Five University Jobs You Can Get with Your MFA (That Aren't Adjuncting)

You have your MFA in hand and you're looking for a job. For whatever reason - money, lack of class availability, the desire to try something new - you find that you aren't looking for adjunct work. But you love the university setting and you don't want to leave.

When you're checking out the staff postings for your local university, here are some jobs to look for.

1. Academic Success Coordinator
Keep your eyes open for jobs in the student success center on your local university's campus. They will be the best bet for finding positions that still involve teaching or advising students if the English department doesn't have any positions available. There might be positions with career coaching, success advising, or even managing student tutors. This position has opportunities to give presentations on learning skills to classes when teachers are absent and to teach First Year Experience courses to Freshmen. The biggest downside to this position is that students can view their mandatory time spent with a success coach as punishment for poor grades.


2. Writing Center Teaching Assistant
At some community colleges and universities, there is a designated teaching assistant in the writing center. This position acts as a tutor to students, but also gives supplemental presentations on writing topics. For some teachers, this is a dream job. You get to have one-on-one interaction with students, helping them with their writing with no time constraints, and you don't have to grade papers. You won't have your own lesson plans, and you'll need to interpret the assignments made by English faculty, but you'll be at the heart and center of the kind of teaching that makes drastic improvements in students' writing.

3. Administrative Assistant
Working as an administrative assistant at a university can actually be a lot of fun. If  you work in the graduate studies office, you might have the opportunity to work with theses/ dissertations or schedule fun events, like the Three Minute Thesis competition. There are downsides to this type of work. You may have to work with budgets, take minutes at meetings, etc. And you will have to make peace with the ennui of office life and learn how to prevent ego damage: dealing with being called a secretary/ sometimes treated as if you're inferior. With this type of job, your co-workers can make or break your chance of happiness. So ask around to see which departments have good reputations for staff satisfaction. If a job comes open because someone has retired (instead of applied for a transfer to another department), then that's usually a good sign you'll like working there for as long as you want.



4. Contracts and Grants Coordinator
The professors you studied with during your graduate career probably spent at least some of their time preparing and submitting grants so that they could have more opportunities to do research and outreach. In any university, there is an office that manages these grant applications to make sure the professor has the best chance to receive funding. This job will help you learn about the proposal development and submission process and can be a way to get your foot in the door for grant writing. However, this type of work is stepping farther away from your roots as an academic, and comes with some high costs. You'll have little contact with students, as your primary contact is with faculty submitting grants. You will have to deal regularly with high stress deadlines, brush off your math skills to develop budgets, and there will be little if any writing.



5. Academic Writer
If you have any courses in communications, or any history in professional writing, then you're more likely to be able to find a job that has writing in the job description. At my university, the academic writer composes short articles on recent campus events, alumni who have received awards, and students who are participating in interesting projects. There aren't many of these positions, but they exist. So keep your eyes open.

Two additional points to note: 

1. Don't be afraid to put your creative publications on your resume. They were a great conversation starter at all of my interviews during my job search, and it shows potential employers that you have goals and aspirations outside of the 9 to 5. You're a hard worker and imaginative. Both bonus points that set you apart from other applicants.

2. Temp if you can. Universities love to hire from within. If you're offered a temporary position, it is a good way to start making contacts that can recommend you for permanent jobs later on. Most of the people I have met at the university started as a temp and then were hired on as permanent staff after a year. Keep checking the job board - you might have to apply to a job in a different department in order to make that leap. (Thanks to Amy for this tip!)

MFA Flashback: The Bound Thesis

Once I defended my thesis, the graduation process was far from over.

I was elated to be done with the oral defense of my thesis. It was a wonderful experience, and one that prepared me for future job interviews. But the saga of the thesis copies had yet to begin.

As a graduate student, your thesis becomes part of your university's legacy. The library, your department, and often your advisor will want a bound copy of your thesis. You may say, "that's nice, I bet I could just whip up a cost-effective copy through a print on demand service." But no! Alas, the path through this final requirement is much thornier.

In order to graduate, you have to organize the printing and binding of your thesis. The format must be approved by the Graduate School, and must include strange formatting like 1.5" left margins. The student is responsible for printing four copies of the thesis on 100% cotton paper, and then the university library organizes the binding of each copy.

To make a long story short, I will say that organizing the printing and delivery of your thesis from the other side of the country is a fate I do not wish upon you. If you find yourself in such a situation, I hope you are as lucky as I was and have an amazing department mastermind on your side like Leah Aronow-Brown.

Once my printed, unbound copies arrived at the graduate school it marked the last hurdle needed to confer my degree.

Now I had to wait.

The binding process takes a long time. Usually, they will not arrive until several months after your graduation date. I graduated in the summer, and I received my bound thesis copies yesterday, in late November.

I wasn't sure what the bound copies would look like. I'd never seen one in person. So I began daydreaming about green cloth covers with gold embossed letters, artisan embellishments in the interior cover.

But the thesis copy is more of an academic document, bound to be shelved in a library archive. It is still lovely, but in a more sterile way.

The cover is black but looks kind of plum in a certain light

Shadow in a rare still photograph

This thing is thick - a solid 1 1/2 inches.
The page total is right at 150.

The side is printed with my last name at the top
and the bottom has the date of graduation, August 2012.

Woot!

Still, it's pretty cool to see my name stamped into a book cover.

As a general warning: thesis copies are expensive. Paying for them was a joint graduation present from my mother and father. Some of the copies are mandatory, like one for the library and one for your department. You cannot graduate until those copies are paid for and arranged.

But you also have the option of ordering additional copies. My family members wanted copies, so we ordered several. I wish I had made a separate version of my thesis for my family and a few friends, either through a print on demand site or as a xeroxed and hand-crafted zine. I could have designed a lovely cover for it no problem, and would have made sure to include an Acknowledgements page (which in the rush and stress of my thesis defense I forgot to include in the university version).

I'm submitting several of my thesis stories to journals, both literary and genre, so I don't want to put them up on amazon as a collection at the moment. But a private copy for family would not be considered publication.

I think I might go ahead and see if I can make a few copies of my thesis this way. There are still family members who won't get a library bound copy, and friends and advisors I'd like to thank for their help during my MFA years. Mark Pantoja's Kickstarter short story collection was beautiful, and sits proudly on my shelf. I'd like to have something lovely to give to my friends as well.

