Since publication is integral to staying afloat in the creative writing field, much of my connection to the creative writing world happens through researching publications through online databases and resources. I learn more about fellow writers and aspects of writing and publishing through Poets & Writers magazine and website. Their website allows me to participate in forums and access databases of contests and publications. To understand which magazines are currently most popular and to learn about brand new publications, I often go to duotrope.com. Here I can also discern which magazines to which I should send work.

Like Robert, a conference I plan to attend as long as I can afford going is the AWP conference. This conference is the largest meet-up of writers all over the country. There are hundreds of seminars and speakers and nearly thousands of literary magazine, MFA program, and publishing house booths. This conference is essential for the creative writer who wants to make use of every possible resource to publishing, gaining further education, and making connections with writers, agents, and publishing houses/magazines.

The fact that I joined an MFA program allows me connections to the creative writing world. Attending readings by visiting writers is one way that the MFA program at Virginia Tech allows me to connect with the writing world beyond Virginia Tech, and allows me to spend time outside of the classroom getting to know professors and fellow students. Taking advantage of workshops these visiting writers typically offer for Virginia Tech MFA students has especially enriched my work, my knowledge of publishing, as well as my feelings of connectedness to published writers.

Jamie Rand: Blog Post 7

I don't really have many strategies that involve my professional community. The only strategy I really have, and the one that's gotten me this far (which is to say, into an MFA program) is coming to know my professors, asking them if they'd like to meet up, then picking their brains about the field. As an example, when I was a year from graduation back at the University of Toledo, I had lunch with a professor of mine and asked him about grad school. His reply was that I'd have money enough for food and rent and that was all and I'd do nothing but read and write. He pointed me in the direction of a few different schools, gave me the names of other professors who could help me with the application (personal statements, etc.), and gave me some general tips about applying. It was enough of a lead for me to start, and now here I am. (By the way, his summary of grad school was absolutely correct.) I guess it wasn't the most efficient way to go about being a part of academia (undergrad took me a whopping twelve years; by the end of my tenure there I felt like Van Wilder), but it worked for me. During that time, I came across the Poets and Writers website, which was a real boon (and which, sadly, I haven't looked at in months). Other than that, though, I can't really list any other websites, blogs, listservs (I can't even define that term), or anything else. Mostly I just read a lot of contemporary stuff, admire what I read, and learn about writing from that.

Uren Blog 7

On the scholarly side of my nascent little career, I have—though I don’t much now—follow the Penn CFP list. Through it, I’ve found a couple of conferences to which I submitted abstracts and at which I presented scholarship and read fiction.

I remain passingly interested in comedy—its relationship to critical engagements with mediated texts and especially the opportunity it presents to analyze psychical economies. Sean McCarthy runs a site, The Comic’s Comic, where he shares and discusses much about popular comedy, all centered around stand-up, the medium with which I’m most preoccupied as a researcher. A site like The Comic’s Comic points the way to a lot of popular material that supplements research in comedy. For the scholarly resources necessary to conduct inquiry in humor studies, I have joined the Popular Culture Association. As Miller says in the module, the conference is, in fact, a whole lot of fun; I helped the topics run the gamut by presenting a psychoanalytic reading of shit in Louis CK’s Chewed Up.

At the PCA/ACA conference in San Antonio last year, I was most committed to attending sessions about TV. You find a bunch of people at least tangentially interested in the stuff you’re interested in. Conversations ensue. While my interest in TV is waning, I still keep tabs on Jonathan Gray’s The Extratextuals, Jason Mittell’s Just TV, and Christine Becker’s News for TV Majors. A good example of why I don’t get excited to participate in online communities: some time ago I posted a comment on Gray’s blog that I now find annoying. It was cool to directly communicate with a scholar whose work I’ve found interesting and who works in a program I would covet were I to jump ship for a Communications department. But I’m a bit too self-conscious to actually enjoy those kinds of exchanges.

Finally, as a creative writer, I have also presented at conferences. I’m pretty sure that if it isn’t AWP, it doesn’t count. Although, maybe not. At the Arkansas Philological Association conference, of all places, I read some short shorts that started a conversation with Trudy Lewis, who’s a real-deal writer and professor at Missouri. Nice, too. (I also got to hear Padma Viswanathan read her superb story "Transitory Cities".) At PCA/ACA, I read a story to two friends and three strangers. So it goes. We grabbed drinks after and talked about influences and so on.

Beyond these loosely strategized endeavors, I’m probably far too insular a scholar. More so now than before, too. I’ve lined up a couch in Chicago for AWP, though.

