VCFA: A Place that Grows Children's Writers

Interested in moving your career as a writer for children and young adults forward?  Would you like to learn amidst the lush mountains of Vermont?  Or as part of a sojourn in Bath, England?   And then return home carrying a mentor in your pocket and all the support of an MFA program into your daily life?The Master of Fine Arts program in Writing for Children and Young Adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts can offer you just that.Why an MFA program you might ask?  Can’t I learn to write on my own?You can.  My generation of writers had no other option, so we did.  But I’ll confess that I just might have considered selling my children—the more difficult child anyway—to have had a chance to learn under the guidance of established writers who knew the field I was attempting so blindly to stumble into.A disclaimer.  I’m not speaking without prejudice.  I am retired now, but I was one of the founding faculty and the first Faculty Chair of the VCFA MFA-WCYA program.  We were the first such program in the country.  In the world, actually.  And we—I still consider myself part of VCFA, despite having moved on to a less student-packet-driven existence—remain the most prestigious.It’s a four-semester, five-residency program.  The twice-a-year residencies are filled—and filled is an understatement--with workshops and lectures and readings and one-on-one sessions with mentors . . . and lots of talk and bonding with fellow writers on the same trajectory.The members of our faculty are outstanding writers in the field.  Our alumni are pulling down major awards.  They are also teaching and using their expertise to benefit the world such as the Young Writers Network created by alumna Katie Bayerl.  This group is focused on supporting young writers in underserved areas with workshops offered by VCFA alumni in collaboration with other local centers.And studying abroad?  Students can now opt to spend one residency in Bath, England, studying with program faculty who travel with them and with students and faculty of the Bath Spa MA in Writing for Young People.  Talk about a working vacation!  I can imagine nothing more satisfying.Established writers join the program to move their careers forward or to have support in trying a new track . . . and perhaps also to have the credentials to teach on the college level.  Talented beginners get their feet on the ground through the intensive two years of study and work.Graduate programs cost, but scholarships are available as are student loans.There is no guarantee, of course, that an MFA will get you published.  (I used to teach for a well-known correspondence course in children’s writing that took practically all comers and “guaranteed” publication by the end of the student’s time in the program.  When I challenged the contention the answer was, “Well, a letter to the editor, perhaps.)  And no one at VCFA is going to make that kind of spurious promise.In fact, if you come into the program, you will be encouraged to put aside all questions of marketing and publication and to concentrate on producing the best writing you are capable of, the writing only you are capable of.  But then, if there is any magic that can open the door to a publishing contract, that’s it.Some of our students have gone on to contracts with advances far beyond anything I have ever dreamed.  Others have worked their hearts out during the program and after and still not published.  Those are the chances you take when you set off to be a writer by any route.But students who go through the MFA-WCYA program come away with a much deeper knowledge of their own strengths and of the field they love and with a support system that will be theirs for the rest of their lives.  That support system alone changes lives.Writing is such an isolated and isolating activity.  Having others who know the same isolation, the same frustrations, and who know, too, when your manuscript is good and what you might do to make it better . . . that is richness beyond measure!As I said, I’m retired now, but VCFA remains part of my heart.  It’s the only community in the world where I ever felt completely and absolutely at home.Vermont College of Fine Arts might be your home, too.