This week, I’ve been working to finish an essay. (Finish is not an accurate term. Is anything ever finished?) This particular piece has been bobbling around my mind for about a year and it will certainly go through some more revisions but I thought I’d share the process of its making. I’ve been thinking about [...]
This week, the 58th issue of Sonora Review, the oldest student-run literary journal in the country, is going to print. Sweet. As art director, it’s like I get to know the future. And so here, world, is a snapshot of the near future. Some cool things about this issue. First, the journal is being printed [...]
For the past year, I’ve been practically begging my students to start their own websites, with emphasis on starting blogs. It’s a marketing tool, I’ve told them. A way to show people who you are and impress them with your mad skills. It occurred to me this week, though, that I’m wrong. That’s not why [...]
A year ago, a teacher asked me casually in a meeting, “Do you want to teach?” “Yea, sure.” And so began my first year of teaching undergrads. I was given no syllabus, no assignments and no advice. After some panicking, I did ask a mentor for his syllabus and he was kind enough to discuss [...]
Another semester is finally winding down and with it are the requisite papers and reflections. One such reflection, part of a writing course, involved the relationship between memory and research. After spending a semester reading various kinds of memoirs (from the journalistic to the borderline sentimental), we were asked to consider how research can be [...]
A few of my students have told me that they are thinking of going directly into grad school after completing their BFAs and my advice to them is to wait. Especially for people earning degrees in creative fields, where the work is the determining factor. No one needs to give you permission to write or [...]
Starting today, starting now, I guess, I’m officially pursuing two degrees simultaneously. I call them Muffas. Um. MFAs. One in Visual Communications (a fancy word for design) and one in Creative Nonfiction. Anyway, this isn’t really important except that I’m going to be changing the nature of my blog a little bit. After this weekend, [...]
Issue 57 of the Sonora Review, the oldest student-run literary journal in the country, is finally here! The issue features poetry from Jeffrey McDaniel and Peter Jay Shippy, new fiction by Amelia Gray, and super duper nonfiction by Steven Church and Lia Pupura. Get your copy online or come check us out at the Tucson [...]
Last year, the lovely Sonora Review published a double issue (55/56) of their journal with an uncollected story by the most excellent David Foster Wallace called Solomon Silverfish. In this story, our protagonist is guilty of identitylessness. Our culture (and our brains) teaches us to categorize, to separate the world apart, to make decisions about [...]
Here are some images from the Design+Science Exhibition, which opened this week at the Kachina Gallery (also a lounge, in case you’re wondering about the tired looking students). I took these photographs just before the show opened. Many scientists and artists (even a few art historians) were in attendance. (Full disclosure: Photography is more of [...]