, a library that has a writing group or if you're emailing work to friends. And sometimes friends don't really, like you said, they don't give you the notes that you're looking for. They don't kind of dig in the way that you want them to. Can you talk a little bit about the sort of workshop experience that a person can expect when they go into an mfa?

So I think the etiquette piece is a key one that can be harder to attain when you're working with a local writing group. And I don't just mean like, people being respectful, as Meg likes to tell our students. Meg Carney, the founding director of the program, reining in your intelligence so that you can prioritize your compassion. Sometimes it's really just understanding the etiquette around how to comment in a way that is useful for your peer. And even with some undergraduate creative writing programs, as I'm coming to understand from seeing conversations with my peers who do teach at the undergraduate level, they don't necessarily get some of this understanding of like, all right, when you get Someone's short story and you want to put notes on it. Circling a sentence and saying this is good is affirming, but it doesn't necessarily help the writer. So what is good about the sentence? What effect did it have on you as a reader? And how can you convey that to the author so that they can then understand what's working in their work? I didn't like this. Okay, so what wasn't working? Is it also a one off issue that doesn't necessarily need to be commented on? A workshop space, Is this something that maybe you just write a note and say, hey, this sentence felt clunky because the syntax just isn't fitting the rhythm of everything around it. And then in workshop you talk about maybe some overarching issues with structure in the story that recur things that happen more than once. And there may be a better use of that student's time as you're giving them your feedback along with everybody else in the group. These are things that our faculty definitely set their own expectations for their workshops. But some of that is at the front and as the workshop is going, directing people toward having these thoughts. And so the great thing about it too is with the program being set up the way it is, you have students who are graduating in a particular residency sitting in the same workshop as some students may be in their first residency in their first semester. They get to see that modeled for them from people who over time got to get better at that kind of thing. Like commenting in ways that are helpful for the person who is being workshopped, but also helpful for themselves. Because you should intend to see things in your own work as you're talking about someone else's, that can be helpful. And I think really for me, it's getting yourself in a space where everyone is excited for everything that's presented, even if it's not theirs, and excited for the potential of what the writing wants to be. I'm a little woo woo in the sense of saying, like, all right, so I understand what you, as the author wants, but what does the poem want to be? What does the story want to be be? And really getting in that sense of thinking about what is the intention, not only of the author, but really what is the intention of the work so that everyone can be excited about that intention and talk around that and have that shared feeling. I think those are the things that workshops do well when they do them very well. Because we can't deny that there are some workshop experiences that are challenging, some workshop experiences that are just directly toxic or Discriminatory. I know that. You know, the talk about the Iowa model, the long standing Iowa model of the person being workshopped can't talk while their work is being discussed, has its criticisms that people are talking about and talking about ways to move past that. There's a mini text now about how to conduct workshops in ways that are more conducive for our thinking in this day and age, particularly getting out some of those biases and some of those practices that are rooted in things tying back to oppression because we want these experiences to be for people to bring in things that they want to write, but to write it better. You know, the analogy I get people for, like the solstice approach to workshops is, you know, you have a house that you want to build. You have your dream house, you know, that's your dream house. It's what you want to look like. I can't tell you what your dream house has to have. I can't tell you, you know, what it needs in certain ways. But I can maybe if I'm, you know, the person mentoring you on building your own house, tell you, like, here are the building codes you have to, like, think about. You have to put a foundation down. Like, that's like a thing you have to do. And also beyond those things that are just completely necessary to keep your structure standing up once it's done, I'm going to teach you how to use the tools that you're going to use to construct the house. But ultimately you have to design it. You have to put forth the work to build it. But the idea being that I'm going to teach you how this particular saw. Here's a miter saw, here's when you use a miter saw, here's how it works, here's how you, like, use it without injuring yourself. And then, like, go forth and build your house. Like that should be, at least in my opinion, that should be the format with which we approach workshops because we want people to come with again what they want to write, but show them how to do it in the best way possible so that we're not imposing our own biases on their work.

I love that because then they will leave the workshop excited about their piece and feeling like, like you said, so the conversation becomes excitement around the piece and what, you know, what they can do to it to make it stronger and better the way they want it to be.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, like the idea of, you know, what your peers are doing in that space, right? Giving them that same knowledge so that as they go through it might be. All right, so you're, you're presenting a story in workshop. And I'm going to say you presenting the story is you need to, you need to cut a piece of lumber and you were using a rip saw. And when you were using this rip saw, you were cutting across the grain. And maybe your peer says, hey, because you're cutting across the grain, maybe, you know, use a cross cut saw instead. Right? They're not telling them, like, okay, like, now that you wrote this, I want you to put a pool in the backyard. They're like, I think that maybe for the current thing you're doing, you're just using the wrong tool in the wrong way. And, you know, again, it's about fostering that understanding not just among the faculty so that they help students, but like the students, like you learn this. So then, like the faculty members just continuously get to like, step back and guide and guide and guide, put their hands in for a second, say, all right, everybody, let's rein it in, let's direct it. Let's make sure we're mindful of time. But also, like, they can step back and just be part of the conversation along with the students who were there.

