September 7, 2011 Where Do You Want To Be?
Jason Korolenko working his craft while soaking up the sun in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Sept. 2011
A dull winter sun shoulders its way between low cloud cover like a morning commuter fighting through the subway mob to catch a departing train. I’m sitting in the courtyard of Santa Casa hospital, surrounded on all sides by Gothic arches, mangled and twisted trees, invisible birds screaming, “Bem-te-vi! Bem-te-vi!” The sick and the weak hobble into an on-site chapel to my right, doctors flit around with calm assurance, mumbling under their breath while scrolling through their iPhones.
It could be Europe, but it’s not. This is only one of two Gothic buildings in all of Sao Paulo, Brazil, the sixth largest city in the world. And this will be my home for the next three-and-a-half months.
One of the greatest things about studying in Southern New Hampshire University’s low residency writing program (www.snhu.edu/mfa) is that I can do my work from anywhere on earth. We have students and faculty living everywhere from Vegas to Damascus.
Take award-winning nature writer Craig Childs, for example. Sometimes known as the “Indiana Jones of Non-Fiction,” Craig is so nomadic he seems to receive each of his students’ submission packets in a different location. I can see him now, ink smeared across his palm–a jotted quip or idea he just couldn’t afford to lose–saying, “In one month, I want thirty pages sent by carrier pigeon to a boulder in the shape of a finger pointing to the sky, at these precise coordinates, in Death Valley. Attach a message for Roberto, who is camped at the boulder waiting for your manuscript, and he will know where to find me. Oh, and don’t forget the tequila. Some is Roberto’s fee, but most is for me. It gets cold out there at night.
Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but not much of one.
My point is this: you don’t have to be a New Hampshire local to get the most out of this program. You don’t even have to live on the same continent. All you really need is a passion for writing, for finding that voice inside you and translating it into words. — Jason Korolenko, Graduate Assistant & MFA Candidate 2012
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- Posted under 2011, Faculty, Fiction, Inspiration, International Students, Nonfiction, SNHU-MFA, Writing