Quinn's Blog Seven

I think that the professional community most relevant to my work as a writer is the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP). The AWP has a yearly conference at which all sorts of writers meet and go to readings and panels on things such as "Memoir Without a Net" and "The Care and Feeding of Long Poems." In order to participate in my professional community, I intend to attend this year's AWP conference in Chicago, Illinois. Yes, it will be freezing and I will have to take a plane. But the cold and flying are worth learning about chapbook publishing, "keeping a debut book alive", and the "relevance of print culture in a digital age." I know nothing about creating a website, other than I need to have one. So I plan to enlist a person to help me create a website. Having a website and/or blog is tricky, though. Because some journals won't accept work that's been previously published online, even in a blog. Another way to stay connected with the professionals in my field is through Facebook groups such as "Writers' Colony," where people share calls for submissions and ask and answer questions about publishing or writer's block or whether or not the metaphor about the chandelier and the ovaries is working in a story. On "Writers' Colony," which is a private group, so I don't know how to provide a link to it, people even ask questions about whether certain character names are good. People swap poems and stories. Attending conferences such as the AWP conferences seems like a good way to stay up to date in my field. Another way to stay up to date is by reading articles in The American Poetry Review or Poetry Magazine. Hugely important to staying up-to-date, however, is reading the work of my contemporaries. Reading first books. Reading what's been published in print and online journals.

Blog Post 6: Kevin Juggles in his Sleep (he also grinds his teeth)

Like Nial, I sometimes find myself flapping between 3 roles--feathers askew and rudders akimbo, like some sort of wild p(h)easant. The student role can be quite taxing: write the seminar paper--write the annotated bibliography, partially duplicate the annotated bibliography for another class days before it is due for the former class--another short paper and a long one for the survey--and a final portfolio to work toward for yet another class.

The nascent professor role is, for me, the most joy-filled. Designing my composition assignments and working toward a complete syllabus has been a fun process.

The role of researcher is almost inseparable from the role of professor, which is almost inseparable from the role of student--all viewed within the context of our triad of concerns at VT for the next couple years. I do not consider the dichotomy to be false, but maybe elusive. The three roles are interdependent and symbiotic, in my mind.

Blog Post 6 - Mike Roche

I think the identity I feel most comfortable with is "independent scholar." Probably the one I feel least comfortable with is "research collaborator." I'm adequate in the "student" department; however, one of the reasons I seek an MFA is because I can feel myself reaching a threshhold for the amount of academic course material I am willing to engage in. I don't yet feel comfortable with the "teacher" one, as I've never taught before, but I am excited to try to be a good one. But back to the one I identify with most: "independent scholar." I consider myself one of these because I read literature. Like Michelle, I prefer reading primary texts over the secondary ones which analyze the primary ones so, in this sense, I wouldn't consider myself an aggressive independent scholar.

If you consider poems and other kinds of art "research," then I suppose I am a research collaborator because I'm always sharing my findings--i.e. my poems--with other researchers--i.e. other poets. I think it is very cool to browse through the Virginia Tech Electronic Theses and Dissertations and find creative work from MFA students who've published and graduated. I also like how I can use ProQuest to obtain copies of creative dissertations from some of my favorite poets at other universities throughout the country. When I think about the fact that I'll be publishing a creative dissertation at the end of my three years at Virginia Tech, I become more comfortable considering myself a research collaborator.

Blog Post 6

My current identity at Virginia Tech seems to reside between student and independent scholar. By independent scholar I mean writer/poet. I do not identify myself as a researcher as I don’t purposefully seek out academic research regularly. I turn to academic research only when necessary. I do see its advantages and have enjoyed discovering how many academic articles and essays I have found on poetry through this course. However, I enjoy reading actual primary texts by poets and other creative writers and writing my own work more than I enjoy researching secondary materials on poetry.

I don’t identify myself as being a teacher yet as I am not currently teaching. I am moving gradually into that identity through working with a mentor (who is a teacher) and through my pedagogy class.

To a degree I believe separating these ideas out is impossible, as I conduct informal research almost daily through Google and Wikipedia searches. In my own life I am constantly reading up on certain phenomena I find interesting. And so, I’m always researching. I’m just not researching in any formal academic way.

I think I also teach without being aware of it. Granted, my “teaching” does not occur in a classroom and it’s much less anxiety inducing, but it exists along the teaching spectrum at some point. For instance, I am very eager to express and explain ideas to peers and enjoy mentoring and tutoring fellow students.

Like Nial, it will be necessary for me to plunge into all of these identities in order to land a decent job in the future. Though I rarely turn to academic research without needing to, when I am forced to explore intellectual essays (particularly when they have to do with some aspect of creative writing), I usually enjoy what I come away with. Thus, in the future, I may develop a desire born of necessity for academic research.