Hollins College MFA in Creative Writing

Reviewer's Name:

Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry

Review Date

January 14, 2010

Year of Graduation:

2010

Review Title:

Though no one can teach you vision, Hollins can teach you re-vision.

Full Review of the Program:

The Hollins University MFA program is a small, tightly-knit community of writers who care deeply for the art and craft of writing. Even though artists are born—and not made in school—there is a great deal that can be learned if one aspires to become a poet, fiction writer or essayist. Hollins has helped me to become a better writer, a better thinker, and most importantly—a better reader. It is by reading and analyzing other people’s work that we learn the most about our own. All poems, short stories, and novels are language constructs, born out of luck and patience and hours of profound, unbroken solitude. But they are also fruits of love and sustained labor, the author’s knowledge and technical mastery. Though no one can teach you vision, Hollins can teach you re-vision, the skill without which no writer can succeed. While at Hollins, I have had a great opportunity to work with emerging and well-established authors who do not seek to impose their wisdom, but rather guide you through the beautiful, and often painful, process of crafting and editing your work. Among many things, Hollins has taught me that writing is a self-discovery, a journey into the unknown—long, exasperating, maddening, exhilarating, breathtaking, wondrous, sublime.