I’ve been tasked with capturing the spirit and experience of Winter Wheat 2024. I’ll offer first a series of images and momentarily shift responsibility to you, earnest reader: imagine the Education Building, in all its eastern bloc nobility; a gaggle of impassioned writers, buzzing in disquiet; dark, fall evenings with winds a shade warmer than we deserve; and a smooth Saturday morning where hope sprinkles in tease of snow. There was coffee. There were snacks. Writing was done. Some learning, too.
But it’s all best stated by our presenters, guests, and organizers.
Nathan Fako, poetry MFA student and co-presenter of the Elegies for Disappearing Nature workshop, finds that Winter Wheat “was fine, wonderful. It was warm. Gatherings of writers… I feel like we’re all kind of awkward people. We wanna keep to ourselves. We like to be alone to think. There’s an apprehension, generally, when we get together, but the warm atmosphere assuaged that feeling. It was fun.” He felt that the “workshops were accessible. There was clear work put in to make the content accessible to someone with no experience with writing, but also to make it interesting to those who are experienced.” His concluding thoughts, which should be remembered: “I’ve never been to a literary festival before, and I really enjoyed it. I thought it was great. It was nice to see so many people passionate about the same thing. I find that heartwarming. Or terrifying. I don’t know which.”
Liz Barnett, fiction MFA student who presented on adaptation, found that Winter Wheat “went really well.” They stated, “In the end, I had a lot of people tell me it was fun. [The workshops] I went to were accommodating; they provided materials, it never felt like I wasn’t prepared, and it didn’t feel like I was being excluded from any activities.” Liz said finally that they’re “looking forward to running a workshop again next year” that will explore revenge stories.
Michelle, an attendee, offered similar sentiments on the warmness: “I had concerns that Winter Wheat would be workshops where the presenters sort of droned on about things they didn’t seem to really care about, but I was happy to find that the presenters had interesting topics that I didn’t know much about. They seemed excited to be there but also relaxed. It felt like nobody was going to make fun of me for my lack of poetry knowledge.” She thought “people were going to be stuffy and have very specific and intense rules for writing,” but stated, “Thankfully, I was wrong. I feel like everyone there was open-minded and interested in exploring many different styles of writing.”
Abigail Cloud, Editor-in-Chief of Mid-American Review, thought “it went really well. People really needed it this year in a big way. There was a lot of worry going on, particularly among our population. People needed to be together and create together. [Attendees] wanted that opportunity to work in inspiring circumstances that are safe, where they can create and not be worried about anything else besides new work and new ideas.” Cloud spoke at length about the generative importance of Winter Wheat, how it “puts focus back on creation, the generation of new ideas and work,” an attitude shared by Haley Souders, Winter Wheat Coordinator. Souders stated, “I always come out of [Winter Wheat] wanting to write more. This year I left wanting to take a look at my thesis project. I feel like I’ve been in a little bit of a gray area with it, where I’m not feeling as much joy writing it, but after spending a few days talking to people who are interested in writing, I feel inspired.”
Cloud also highlights regionality, the “quintessential midwestern aspects of comfort and value of togetherness.” For Cloud, Winter Wheat fosters a sort of camaraderie: “The region, as much as it is here, it is a place, it is more about the attitude and knowledge that we are coming to a place that represents some level of comfort to people.” Souders also touched on the importance of place, stating, “I feel like the words “literary community” have gotten thrown around a lot when talking about Winter Wheat, but having events that are free to attend is important because people from all over can come together to talk about art and writing. Who knows in five years if we will be able to do these things? Humanities are being defunded across the board. It’s important to have [Winter Wheat] and maintain it.”
Finally, Cloud defines Winter Wheat: “The word I’m going to pick is fervent. There’s a real desire to put new work together and take advantage of seeing friends. That’s how I felt. I had some friends there that I haven’t seen in a really long time. I wanted to fervently soak time up with them while they were there with me. I think that’s the best energy that we can hope for and create, just having an immediate connection and desire to what we were doing.”
And here’s what I’ve been thinking about lately, pre and post Winter Wheat: among a few other pesky things, John the Savage tells us to find poetry, God, freedom, sin, and goodness. His distant cousin Alexander Supertramp tells us to honor Ahab, but advises we not forget the dominant primordial beast. Locate ambition, but do not forget hubris. Writers are strange; sometimes we are arrogant, sometimes self-dismissive. Maybe we have ethereal jobs, biblical duties, and great importance – maybe not. It does not matter. Find a warm atmosphere with gentle souls like Winter Wheat, sit awhile, and play toward peace.