But I think it is also oddly fitting that my thesis, This Apocalypse Won't Last Long Enough, looks like a book that would survive the apocalypse and might be found in a government stronghold that a few straggling survivors use as a way station.

My First Novel: Stepping Stones in the Mire

I recently applied for a fellowship that had me rummaging through my files for a screenplay I wrote during graduate school. I began the screenplay during an Introduction to Screenwriting course and expanded it during an Advanced Screenwriting independent study. When I opened the file with the name of the screenplay I had worked on during grad school, it was as I remembered it - a bit of a mess but with some great visual scenes.

I set into work revising it for a few minutes and then something ticked in my brain. Wait - what was that other file in my screenplay folder?

I went back and there was a title I didn't recognize. I opened the document and I remembered - I'd spent weeks rewriting the screenplay during the stint when I'd wanted to switch my graduate thesis focus.

This version - the revision of my graduate screenplay - was really good. The scenes were specific, the characters three-dimensional, the push of the story more likely to grab a reader or viewer and pull them in. It was surprising how big the distance was between the two versions. There was a leap from idea to execution, from mucking about and finding the story to telling the story with confidence.

Photograph by clrcmck
Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

I'm working on my first novel, aided by goals with my writing buddy, NaNoWriMo word counts, and nudges from writing friends. What I've found interesting so far is that I can already tell the difference between my original story concept and where the novel is headed. I spent quite a while brainstorming about this story, but nothing clicked until I sat down and started writing.

My worst enemy in this writing process is the voice inside my head saying that this is all crap. And of course this book will need to be revised. Of course. That's when the book is really going to start to sing. I can't catapult myself from one shore to the other via the clean air. I'm going to have to wade through the water.

Looking at an early and late draft of my own writing at this point, when I'm feeling adrift in a big project, has given me the drive to keep going. I'm confident that I can revise this novel and make it cohesive, deeper and brighter than this first draft. The strange trick is freeing myself to write without beginning that revision process too early, starting off an endless cycle of editing myself out of the story before it is even written.

How's your novel going?

MFA Flashback: Visiting Writers

J.T. Dutton and Me, 2010, Photo by UAF staff photographer

One of the best experiences during my time as an MFA student was the visiting writer series that my department sponsored. Even though we were in Alaska, my program brought amazingly talented and accomplished writers up to visit.

The visiting writer would give a lecture on Thursday afternoons about their craft interests and areas of expertise. These lectures were open only to MFA students and English faculty, so they were cozy affairs where you really got to  know the writer and ask questions. And the writer had time to respond to those questions slowly and with care. It was almost like taking a seminar class with the visiting writer.

On Friday evenings the writers gave a public reading open to the entire campus and community, followed by a book signing where the local bookstore provided copies for sale.

But there's another element of the visiting writer that takes place earlier in the week, around Wednesday or Thursday.

Second and Third year MFA students have the opportunity to participate in a one on one manuscript discussion with a visiting writer. The visiting writer only meets with a few students (there isn't much time for more), and there are usually around six visiting writers each year. So meeting with a visiting writer is a once in an MFA experience for most of the grad students in my program.

My thesis advisor asked me if I'd like to meet with YA author J.T. Dutton, and I was ecstatic at the chance. I emailed her around twenty pages of the novella I'd been working on, and wrote the date for our appointment in my calendar.

I was terrified of meeting Dutton. I was afraid she'd throw my manuscript in my face and tell me I was a horrible writer and that I shouldn't have wasted her time with my silly story.

Instead, she gave me one of the best critique sessions I've ever received. She went over some language and pacing edits with me that snapped the opening of my story to life. It was amazing to watch my story wake up from my lumbering prose just by a few scratch marks through extra words, a few arrows to rearrange sentences in the paragraphs.

Next we moved onto larger discussions about story, and about writing YA. It was the first time I had met someone who wrote YA fiction. So many of my favorite books are considered YA, but for some reason I had never entertained the idea of writing YA as something that MFA graduates did. But J.T. Dutton's novel Freaked was based on her MFA thesis at UAF. I think I had a prejudice that YA fiction couldn't be serious, and that only serious writing mattered.

At the reading on Friday night, J.T. read a passage from the end of her novel, and it is a reading that both my partner and I remember to this day as being an amazing experience. It was a beautiful passage about being at a Grateful Dead concert and the feeling of being in the crowd.

Freaked and Stranded by J.T. Dutton

J.T. told me something important during my one-on-one critique session. "This is a novel," she told me. "A YA novel."

That story is still with me, and I haven't written it into a novel just yet. But I know that I can, and that it can be as sad and serious as I want and still be a beautiful YA novel. And it can also be funny and geeky and talk about Star Trek, and those aspects might even make it a much better story.

A New Job Begins and a Piece of Paper Arrives

Last week I started a temporary job as a full-time administrative assistant. It's a wonderful position - great co-workers, a quiet but productive office, and it's on a university campus. In my mind this type of job has one really wonderful feature - I can leave it behind at 5PM and spend the rest of my time writing. 

But last week I was so tired that I didn't write at all. On Thursday I came home from work and fell asleep by 7PM, woke up for an hour, then went to sleep for the night. I'm hoping that my body readjusts fully this week, and I can have my wits about me enough to step into my stories.

One definite plus is that I've been able to read much more. I read an entire book in one week, something I haven't done since grad school. It was a shortish book, only around 200 pages, and it was a memoir, but that's still a step forward. I have to take a one hour lunch break in the middle of the day, and I spend most of that time reading. It's strange - my room of my own is my office. 

I'm considering taking my Eee PC with me and trying to write a little on my lunch break. No big goals, just a hundred words or so. Enough to push me into my novel project every day, so that my brain can work on it in the background as much as possible. 

On Saturday, a large envelope arrived in the mail. No padding, the edges torn. Mail from Alaska always comes in a bit chewed. Thank goodness the contents were in great condition:

My Diploma!

I know it's silly, but damn am I proud of this sheet of paper. Maybe proud doesn't describe how I felt when I held it for the first time. Maybe - excited. The kind that shakes the fibers of your heart a bit. 

I've felt in-between for a long time. It's nice to be out the other side. 

MFA Flashback: Why Alaska?

The dry cabin I lived in my last year in Alaska

I get asked about Alaska pretty often, usually at least once a week. I still have my Alaska driver's license, so the tellers at the bank are always curious why I would move from Alaska to Alabama. And at interviews, Alaska features prominently on my resume. It makes for a fun introduction.

