What We Talk About When We Talk About Craft

Thoughts and Musings

In her keynote speech at the Goddard MFAW Vermont residency, @r3reiko talks about craft and urgency: “the truth we need to speak, the warning we need to impart, the redemption we need to share, the beauty we see in the world, the thrill of being alive…”

The Thriller in the Shadows

Thoughts and Musings

After almost twenty years in the making, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto reflects on the many influences and the long process of bring a novel into the world. On Friday, this essay appeared on Lit Hub’s Crime Reads. “My novel was sparked by a true crime, but it refused to become a thriller. Nearly two decades ago, a friend of mine was raped…”

Acknowledgements

Thoughts and Musings

Last week I finished my first pass page proofs for Shadow Child, my new novel coming out in May. I started it in the year 2000. Holding those pages in my hands, with their elegant design and their printing marks, I was amazed at how much effort has gone into the...

From the Beginner’s Mind and Back Again

Thoughts and Musings

I am a self-taught writer. There are many of us out there, though possibly not so many who are teaching creative writing in an MFA program. I wrote my first novel because I had to; it was a story that I had to unravel in order to understand my mother and her family...

How to Stop a Bullet

Thoughts and Musings

MFAW faculty Rahna Reiko Rizzuto muses about the role of art in a society in crisis, and offers an exercise to take you beyond anger and fear, to sorrow and love.