SewaneeLetters.com

Current Home: Toccoa, GA
Age: 35
Program: MFA
Year in the program: 3rd year in summer of ‘09
Blog/website: loblollie.blogspot.com

Fill us in on your background. Schools attended, work situation, etc.
SUNY Albany ‘01, B.A. Spanish
Spanish teacher in a private high school in Anderson, SC

What led you to the School of Letters program?
Had been plagued to write seriously for years and needed structure ( i.e. a classroom) and flexibility (i.e. a summer program)

What writing/academic projects are you working on currently?
I have a few short stories I am polishing that revolve around mother-daughter relationships and/or the idea of home and what that means.

Favorite class so far at Sewanee:
Literature of the American South

What would be your fantasy class or workshop at Sewanee, and who would teach?
A creative non-fiction class taught by Lee Gutkind

What advice would you give to any prospective students?
Come devoted to your craft. Come green and humble enough to be taught to write better. Come with the willingness to put yourself on a serious schedule.

What are you reading these days?
I recently finished Two Kinds of Decay by Sarah Manguso. (It was in a stack of free books that John Jeremiah Sullivan gave away at the end of the semester.) Right now, I’m absorbing morsels from Letitia Baldrige’s New Manners for New Times. Next I’m leaning towards finishing Gilead and then Home, both by Marilynne Robinson.