In high school I knew several people who had never left Alabama, never gone to the Gulf of Mexico to see the ocean, never even taken a trip up to Tennessee. And since I've been back I've met a few people who have their limits - they won't cross the Mississippi River or go up higher than the Carolinas. Not everyone in Alabama feels this way about travel, but it is pervasive enough that I get asked weekly, "Alaska! What made you leave Alabama to go all the way to Alaska?"

The simple answer is that I applied to a school in Alaska, and they accepted me and gave me a Teaching Assistantship.

The more complicated answer is that Alaska was as far away as I could get from Alabama and still be in the United States. It's not that I hate Alabama, it's just that there's so much world out there - and a great way to learn about a new place is to go to school there. This gives you a built-in community, something to do, and a source of income.

It might have been easier if I had gone to graduate school within the contiguous states, or as they say in Alaska, the Lower 48. I would have had a car to take with me, I could have visited my family more often, and I might have been able to attend the AWP conference while still in grad school, which would have been a great source of motivation.

But I would have missed out on birch trees, snow, outhouses, giant ravens, the enormous mechanical beasts that scrape the roads late at night, moose in my backyard, blueberries beside the cabin, driving through the Yukon on a spare tire while being chased by bears -

and meeting the kindest, most inclusive bunch of people I've ever known. Fairbanks was the first place that ever felt like home. Alaska has a way of trapping people's hearts, of pulling them back long after they've left. It's kind of a joke among people in Fairbanks. "We'll see you again," instead of good-bye.

Once you've been to Alaska, it's easy to understand how people can move there from far away and never leave. And how the people who do leave always carry Alaska with them, a string pulling them home.

Here's a short video I made of my first winter in Alaska for my family, way back in 2007. It isn't fancy, the video quality isn't HD, but I think it captures some of the feeling of being in Alaska for the first time, so I wanted to share.




First Winter in Alaska movie from Jenni Moody on Vimeo.

MFA Flashback: Comprehensive Exam

In addition to coursework, students in the MFA program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks must complete two tasks: compose a thesis and pass a comprehensive exam. 

What is this exam?

• The exam is in February, and MFA students are expected to take it in their second year. It is a pass/ fail exam. If you fail, you can take the test again the following February. It is only held once a year and you must pass it in order to graduate. 

• The test is composed of five questions that must each be answered with an essay. Students answer two questions in the morning session (9am - Noon) and three questions in the afternoon session (2pm - 5pm), all on a Saturday near the beginning of the Spring semester.

• The exam itself is exhausting. The only book you are allowed to use is a dictionary. But you must reference (and quote if possible) several books in each essay response. 

At the end of the exam, upperclassmen were there with champagne and beer. There's no better feeling than finishing an exam you've been studying for for a year and having people who have been through the process before (and know how difficult it is) there to cheer your success.

But here's my story - I messed up with my comprehensive exam. I didn't plan for it. 

There are fifty books on the comprehensive exam reading list, and in order to pass, you need to read most (if not all) of them. Usually professors try to use at least one comp book as a text for their class, but this will only get you so far. Students must read a substantial number of books in addition to their class readings, and with most graduate literature courses requiring you to read one book per week, this can become an overwhelming task. 

The first year for a graduate student is tough. Graduate level workshops are like that scene in Centerstage; everybody was the best writer in their undergraduate workshops. But here, in the graduate workshop, you're a first-year. The first time your story gets workshopped at the graduate level is a serious wake up call. 

So after my first year of grad school, I was wiped out. (Did I mention we were living in the middle of Alaska with no car?) I was mentally and physically exhausted. That summer, I should have been reading for my comprehensive exam. But I couldn't bring myself to read or write. My brain felt fried, so I went into regeneration mode. I rode my bike to Creamer's Field to watch the sandhill cranes, developed an obsession with episodes of Mystery! and Globe Trekker that aired on public television.

I reasoned I'd study for comps during the winter break. I'd have nothing to do but read for a few weeks, and  the books would be fresh on my mind when it came time for the exam. 

Then we visited my family for the winter break, and time evaporated. As time drew near for the exam, I made a difficult decision - I decided not to take it in my 2nd year. If I took it while I was unprepared and failed, as I knew I would, then it would be much harder for me to take the exam when I was ready. 

I took the exam in my 3rd year and passed. The results of the test were given through individual letters from the chair of the department, placed in our grad mail boxes in the English office. I was on shift as a tutor in the Writing Center when word started going around that the letters had been delivered. There weren't any students waiting to be tutored, no appointments scheduled - I can't remember if I ran to the mailbox to get the letter or if my boyfriend picked it up for me. The letter was short, and without looking at it I can still remember one part: "in the end, I believe the most useful part of this process was the time you spent studying for the test."

Me with my comps pass letter, 2010

And this is absolutely true. 

When I realized I wouldn't be able to take the test on time, I got serious about studying for the next opportunity. The students in my year had formed a weekly study group, but I dropped out after a few sessions because I couldn't keep up with the reading and I was embarrassed. 

Luckily, there were several fiction writers in the year below me who were up for the exams. We started meeting every Sunday at Alaska Coffee Roasting Company. We made a schedule of books to discuss and designated a discussion leader for each text.

I wish I had a photograph of the four of us studying for the exams. The coffeehouse was always crowded and noisy. There was never enough table space for our coffees, sandwiches, piles of books, the binders of notes we were compiling. Our screenwriting professor, Len Kammerling, was sometimes there with a different group, and he'd wave to us and stop and chat. Often I would spot David Marusek, the science fiction writer, with his laptop. I never worked up the courage to go over and say hi. There were impassioned conversations about Melville, talks that helped me better understand my mixed feelings for The House of Mirth, and gradually there was a comprehension of knowing the texts much better than I could have if I had studied for the test on my own. 

I'm glad I didn't try to take the test my 2nd year, when I had not studied. My comps study group was one of the best learning environments I experienced during graduate school. And this experience converted me from a student who detested group projects, to a teacher who believed in their ability to inform texts and conversations on literature in a way that other modes of learning cannot. 

*

If you're curious as to the 50 books I read for my comprehensive exam, here's the 2012-2013 list. It changes a little every two years, some books are added and others dropped, but the scope and the spirit are pretty much the same. 

