MFA/MFYou

Issue Four, July 2010

Letter from the Editor:

As we here at MFA/MFYou celebrate the (roughly) two year anniversary of the website’s inception, we’re getting ready to make some exciting changes. While the primary focus of MFA/MFYou will always be to showcase and celebrate the work of writers who have studied in MFA programs versus writers who haven’t, we’re also (as those of you who follow my blog may know) interested in the writing life in general, the business of writing, how we write, why we write, and pretty much all other writing related topics.

As we head into another two years (and many more!), we’d like to begin publishing articles and interviews that explore writing and the writing life. We’re very open to suggestion on these pieces, and they don’t have to focus on the MFA or non-MFA experience. Have you got an interesting writing topic you’d like to discuss? Had a writing experience you’d like to share? Or maybe you know a writer or someone affiliated with a writing program who you’d like to interview. Give it your best shot, and then send it our way! As with our fiction and poetry, we plan to be selective with these articles and interviews. However, we’re excited to open the discussion up even further and offer another platform for writers to write (and read) about writing.

Now on to Issue Four already. Over the past two years, we’ve been delighted with the quality work that gets sent our way, and the work in Issue Four is no exception. On the MFA side of things we’re happy to present to you “Redemption,” a beautifully disturbing story by Rosemont College MFA student Jill Faith Neal, and “A Mother Hen,” an intensely felt poem exploring womanhood by Mills College MFA student Eboni Dunbar.

And, as always, our MFYou’s are holding their own too. Ocean Vuong’s skillfully crafted poem, “Convergence,” is as evocative as it is powerful, and Michelle Filippini’s story, “Behind These Walls,” is one of my favorites of all the fiction pieces that have been submitted to MFA/MFYou in our two years of existence. Filippini’s subtle, graceful prose weaves a story that ends up being about much more than it is about.

Ashley Cowger,

Editor