Guild Member, Tery Griffin Reports on the Vermont College of Fine Arts Postgraduate Writers Conference

Tery Griffin

In August I spent a week participating in the Postgraduate Writers Conference at the Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier. The conference was started 16 years ago, as a summer immersion program for writers who already hold MFAs or have equivalent experience. Workshops at the conference are small, consisting of six writers and one faculty member. For short fiction, the faculty writers were David Jauss and Ellen Lesser. Other genres included the novel with Connie May Fowler and Lee Martin; poetry with Cleopatra Mathis; poetry manuscript with Natasha Trethewey, David Wojhan, and Kevin Young; creative nonfiction with Richard McCann and Sue William Silverman; and writing for young people with Carolyn Coman and Louise Hawes.

I'll start with the nuts and bolts, the workshop itself, since that's what attracted me to this particular conference. David Jauss, with whom I worked, was an excellent teacher and workshop leader. His extensive notes on my manuscripts would have been daunting had they not been both kind and so helpful to the work. In addition to the in-class critique, writers had an hour-long meeting with their faculty member, which I also found useful.

At conferences I've attended in the past, both the work and the level of critique by students was uneven, due to the range of writers from beginning to very experienced. At PWC, everyone was experienced. In my group, five of the six of us had MFAs from the VCFA low residency program; the sixth had an MFA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. I was very pleased with the level of work my group mates submitted, and with the critiques I received on my own work. The discussion was consistently at a high level. We got along so well and respected each other's work so much that we're sending one another revised stories in September. And we talked about starting a small writers' retreat, sans faculty -- someplace for writers to go, hang out with other writers, and do some serious writing.

PWC offered a very full week of other writing-related events. Each faculty member did a reading and a lecture, in addition to leading a workshop. That's a dozen lectures and a dozen readings in one week! Lecture topics included everything from how to give a reading to working with a child narrator to working with the poetic sequence. Although I primarily write fiction, I attended lectures in different genres and learned something from each one. The readings by the faculty were always enjoyable and included both published and new work. Particularly powerful was Richard McCann's letter to the organ donor whose generosity saved McCann's life. Everyone remained seated, silent, after that reading.

A pleasant surprise was the quality of the student readings. Each day, the students in several classes read from their work. Writers had five minutes, which does not seem like a lot of time, but people fit impressive work into their time slots while still respecting the time limits. Confession: when I go to conferences, I often skip the student readings, since it's impossible to do everything and you do need some downtime. After attending the first student reading at PWC (I had to; my group was reading), I went out of my way to attend the others.

Most days, something not directly related to writing was offered as well: a walk in a beautiful Vermont park, swimming, and parties off-campus. Since it's impossible, at least for me, to do everything at a conference like this, and I filled my days soaking up things related to writing, I was not able to get to the off-campus events. People who did go talked about having a wonderful time at them. On-campus evening events included a folk group and "Po-Jazz," in which writers read work and a jazz group improvised around it.

This year, there were noticeably more women than men at the conference. Ages ranged from people in their 20s to people in their 60s (and perhaps older; I'm guessing here). Housing was in dorms on single sex floors, and with the sparsity typical of dorm rooms that are mostly unoccupied for the summer. People who had come to this conference before or who had done their MFAs in low residency programs came prepared with clocks and photos, extra pillows and towels from home. Since I drove, I could have done the same but was somehow not paying attention to what life in a dorm was like. While I would not want to make a habit of living in a dorm, even without the amenities I would bring next time, I found the dorm life fine. You can choose a single or have a roommate. Given the intensity of the workshops, lectures, readings, and other activities, I would recommend a single.

You can also purchase an optional food plan, which I did. Food was provided by a crew from a New England cooking school and was acceptable at best. There were always vegetarian and vegan options, which I was glad of since I'm a vegetarian. If there was a weak point at the conference, the food was it. There was a very large salad bar, though, and you could help yourself to fruit from the fruit bowl. People who have attended the conference in the past said the quality of the food varies by year, so it's possible that the food next year will be great. One way or the other, you have to admit that there's something especially appealing about food you have to neither cook nor clean up after!

This is a conference I would recommend to a serious, experienced writer. I intend to follow who is on the faculty in future years, and perhaps attend again myself.

Visit Tery Griffin's website .