Post-MFA: The Job Hunt

Back in May, a few weeks after I defended my graduate thesis, I wrote a blog post about my deciding whether to try to find a job teaching or as an administrative assistant.

High on the success of finishing the last requirement for my degree, I felt sure that now I would have a chance at finding a job that challenged me intellectually and supported me financially. I might even be one of those people who could tell others "I love my job." I daydreamed about proudly updating my LinkedIn profile with "teaches at such and such community college" or "executive assistant at awesome non-profit."

Three months later, I realize how naive I was.

Here are a few things I've learned so far.

Your MFA Does Not Qualify You to Be An Administrative Assistant

It seems I'm not alone in my misconception that a Masters in an English field should make me an ideal candidate for an administrative assistant position. NPR recently published an article about a graduate with a Masters in English. He works as an adjunct, but is also searching for a full-time job as an office assistant. Frustrated with his job search, he decided to create his own Craigslist ad for a pretend job to see what his competition was like.

What he discovered was that most of the applicants had much more experience as an administrative assistant than he did - even as much as ten years.

I took for granted that my graduate degree in writing would show employers that I can proofread like nobody's business, that my official correspondence would win over grants and clients, that I'd be able to analyze customer service situations and form concise, specific responses that would clear all paths of conflict.

But being an administrative assistant is not just about writing. There's infinitely more to the job than that, and employers know it. They want someone who has experience with office-specific software (and I'm not talking about Microsoft Office), can handle a multi-line phone, and who knows how to work within the flow of an office setting.

I worked for a year as an office assistant before heading to graduate school, but that one year of experience is nothing. The only job I might be able to find as an administrative assistant would be an entry-level position, a $25,000 salary if I'm lucky. The competition for these is steep. And once the employer notices I've got a master's degree and have taught at the college level I'm done for. Why hire someone who will probably just leave in a year or two to go back into teaching or on for more school when there are hundreds of applicants who would stay put?

I interviewed for a receptionist position last week that paid $9 an hour. They told me I was hideously over-qualified and never called me back.

If You Want to Adjunct, Your Transcript Had Better Be Conferred

It is mid-August, and I've given up hope of being able to adjunct this semester. Classes in Alabama start on August 20th, and my degree will not be conferred until August 22nd.

The date of graduation all depends on when you defend your thesis. In order to have a spring graduation, you have to defend your thesis in March. I needed a few extra months to work on my thesis, and defended it in May. Due to a technicality, you have to be enrolled in 3 credit hours in the semester in which you defend. So, I had to register for 3 thesis hours during the summer semester. I only recently realized that the summer semester does not end until mid-August, and that the graduate school would not confer my degree until after the summer semester had ended.

I've applied to 23 teaching positions this summer, and I've only been interviewed for two of them. Most of the colleges sent me rejection letters right away, stating that I did not meet the minimum qualifications because I was "still taking classes."

I've sent colleges my degree audit, an explanation of the technicalities that are keeping my degree from being conferred, but the colleges are immovable on this point. Your graduate transcript must say "degree conferred" before they will consider you for an adjunct or full-time position.

Of the two teaching jobs I have interviewed for, I only felt that I actually had a chance at getting one of them. This interview - the "you were in our top 3" interview - I lost out on partially because I hadn't taught creative writing classes as the primary instructor.

The other interview took place at a rural community college, where I watched five other people interviewed during the two hours I was there, and they had an additional full day of interviews lined up. One man who had just been interviewed approached me in the parking lot and said "I'd wish you good luck, but I want this job." I'm not sure why this particular community college did not mind that my degree was not conferred - maybe they didn't notice until after the interviews, maybe they had to make a quota of so many applicants interviewed - but in the end I received the same result as all of my other job rejections: a form letter in the mail.

Some of the rejection letters have the name of the person hired for the job, and when I Google these people they have 30+ years of teaching experience, PhDs, book publications - all this for a job at a community college whose starting pay is $30,000. How can I even begin to compete?

This Degree is for Me

I loved getting my MFA. Nothing could have helped me grow so much as a writer other than going to graduate school for three years and focusing on reading, writing, teaching. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

But I'm seriously considering leaving my MFA off of my resume and applying to minimum-wage jobs. They won't build my career, I won't proudly announce them to friends and family, but I must find a way to make money very very soon.

When I set off for Alaska and my graduate degree, I thought I was leaving behind my days in an office. I thought there was a better life on the other side of the MFA. But mostly, there's just been the feeling of discontent. Of knowing I have so much enthusiasm for teaching and writing that is useless out in the real world.

Resources & Strategies

I may have dug my own grave with a summer graduation, but if you're a recent MFA graduate or an MFA hopeful, I wish you more luck. Here are some resources and strategies that have been passed on to me from other writers and MFA grads.

Connect with your local community colleges

• Find your state Community College System website (Alabama's is here). This website will post new job openings, and some states have a very helpful online submission system. 

• Email local community colleges with your information, or follow their guidelines for submitting an adjunct package. Then wait. Schools may not hire until a few weeks before the term begins. (Thanks to Ashley Cowger for this advice!)

• Look at the Adjunct Project to see adjunct rates for schools in your area

Check national databases for university positions

University jobs are a little harder to keep track of than community college ones. I've found the job boards at universities to be updated less frequently and for English jobs to be buried by unhelpful search criteria. These national databases have the option of searching for local positions, and are updated regularly. 

• AWP's job board - The best job board. If schools post a job anywhere, they usually post it here. Use it as much as you can while you still have your membership from being an MFA student

• Poets & Writers - not as many useful job hits, but still worth checking out. 

• Higher Ed Jobs - an excellent search system. The advanced search lets you weed out online-only colleges and you can specify the geographical and subject area. 

• Academic Jobs Wiki - Wonderful interactive wiki about creative writing faculty positions. People who apply update the wiki letting you know when the position has been filled, whether the school is doing interviews, etc. There's a separate page for literature faculty positions, and the wiki has a new page for positions each year, so it is easy to keep track of which positions are open. 

Look at jobs that aren't exactly teaching positions

While searching for English instructor and adjunct positions, I've come across a few job openings that aren't exactly teaching, but that seem to view teaching as a worthy credential. These usually have to do with working with high school or college students to plan their careers. The benefits of this type of job are clear: steady work hours with no take home work, steady pay throughout the summer, and a guaranteed level of income that is consistent from semester to semester. If you want to apply to these jobs, I recommend brushing up on your PowerPoint and presentation skills. So far, these types of positions are my most optimistic chance of employment. They aren't exactly teaching, but they might be a really good middle ground.