I was thinking a couple things. One of them is that I like what that, that analogy because it puts an emphasis on the tools which the author can then write, or author, whichever we want to call them, they can use those tools again on their next project and the one after that so that they maintain the skill and then they're growing skills, not just writing pieces.

Exactly.

The other thing I was thinking about is it might be good if someone was looking into MFA programs to find out what they can about their workshop models and their workshop philosophies. And that might be something that they could use as a way to decide which programs they wanted to look more seriously at.

So I think so. I mean, I think it's a good question to ask. And the thing is, when you're, when you're looking at all the programs, there's a lot of things you can consider, right? You can consider price, because price is a big one. Because again, we're, you know, for a lot of us, this is functioning as a second job that is maybe not generating a ton of income. You want to look at faculty. You know, are there faculty who are writers you admire or faculty who's writers? You maybe don't know their work, but when you read their bios, you think like, oh, I would love to work with this person and study with them. And then, yeah, talking to the people who run the programs and asking questions about the culture, about the philosophies that guide the workshops. If you were looking full res, where you're going to be in class all the time, what kind of culture guides the classes you're going to take? If there's mentorship, you know, what are some approaches that faculty have to mentorship? Can you talk with any of the faculty for a particular genre you're considering applying in? Can you talk with alums for that genre? Can you talk with current students? There's a lot you can ask. There's a lot you can ask of these programs to make your decision. Because I don't ever really like to think that, like, you know, I do think Solstice is. Is an amazing program and is definitely doing some things that a lot of other places maybe aren't doing at all are doing to the same scale. But I also understand that, like, Solstice isn't necessarily the program where everybody needs to go. And so when I'm talking to prospective students, I, you know, I essentially tell them who we are. This is who we are, this is what we do, and this is where we can foster you as a writer. And then I kind of. That leaves it up to them to decide, like, is this what I personally need in an MFA program? And hopefully, if we're the first program that they've talked to, which in some cases we are, or if we're the second or the third and need to go back and call somebody again, they have some other questions to ask where they can make some better decisions about things. Like, you know, maybe I talked to this other program and I just asked them, how much does it cost and how many credits is it? And I hung up the phone. All right, I need to go back and ask, like, so, you know, how many. How many people are in each workshop and why, you know, why is that number? You know, at this point? What philosophy guides that number? What is the culture like? Because I talked to this other program, and these are things they talk to me about, and I want to understand that, how that works for you, so I can make the best decision about whether or not I want to come to this program, which maybe was your first choice. But then you learn things about culture where it's just like, yeah, you know, we have. You come here, we have you write, we want you to publish a book in a year after you graduate, and so we can, you know, shout out that other book publication, and that's it. And you may not like the sound of that. And that's, you know, something that you should feel encouraged and empowered to ask these kinds of things about programs because you're given, you know, these institutions, two years of your life and two years of your creative life that you were potentially carving out from a lot of obligations. And it's totally fair for you to try to, you know, make sure that they are winning you as much as you were trying to win your place in their community.

Right. And that kind of takes us back to where we started. Given that a community that will last really a lifetime is one of the things that you're looking for when you go into an mfa, that it makes sense to take the time and ask the questions in advance and make sure you're going to the place that's going to be the best community for you as a writer and as a human.

