Let's talk the MFA. Steve Huff and Christopher Kennedy take a moment to discuss their experiences as teachers in the MFAs. We talk about the issues of diversity confronting MFAs, the current relevance of it, how teaching has affected their writing lives, and the kind of impact the MFAs can have on students. Christopher Kennedy also shares some of surreal poems with us.
About Steven Huff:
Steven Huff is the author of two books of poems, The Water We Came From, and More Daring Escapes, and a collection of stories, A Pig in Paris. He is a Pushcart Prize Winner in fiction, and his poetry has been read by Garrison Keillor on The Writers Almanac. He teaches in the Solstice low-residency MFA Program at Pine Manor College in Boston. And he is the founding editor and publisher at Tiger Bark Press. He lives in Rochester.
About Christopher Kennedy:
Christopher Kennedy is the author of five full-length collections of poetry, Clues from the Animal Kingdom (BOA Editions, Ltd., forthcoming, 2018), Ennui Prophet (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2011), Encouragement for a Man Falling to His Death (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2007), which received the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, Trouble with the Machine (Low Fidelity Press, 2003), and Nietzsche’s Horse (Mitki/Mitki Press, 2001), and two chapbooks of poetry, Once I Saw You Laughing While I Was Feeling Sad (Midnight City Books, 2015) and Greatest Hits (Pudding House Press, 2003). He is the co-translator, along with Faisal Siddiqui and Mi Ditmar, of Light and Heavy Things: Selected Poems of Zeeshan Sahil (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2013), published as part of the Lanaan Translation Series. His work has appeared in many print and on-line journals and magazines, including Ploughshares, Plume, New York Tyrant, Ninth Letter, 5-Trope, The Threepenny Review, Slope, Mississippi Review, and McSweeney’s. Among his awards, he has received an NEA Fellowship for Poetry (2011), a New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellowship (1999), and a Constance Saltonstall Arts Foundation Poetry Grant (1997). He is a professor of English at Syracuse University where he directs the MFA Program inCreative Writing.