Consider teaching abroad

Teaching positions in countries like Japan or South Korea usually pay really well and can offer an opportunity to nourish your creative soul by visiting a new place. The application process can be lengthy and you may have to travel to a major US city for an in-person interview. But if you feel like you absolutely must teach and cannot find a position in the US, then there are many opportunities in other countries to teach ESL.

MFA Flashback: Office Space

I entered the MFA program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks with a Teaching Assistantship. In return for teaching one section of a beginning composition course each semester, my tuition was waived and I received a small stipend. 

Magazines about MFA programs urged me to consider TAships carefully. "Do you really want to spend your graduate career teaching instead of writing?" In the end, I decided that I wanted to take as few student loans as possible, and a TAship was the only way. 

What I did not realize when I started teaching at UAF was that learning how to teach would become an invaluable part of my education. I believe that being a teacher made me a better student in my graduate classes, and helped me to grow socially. 

All TAs are offered desk space on the English department floor. The desks are out in the open, somewhat divided by office partitions. 

My first year as a TA and as a graduate student, I had a small desk with the right side pushed up against the wall. There wasn't much space, but I was ecstatic to have it. 

First year TA desk at UAF

It was a small space, but I was surrounded by fellow first-years. If I was having problems teaching or writing a story, there were always people around to offer support and advice.

"How is your class going?"

"What do you think about Who Slashed Celanire's Throat?"

To have people who not only ask you how you are doing, but who are genuinely interested in the answer and will talk with you for twenty minutes until you feel better - I would have missed out on all of this if I had not been a TA. I would not have had a desk, a space where I could work and talk and run into my fellow grad students.

At the beginning of my 2nd year, I moved to a much larger office space that had been given up by a 3rd year student after he graduated. I had my own bookcase, a filing cabinet, lots of wall space, and a coat rack that I misguidedly covered in blazers.

2nd & 3rd year desk

The best aspect of my 2nd and 3rd year TA space was that it was good for hanging out. Sure, I had much more desk space on which to sort and grade papers, and I could roll my desk chair back and forth without worrying about knocking into anyone. But for the first time I had a cozy guest chair that was also out of the line of traffic.

My MFA friends stopped by to play with the dinosaur that made silly roaring sounds when you pushed a button, or to borrow a book to teach in class. We talked about the stories we wrote, the literature classes we took, the students we taught.

View from a visitor's seat

Before I left UAF, I had to clean out my desk space. What I couldn't keep I gave away, leaving a plant on one friend's desk, a plastic Gloomy bear on another. I turned in my keys to to the Writing Center and the 8th floor to Leah, the wonderful administrative organizer for the English department. Turning in those keys felt like losing the last link to all of the wonderful friendships I'd gained during my MFA program.

"Don't worry," Leah said. "You'll have new keys soon."

"The Internet is our new Writing Center. We can hangout anytime," another MFA friend said.

But as wonderful as the Internet is, as lonely as I would be without it, I still miss the experience of having a physical space amid a community of writers. These last two, long years since I left UAF I've been working on my thesis at my small desk in the corner of my bedroom. There isn't another chair in the room, just an Internet window open, hoping someone drops by. 

To Teach, or Not to Teach

"Don't feel like you have to be in a rush to prove yourself now that you've graduated," my sister told me over the phone last night.

But I do feel like I need to start accumulating more publications, and fast. Not only so that I avoid the post-MFA writing slump, but also so that I can build my resume.

I've been applying to jobs in two specific areas: teaching and as an administrative assistant. My feelings on the perfect job are ambivalent. Part of me wants a job I can leave at the office, with steady hours that won't drain my writing brain so that I can come home to my own stories. The other part wants a job that I will be proud of, one that makes me feel like I'm making a difference, even if it leaves less time for my personal writing.

But in the midst of sending out my resume and CV, I'm trying to keep a handle on the difference between wanting to teach because it is something I enjoy and wanting to teach because it can make me feel like a writer even when I'm not publishing any stories.

My CV for teaching prominently features my short story publications. While I was at UAF, two of our professors held a workshop and shared their CVs with us. For a teaching resume/ CV, your creative writing publications become an important credential. I think this document has bled its way into my mind, tricking me into thinking that landing a teaching job will validate me as a writer.

So I am trying to remind myself: That is one thing, but this is another. It's a phrase from a clipping that I taped inside one of my notebooks years ago and just recently rediscovered:

How do you find a job that doesn't drain the essential energies that you bring to participate in the creative act? How do you maintain those energies when you're a mother? How do you maintain them when you're a father? I mean, this is always the question. No matter what we do or how we live. How do you nourish those energies and live in life? 

We have to make a living. We want to be in the world -- to be engaged with other people. One has to know one's own temperament. I think of someone like Liz Rosenberg, a strong poet, and it's impossible to imagine her not teaching. She is so gifted at it. And she seems to be able to write her wonderful poems, and her energy is unabated. But there are the great writers who couldn't teach. Bishop, famously, was a terrible teacher. I always want to say to the young writers I work with, you can be an artist without teaching. You are an artist. You don't need an academy to tell you what you are. Whitman didn't teach. Emily Dickinson didn't teach. John Keats didn't teach. Rilke didn't teach. Let's go on and on. Let's make a list of all the writers who we read who didn't teach. Teaching is great but let's not put the equal sign between them. That is one thing, but this is another. 

                           -- Marie Howe, The Writer's Chronicle, May/ Summer 2010. (9).


Last week my grandmother pulled out a family photograph. "She was a teacher, and so was she, and so was she," my grandmother said as her finger hovered over the faces of great aunts and cousins. My mother, also a teacher, stood beside me as I looked at all of the teachers in my family.

I'd always vowed not to teach. I was going to buck that family inheritance. But then I went to graduate school, and I had a teaching assistantship to pay my tuition and help me live. And I developed a teaching persona, a person more self-confident and commanding than my every day self, the introvert writer. I loved learning from my students, and seeing texts through their eyes. It was the most rewarding work I've ever done.

When I'm gone, and someone in my family is saying my name as they point out the faces in a photograph, I want them to call me a writer. But after that, I'd like to be called a teacher, too.