Yeah, that's true. I mean, I know some people who, you know, they went through MFA programs and if there was ever a chance for alumni to come back and do anything, they never would, you know, they would never set foot back on whatever campus they got their degree from. I know people who graduated from MFA programs. And I mean, your creative thesis, depending on your genre, can be a book length thing and you do have to submit graduate level work. But I tell our students and I tell prospective students, it's not done. When you turn that in for graduation, it's not done. For some people it's going to be, you know, one in a million. It's going to be Pulitzer Prize ready at that stage. But for a lot of us, it's. It's not done. You're going to keep working on it after you graduate. There are people I know who have graduated from their programs that don't even feel like it was graduate ready because they don't feel like the rigor was where they needed it at, or the support was where they needed it to be, or a combination of the support and the rigor such that they felt confident in what they produced after two years of their time. And I think that's important. Like, you should feel like, even if, like. And it's funny because I actually just look back at an old vert. My first book is my creative thesis from Solstice. And I was looking back at it in our, in our, in our archive files and I was like, wow, like, I cut some really good stuff from this in terms of what's actually the book now. But, like, were there some things I was just like, yeah, I really didn't have it together yet, like, of course I'm gonna do that because of the fact that I'm constantly growing as a writer and I'm learning more, and that's healthy. But if you look at that thing that you spent, you know, two years of your life either working on or working toward, depending on how you approach your. Your projects, when you come into the program, you should not be that disappointed in it. And you can figure these kind of things out by asking these questions. To think like, am I going to truly want to be part of this community I'm signing up for later? Are the people going to be people I want to stay in touch with? Is the work I produce here stuff I'm going to be proud of, that I'm going to want to talk about? Am I going to want to evangelize about this to other people? You know, am I going to want to sit and say, hey, if you're thinking about MFA programs, ask me about such and such program. I'm happy to tell you about it. That's what you're looking for. I think that you potentially could get a good sense of that from these conversations. It's going to take some work. It's going to take some time. You're going to have to be on the phone, you're going to have to be on email a bit, asking a lot of questions, reading a lot of stuff on these websites from these programs. But. But it's work that's well worthwhile for again, two years of your life of graduate study.

Can you think of. So if somebody's thinking, all right, I'm going to do the research, going to find the program that's right for me, can you offer maybe one or two tips when they start to get their application materials together, pieces of advice you'd offer them?

Yeah. So I would say for the personal statement, if the program that you're applying to, like Solstice, clearly lays out the questions that they want you to answer, answer the questions. Not only does answering the questions do what the admissions committee wants you to do, it also makes it really easy to eat up the page count by just doing the base of what you're asked. Because I know that personal statements can be big and can be scary. And she's like, I have to talk about myself and make myself sound good. But if they're kind enough to give you questions about what kind of things they want to cover, just answer the questions and you'll notice that you've already covered all the pages you need, and you just need to Finesse the language so that it actually makes sense and reads a flow and clarity. When you're submitting your manuscript, submit your best work. Don't submit the stuff that you're maybe not sure about, the stuff that you just wrote that morning. Like submit work that you are really proud of. Yes, you are going to get into this program and two years later you'll be like, wow, I sent this in. This was terrible. How did they let me in? That's going to happen probably. But at the time what you perceive to be your best work, send that work in. Because there's no reason that you want to give an admissions committee, you know, not the best impression of who you are as a writer and as a reader, right? We, we want to see your best work and we want to see, at least for Solstice, we want to see the potential, right? We want to see not just where you are, but where you can go when you finish this program. Because we want to know the pathway that we need to take to help you get there. And so, you know, send your best. And also be honest. You know, be honest about things and don't skimp on, especially don't skimp on the details about what you're reading. If you're reading books, make sure that if you're not a person who can recall things that specific things you like about them, what they're doing, take some time to write it down because you can't do this work as a writer if you're not doing your work as a reader. That is a personal opinion I hold, but it is one that I, I would say very much comes through in terms of applications that succeed, succeed and don't succeed is you can tell who reads and who doesn't.

I agree with the importance of reading and writing being, you know, two sides of the same coin. And it keeps you in conversation with other people that are, you know, maybe working on in areas where you're working and that's your community. So why wouldn't you want to read there and hang out there?

You would think.

But all right, if people have questions for you and they're interested in learning more about the program or maybe asking you something, kind of follow up question, where can they get in touch with you?

Yeah. So if you go to the Lasell website, so that's LA S E L L edu, you can navigate through that to find the Solstice MFA program web pages within it. Or if you just Google Solstice MFA program and LaSalle University, you can usually find us pretty quickly and that's if you want to contact me about anything Solstice related. All that information is there. If you just have questions about writing. Me as a poet writer, poetry, looking for events and all that, that's all on my website. My website is Q C O L L I N S Writer. So Q. Collins Writer and then dot com. So that's where you can find information about me. Get in touch with me if you want to book me for something and you know, otherwise I'm on social media. I'm on Instagram. Also at Q. Collins Writer. I have a Facebook that I. I mostly spend time seeing what other people are posting than interacting other than saying I'm doing a reading somewhere. But yeah, I'm on the Internet a little bit. I'm scaling back quite a bit as social media is burning to the ground in various directions. But I'm out there.

Okay, beautiful. I'll be sure to include those links in the show notes so people can find either you the assistant director or you the poet.

Perfect. Awesome.

Well, thanks a lot for coming in today and appreciate everything that you've offered.

Well, thank you for having me.

Thanks for stopping by the audio. Town Square of the Washington Square reflection. Until next time, this has been Washington Square on air from Lansing Community College. To find out more about a writers community and literary journal, visit lcc.edu. wSL writing is messy, but do it anyway.

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