My MFA Journey: Bennington Writing Seminars Residency

~ Aigner Loren Wilson

This post is a part of My MFA Journey blog series going into my grad school experience as I get my MFA in Fiction from the Bennington Writing Seminars. My previous posts go over my application process and my decision process.

In this post, I’ll be going over my time at Bennington during my first June residency. In celebration of getting into grad school and going to my first residency, I planned and did a cross country solo road trip. For a full write up of my road trip from Washington to Vermont, check out my newsletter post, Interstate of Mind.

First things, first …

What is the Bennington Writing Seminars Residency?

Bennington Writing Seminars is a low residency MFA program. Low residency means that I don’t live on campus for the full school year and instead do a majority of my school work from home. And every six months or so, I go to Bennington, Vermont where Bennington College is located, and spend about 10 days on campus going to classes, talks, readings, shows, meet with my teacher for the term, and hang with my cohort and other MFA students. The residency is meant to be an event and enrichment packed time on campus where students fully immerse themselves in writing and align themselves with their teacher and their project(s) for the term.

Then again, I think everyone sees residency a little different. For me, residency was a time for me to get to know my cohort and explore the school. I went to readings, did classes, and participated in the academic side of residency, but I could tell I came alive the most during moments of discussion, sharing, and active learning with the other students in the program.

The way residency is set up, there’s always something to do from sun up to sun down. Some of my cohort went to every offering that the school provided and had a great time. I started out thinking that was how I would take residency. But after getting to school and knowing that residency was sandwiched between my cross country road trip, I prioritized my time on things that would energize me, which was exploring the school and talking with other writers. I did sometimes go to school classes, lectures, and events that often left me feeling drained and mentally stuck, but by the end of the residency, I stopped doing that unless I was going with a friend who I wanted to spend some time with.

Even though I live in a college town, it doesn’t feel like that often. I very rarely go on to any of the colleges around me and only visit them to use the trails in the woods nearby the schools. Bennington is one of those old Northeastern schools that has a lot of history, especially around the arts. I’ve been calling Bennington Jackson Country ever since I got in because it is where Shirley Jackson lived and wrote many of her famous stories like the Lottery and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. The music building on campus is rumored to be the inspiration of the Hill House in her novel The Haunting of Hill House. Robert Frost’s grave is even in town.

I was so engrossed with the school and all its hidden haunted feeling areas that I spent all of my exploring time wandering around campus and not exploring the surrounding areas. Next residency, I’ll do more exploring off campus if I can bear the cold of winter time in Vermont.

Being on campus at residency felt like summer camp for adults. It was exhilarating and inspiring and touched me deeply. During the first or second day, one of my cohort members remarked that even though it felt like we had been there for much longer we had only really been there for less than 24 hours. When he said it, I was totally knocked out and surprised because it did feel like I had been on campus and with these people for weeks, even though it had only been a day. It’s because there was a lot of emotions, intimacy, and creating that every moment felt like something new, special. During the residency experience, what I got out of it was connections and friendships. That is what I prioritized over anything else because I had never been in such a writing community before.

That and learning how to see the writer in the story better. While I spent time before the workshop critiquing the stories of my workshop mates, once I met everyone and got to know them as people and writers, I ended up going back over my critiques and updating what I wrote. I either changed critiques out right once I had a better understanding of what the writer was trying to do with the story or after learning how a writer likes to be given critiques.

The thing about working in an MFA program is that everyone there is a skillful writer to some degree. There may be people who don’t know the technical ends and outs of writing and all the vocabulary buzz words of story, but they can create. They can string together words better than your average writer or person. But there are stars within the bunch of people who can write. There are some people who do more than write. They build emotions, stories, and ideas in ways that are catching and breath taking. That make you wonder why they don’t have a book deal yet or why they haven’t been published yet.

But it also made me excited that I’ll get to know this writer before they get published and undoubtedly become famous.

During one of the dark nights, which is just a night where nothing is planned and we can all do our own things without having to be somewhere or do something for the program, me and a couple of friends explored Jennings—the Hill House inspiration. Whether or not the building is the actual inspiration for the haunted house in Shirley Jackson’s novel doesn’t stop it from being a creepy building, especially at night. I spent a lot of daylight hours there listening to my friend practice the piano, but the night time brought out the spook.

One of the main components of residency are classes taught by visiting faculty and writers on a range of subjects. I went to at leas one a day but by the end found myself not getting as much out of them as I was hoping. The ones I went to that really stuck out for me was a class on using different languages than English in your writing and how to format it, coming up with story ideas by blending emotions and ideas, and on researching topics when the records aren’t easy to find.

A few people I’ve talked to about my grad school experience have led with the belief or thought that the main or only thing you get out of an MFA in writing is the community. I love the community I’ve met and made at Bennington. Since it’s low res, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to build a friend network, have open discussions around craft and story, or connect about grad life. That has not been the case for me, I’m happy to say, but I also know that isn’t the experience for everyone. Grad life can be lonely no matter what grad program you’re in. It’s a lot of close study into areas that most people don’t find exciting or think strange to study at such a level and spend money to do so.

A lot of the conversations I had with writers at residency were about how freeing it was to be in community with other writers who have chosen to pursue something that is pretty crazy. Together, we were able to say our wildest dreams out loud and know that we wouldn’t be mocked for it. We could show our total despair at not getting a scene right and know that the person across from the dining room table understood our pain.

For me, the biggest thing that I’ve gotten out of my MFA program is my study into craft and exploration of it in an environment where I can get feedback from professional writers in careers I respect who write stories I admire. When I finish with my program next year, I’m going to continue taking what I’ve learned and how I’ve learned to study and create in how I approach my personal pursuits.

While a lot of the residency was planned by the program, there was still a lot of space for us to build our own offerings. Like a cohort member set up a primordial scream at the end of residency that (I didn’t go to) but sounded like a lot of fun. Me and a couple other cohort members set up a 1st term reading for other 1st termers to share their work with each other. There was even an impromptu, unorganized air hockey tournament that people got pretty passionate about. Me included. And my favorite, a last night 1st term bonfire.

Soon, I’ll be heading off for my second residency and spending 10 days in Vermont in the Winter. It’ll be cold, mind blowing, and craft altering. I’m also in the process of drafting my next novel project and will be keeping up with my morning writing routine while on campus.

Thanks for reading this blog post a part of my MFA Journey series. You can read the others here:

The next post I will do on my MFA Journey will be all about my actual term. What I read, wrote, and learned.

My MFA Journey: My First Year of Grad School

If you’re new to the website, consider subscribing to stay up to date with all my posts. If you’re new here, I’m Aigner! An award nominated writer of fantasy, science fiction, horror, and all things weird. You can check out my stories here.