The Story of the Story

I defended my thesis on Friday, and it went swimmingly. I now have an MFA from the University of Alaska Fairbanks (woot!), and just need to submit some paperwork in order to make it official.

The whole affair lasted about an hour: 45 minutes of questions, a few minutes for the committee to deliberate behind closed doors, and then a few minutes to tell me their verdict.

Over in an hour, and I've been stressing out about the thesis defense for years.

On Thursday night, I put out a request for advice from my MFA friends. It was amazing to hear from all of my great writer friends who've defended before me, now scattered across the world and doing great things.

One piece of advice, given by Greg, was extremely helpful:

Just tell stories.

I'd been thinking of the thesis defense as an interview, and that allowed fantasies of hardball questions to creep into my head.

But the defense was less like an interview with Piers Morgan and more like an author spotlight, like the kind Lightspeed Magazine does.

My committee wanted to know the story of the stories, where they started, the turning point in understanding a character, and my journey as a writer.

At AWP, Ashley Cowger told me that she felt like the thesis process prepared students for working with an editor, and I think she's totally right. My thesis advisor, Gerri Brightwell, was vital to the writing of my thesis. She asked me questions to make me dig deeper into my characters, to question whether a story needed to be told a certain way, to help me get a feeling for when a story was almost done.

If writing the thesis is an exercise in working with an editor, then defending the thesis is preparation for what will follow once your book is published. You need to be able to explain your story in terms of craft and journey. It's the second story that readers and writers love to hear, one that's been growing on its own during those late nights and early mornings when your eyes have been trained on the computer.

And I think it's important for writers to recognize and celebrate that the story of the writing matters, too.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks campus, Winter of 2008

Resistance Manifesto

As I prepare for my thesis defense, I'm going back through my materials from the classes I took at UAF. In particular, I'm reading through my binder from Forms of Fiction, taught by the amazing David Crouse.

David assigned a writing project during this course that I particularly loved. We each had to write a resistance manifesto. In writing, you're defined not only by the writing styles and ideals that you embrace, but also by those that you reject.

I took Forms of Fiction in the spring of my first year as a graduate student. The first semester of grad school is hell. It's wonderful in many ways, too. But it is an overwhelming load of coursework, learning to teach, and trying to write. The first semester breaks you down and makes you realize that you're going to have to work at writing if you really want to write well.

Then after that first stretch, you begin to rebuild your writing self.

This exercise was very cathartic at that stage of my writing development, but I believe it can be useful anytime you're feeling lost in the crowd of writers. Define who you are, and who you are not as a writer, and keep steering by that star.

RESISTANCE MANIFESTO

I do not want to have my work described as "good writing." Fuck that.

I do not want to be any part of literary snobbery that denies entrance to form or genre.

I will not pass through the charnel houses just to be published.

I will not camouflage myself in the gristle and shards of "good writing" to earn any position or award.

Fuck that.

I resist the urge to retreat into the safe arms of academia and forgo the world of the real.

I resist the urge to forget my childhood, the Southern strangeness that is part of my story.

I defy the division of images and text.

Booyeah.

I support the proliferation of writing through public forms. I will write and share my writing through unfamiliar means.

Saddle-stiched. Hand threaded spine. A copy machine mage.

I will share my life with my family and friends through zines full of images and words.

I will write as well as I can, changing the lens until I get the correct prescription.

I will structure these lenses in thick black frames and blue striped socks.

I am not writing for an editor. I am not writing for a magazine.

I am not writing to be entombed in a print quarterly.

I am writing to be found on a bus seat, a chance library sale find, on a table in a cafe. 

I am writing for the girl in the closet who speaks to her sister through the walls while her parents rage outside.

I am writing for the boy with long hair who lives in a house full of doors that are always closed. 

Studying for the Thesis Defense

Every true work of art - and thus every attempt at art (since things meant to be similar must submit to one standard) - must be judged primarily, though not exclusively, by its own laws. If it has no laws, or if its laws are incoherent, it fails - usually - on that basis. 

~ John Gardner, The Art of Fiction

I've got a little under two weeks until I defend my thesis, the last step I need to finish my MFA in Creative Writing.

The defenses are open to the public, but only the committee can ask the defender questions. Graduate students are encouraged to attend thesis defenses given by their classmates well before it is their turn to sit in the hot seat.

So how does one defend a creative thesis? Isn't it all subjective?

Yes. And no, not at all.

You have to write consciously. Lucking in to good characters and structure won't hold up over the course of a publication-length work. In the thesis defense, you have to describe the decisions you purposefully made as an author, whether you think they worked well or not, and how you learned from these choices.

The examiners also ask you to place your work in relation to the rest of the genre. Which authors are you learning from? Which writers do you reject?

And finally, how does your work intersect with the craft issues of your genre?

The books on my desk right now

To prepare myself to answer these questions, I'm reading over my stories, my revision notes, my notes from my graduate Forms of Fiction class, and a few craft books.

• The Art of Time in Fiction: As Long as it Takes by Joan Silber
• An immensely helpful book that makes me want to experiment more with different forms of time in my short stories. 

• The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot by Charles Baxter
• The essay "Unheard Melodies" in this book completely changed the way that I approach writing dialogue. 

• The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers by John Gardner
• The first time I read this book, I thought it was hopelessly droll. But as I get better at writing, I begin to understand more and more of what he is saying, and can understand why it is a classic (and appears on my university's graduate comprehensive exam).

• Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction by Charles Baxter
• Another text that is on the graduate comprehensive exam list at UAF. There are so many amazing essays in this book. Here's a snippet from the first essay, "Dysfunctional Narratives":
• "Sometimes - if we are writers - we have to talk to our characters. We have to try to persuade them to do what they've only imagined doing. We have to nudge but not force them toward situations where they will get into interesting trouble, where they will make interesting mistakes that they may take responsibility for. When we allow our characters to make mistakes, we release them from the grip of our own authorial narcissism. That's wonderful for them, it's wonderful for us, but it's best of all for the story" (Baxter 12). 

• The Half-Known World: On Writing Fiction by Robert Boswell
• The title essay of this book is wonderful:
• "I come to know my stories by writing my way into them" (Boswell 4). 

The English department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks has guidelines posted as to how to prepare for the defense, and also this bit of encouragement:

Although the examination might seem intimidating, it should also be rewarding: this is your chance (perhaps one of the few you will ever have) to discuss your work with experts in the field who are familiar with your writing.

I'm nervous, of course, but also very excited. It's been a long journey to get to this point, and I'm glad I was able to get here with a set of stories that are the kind I would like to read.

In a Rush to be Famous

After I graduated from college, I got a job as an office assistant. I made pretty good money, had regular work hours, tons of opportunities to move up the ladder of assistantry, but I was incredibly lonely. Not physically lonely. I was living with my boyfriend and had a friend who gave amazing parties full of interesting people.

But I was writerly lonely. Which is a different kind of evil.

I read blogs by authors and reviewers, freaking out because I hadn't gotten famous yet from writing. I reasoned that the only way to have writing friends was to become famous, and then I'd suddenly be hanging out with people whose stories I loved. 

I was twenty-four. A voice in my head whispered: it's already beginning to be too late. Feeling the walls of the office building closing in around me, I applied to several MFA programs and by the end of the year I was on my way to Alaska. 

Flash forward five years.

I'm sitting in a hotel room at AWP, talking to Ashley Cowger. We talk for hours. About writing, about stories, about our hopes and fears for the future - both within our writing careers and in our other lives. She's my kindred spirit. Her husband Damien comes in and we hang out together, playing games with their young daughter, Amalie. It's wonderful. A happy nook of friendship amid the vast chaos of a huge conference. 

The next day I go down to the bookfair and Ashley's at the Autumn House press table, signing copies of her short story collection, Peter Never Came. Damien's behind the table for the New Ohio Review, where he's the Managing Editor.

Ashley Cowger signing her book Peter Never Came at AWP 2012

Damien Cowger at the NOR table at AWP 2012

At the bookfair there's a sea of people, and I only know a few of them. But they're good friends, amazing people, and very talented artists. 

I met Ashley and Damien while I was at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Ashley was a year ahead of me in the program, and her stories were more polished and well-written than I thought mine could ever be. And even though we're both shy, we became friends. 

They invited me over for dinner before they left to move to the lower 48.
They came to my first public bellydancing performance.
We carted away their mattress and box springs when they moved away, thankful for the first real bed we'd have in Alaska.

At Clarion West, a Very Famous Author once came up to one of my classmates and ruffled his hair.

I was agog.

I had spent hours in bookstores reading Very Famous Author's books because I was too poor in college to buy them. VFA's stories changed what I thought was possible in fiction, and they made me feel like writing could not only be deeply affecting, but also fun.

"He's just a guy," my friend said.

And he's right. Very Famous Author may be a very famous author. But he's also just a guy. And once, long ago, he wasn't very famous. But even then, he was still a writer.

I wish I could go back in time and talk to myself.

This is what I'd say:

• Make writing friends however you can with people who are just starting out. 
• Join an online writing group. 
• Look up your city's local literary association. They may not publicize stuff on the internet. Be brave. Call their phone number. 
• Don't be in a rush to be famous. That's not what matters anyway.
• Push yourself to talk to people about writing, but don't push too hard. You've got a long time to take all the little steps you need. 
• Write. Read. Live. Read. Read. Read. 

I'm not sure if younger me would listen. But maybe it would lessen the stress I felt every day, and the fear that's still in the back of my mind of never being a good enough writer.

I'll turn thirty in May. I'm still not a famous author. 

But I have writing friends. Amazing friendships I found through my MFA program, through Clarion West, and through my local literary association. I'm not a lonely writer anymore, and that makes the writing so much easier.

They're just guys and girls and people. Just like me. 

Speculative Fiction at AWP 2012

The Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Annual Conference is primarily a literary conference. It's like World Con for literary writers.(Heck, there were even some costumes.) Many of the attendees either have earned or are currently earning their MFAs in Creative Writing.

I went in with the expectation that most of the panels, readings, and book fair booths would exclude genre writing completely. So I was very excited to find a small but active knot of genre-focused events.

Panel: "Beyond Pulp - The Futuristic and Fantastic"
My first genre panel at AWP was "Beyond Pulp - The Futuristic and Fantastic as Literary Fiction." The panelists were Anjali Sachdeva, Kate Bernheimer, Kevin Brockmeier, Brian Evenson, and Matthew Williamson. This panel took place at the Palmer House, which is beautiful but not a place I'd like to be trapped in all alone at night. It has the kind of opulence that couldn't have been pulled off without creating a few ghosts in the process.

The Red Lacquer Room at the Palmer House in Chicago

Fellow Clarion West classmate Maria and I sat at the panel, taking in the crazy splendor of the Red Lacquer Room. There were maybe ten or so chandeliers, each mounted in ornate appliques on the ceiling.

Chandelier in the Red Lacquer Room

At one point, the panelists started talking about Clarion, and how they knew people in the Iowa Writers Workshop (the most prestigious MFA program) who were graduates. Maria and I were practically bouncing in our seats. We wanted to wave our hands and go, "Hey! We got your Clarion Westies right here!"

The panelists each read a prepared statement or gave a brief talk on the relationship between the literary and the fantastic.

Some interesting points:

• Writers should practice free love when it comes to literary/ genre writing. Write everything. Love everything. 
• The artificiality in genre distinctions has more to do with marketability than content. 
• In genre fiction, online magazines have more prestige and better stories, while the print magazines are mired in nostalgia.  

Reading: Apocalyptic Literature

The next genre event at AWP that I attended was a reading of apocalyptic literature. The readers were Brian Parker, T.R. Hummer, Pinckney Benedict, Judy Jordan, and Kevin Brockmeier. 

At this reading I learned two things:

1. Kevin  Brockmeier is amazing and I must read all of his books. 
2. Apocalypse tales are better when they have a sense of wonder amid the horror. 

After the panel, Kevin Brockmeier announced that he had some copies of "Ten Great Novels of the Apocalypse", an article he wrote for Oxford American. The one moment of out and out kindness from a stranger that I experienced at AWP happened at this panel. I was waiting in line to get a copy of this article, and they ran out right before me. I walked away feeling a bit dejected. Then a young guy came up and handed me his copy. "Here, my friend got one. I'll share with him." 

After the Thursday morning elevator insanity, where people fought over a ride down, this small act of giving completely surprised me. I like to think that people who write or read about apocalyptic events are more likely to be kind in the days before the world goes crazy. 

Bookfair: Genre Journals

The panelists from "Beyond Pulp" mentioned two print markets for fiction on the borderlands of the genre/ literary divide:

• Unstuck - Open for submissions through March 13, 2012. 
• Fairy Tale Review - They're open for submissions for their Yellow Issue until May 31, 2012. 

Both of these journals had booths at the book fair. They're beautifully printed and bound. 

Fairy Tale Review and Unstuck

The small white square in the center of this photograph is a music CD, full of songs inspired by fairy tales. I can't wait to listen to it.

In addition to these journals, Western Colorado's MFA program was also there. They had a little sign listing all of the different courses of study, and one of them said Genre. Two of the people at the table were genre writers, and they were really enthusiastic about the program. 

Keynote Speaker: Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood was the keynote speaker this year at AWP. She was witty and funny and brief, and I loved her for taking hands with the sign language interpreter for a joint bow at the end of her speech. 

Margaret Atwood speaking in the Roosevelt Theater, Chicago

Atwood was asked to speak about the craft of writing, but she explained in her speech that she had never formally studied writing. In the end, she learned by reading and reading and reading, writing and rewriting and beginning all over again.

There was a book lottery for people to have up to two books signed by Margaret Atwood. I entered. I didn't win. But it was amazing just to be able to be in the same giant auditorium with her, and to hear her speak about working tirelessly to craft stories in an encouraging but realistic way.


The Ultimate AWP Event: Hanging Out

On Saturday, the book fair was open to the public for free. Westie classmate Nick Tramdack came over to the Hilton, and we spent hours hanging out in a hallway outside a ballroom, debating the virtues of past and present tense. 

Clarion West 2011 Classmates Maria Romasco-Moore & Nick Tramdack

Maria also introduced me to Meghan McCarron, the Clarion West alum who suggested that Maria apply to Clarion West. We spent a good twenty minutes in a busy aisle of the book fair talking to Meghan, who was super friendly and full of great stories and advice.

Missed Opportunities: Panels & Events I Didn't Attend
There were several genre events that I didn't attend. AWP is like that - there's always ten interesting things going on at the same time.

Here's some of the genre events that I missed:

• Readings & Parties:
• Wag's Review & Unstuck Reading, with readers Noam Dorr, Lucas Mann, Rachel Swirsky, and Julia Whicker. 
• Unstuck Reading, with readers Gabriel Blackwell, Ian Richard Jones, Meghan McCarron, Joe Meno,  Kiki Petrosino, Dan Rosenberg, Zack Savich, Francesca Thompson, and Matthew Vollmer.  
• Literary Rock & Roll with Audrey Niffeneger

• Panels:
• Women in Jeopardy: Crime Fiction
• Fallout & Facts: Creative Nonfiction in the Nuclear Age
• I'd Take Stephenie Meyer's Royalty Check: What Should We Be Teaching Our Students?
• Midwest Gothic: Dark Fiction of the Heartland
• Vampire by Vampire: Genre Writing and the Creative Writing Workshop

If you write genre/ weird/ fantasy/ science fiction stories and you're thinking about going to AWP next year, then you're likely to find a good number of events to attend and journals to discover.

For me, the best part of any convention, literary or genre, is hanging out with your writing friends. The genre people were especially open to speaking with the crowd after panels, talking about their journals at the book fair, and being introduced to genre friends. I was a little worried that I'd feel marginalized and lonely as a fantasy writer at AWP, but in the end it was a wonderful experience. 

Writing Rhythms

I'm up to my neck in short story revisions at the moment. Which means less of the fun "I'll fix this problem later!" typing, and more "Crap, how do I fix that problem?" staring at my computer screen. I have twelve stories I'm mending at the moment, making sure that the stories have forward movement and clarity, their backs sewn up into fulfilling arcs.

There's a lot riding on these twelve little stories. They comprise my thesis for my MFA degree. When they're finished, I will have to defend them in front of a panel of university professors. My thesis and its defense will determine whether or not I will be able to graduate with my MFA degree. And I need my degree to get a job teaching composition (and hopefully someday creative writing) at the community college and/or university level.

I have also taken the "all or nothing" approach to finishing my thesis. I quit my job working for a non-profit, where I worked 50+ stressful hours per week, and am now living on my student loan. So I have to make these days, hours, minutes, and moments count. Because I am paying for them, with interest.

The problem with this is that I have a hard time stepping away from work. Even if I am not physically sitting in front of the computer, my mind is still working away at my story problems. It's difficult to turn off the "how do I fix this story?" stress level.

Recently, I tried implementing a new kind of writing rhythm into my daily writing schedule. This advice came to me from Ellen Sussman's article "A Writer's Daily Habit: Four Steps to Higher Productivity" published in the Nov/Dec 2011 issue of Poets & Writers. 


One of Sussman's suggestions is to use "the unit system" :

Each unit is one hour of time. For the first forty-five minutes of that hour, you write. You do nothing but write. You don't stop writing. Then, no matter where you are at the forty-five-minute mark, you get up from your desk. You take a fifteen-minute break and you do something that lets you think about the work but doesn't allow you to actually do the work. 

Before I read this article, I had been dividing my days into two giant groups of time - working on thesis time and rest of life time. But I wasn't ever able to really transition from one to the other. I'd dread sitting down at the keyboard, because I was stressing over my stories constantly. I would already feel like I'd been working on writing before I even opened up the Word document.

But forty-five minutes - that's a manageable amount of time. I can push myself to be actively productive for a forty-five minute stretch, if I know that I can get up and walk around at the end of it. In those fifteen minutes I do the little chores that let my mind take a break. I feed the cats, do the dishes, check the mailbox. Sometimes I dance. And when I come back to my story on the start of a new hour, I feel newly energized. I don't always have Aha! moments after those 15 minutes, but the knots in my stories are usually a little bit looser, easier to pull apart and straighten out.

Making the transition between conscious writing time, and non-actively writing time, several times a day has helped me step away from the story world more fully at the end of the day. In the evenings I still read stories and novels, observe the world around me, and do all of those other activities that help nourish writing. But I take a few hours to breathe, to tell myself that the stories are coming together. And the next day I'm rested, ready to sit down and start to work.

Even if you only have an hour a day to write, I think this is a great system to try. I know that for myself, it is easier to be productive when I know that there's a break - or a change, no matter how small - looming just over the horizon.