The MFA once seemed like a secret society existing only for the surest, truest, most brilliant writers, and more importantly, a slingshot to success. I wondered if the MFA was a kind of pseudo-nepo-baby? Would Harper Collins or Penguin Random House see the degree and take my manuscript, no questions asked?
I was a junior at Duquesne University when I first heard of an MFA program in creative writing from my fiction professor. The two faculty members in my small program who had MFAs held an informational meeting for all of us who hoped to break into this secret society. Only three of us attended the meeting, eager to know: Was this our ticket to becoming a writer, truly and honestly? Was this the way to see our name in print, making a career out of the scribbling we did in the solitude of our rooms?
Instead, we learned it was, at best, a boutique degree. At least, that’s what they said. I still don’t know what that means except that I figure it’s what a boutique is: unique, specialized, and overpriced. These were not meant to be words of discouragement from our faculty but rather words of caution. Don’t overemphasize its significance. Don’t go into debt. My all-knowing twenty-one-year-old self took it with a grain of salt. I needed that piece of paper.
I spent my senior year of college compiling a spreadsheet of top-rated MFA programs, evaluating their location (East Coast, New England preferred), their stipend (one has to eat), teaching requirements, and professional opportunities (literary magazines, publishing, and editing skills). I was methodical and determined. I prepared my portfolio with the gracious help of my fiction professor with line-by-line editing and revised personal statement after personal statement. I was doing everything by the book, but the thing I wanted so badly, to write, was exactly what I’d stopped doing in the process. By March, I’d been waitlisted by one program and rejected from the rest. The rejections shook me. I saw graduate school as my inevitable future. How could I be done with my academic career? I needed the MFA to waive in front of all my doubters so that I could say, “Look here! I’m worth something.” Instead, I scrambled for the backup plan I hadn’t made as I walked across the stage to collect my diploma.
After the rejections, I retreated to my parents’ house in rural Lancaster County–the prodigal daughter’s return. I went back to my summer job as a prep cook and caterer in my small town at a cafe known for being an overpriced tourist stop, passing off Costco ingredients as locally sourced. I sliced deli meat and mopped floors and wondered if this is what it was all for after years of filled journals, carefully annotated short story anthologies, and Barnes & Noble gift cards. I felt myself to be a failure, the starving artist doomed to a food-service job, resentful of her unrealized potential. Still, I was determined to apply again; I needed to prove something. I spent the days after work, still smelling of grease and potatoes, shoveling spoonfuls of short stories down and carving out the pieces I wanted to steal like a butcher. I collaged my rejection letters together using some Modge-Podge to paste in a poster frame – my grand motivator. I got a story published, and some of my coworkers at the cafe read it. I came in one morning to the baker telling me she’d cried; it had stirred something in her, made her feel seen. I realized I was a writer to her.
It was the fall of 2023, a few months after my rejection. I stared at my poster frame collage, and I took it down. Until that point, I had been waiting for someone to permit me to write. I had been waiting for a graduate degree. I realized that having an MFA wasn’t going to make me a writer. It wasn’t a knighthood I needed to be inducted into. There was no monarch of writing and literature, no degree, that could grant me the title.
A year prior, when I was finishing my undergraduate program and our university’s last literary magazine was released, the other senior creative writers and I gathered for our pizza party in College Hall, a windowless classroom on the English department’s floor, and we signed each other’s poems and stories with bright-eyed optimism that our names would be widely in print someday. We treated the inside covers like yearbooks, and inside mine I have six notes that all say, don’t stop writing.
If there’s one thing I learned from my two rounds of applying to MFAs, it’s that intent matters. I reapplied, but this time I wasn’t chasing a degree, a title of prestige, or a sense of validation. The biggest part of creative writing that I missed was being around other writers, and that was my new intent. To learn from others, to be inspired, to sit at a roundtable workshop and voice ideas about how to make a piece work better and in turn, learn how to make my work better.
Now I’m here, at Bowling Green’s MFA program as a fiction writer. The first few weeks that feeling returned–the dreaded imposter syndrome. However, our first Q&A session for our Prout Reading series took place just last week with an alum, Jacqueline Vogtman. We all wanted to know, how do you make it happen after? When you’ve finished the degree and have dedicated two years of your life to writing, how do you return to the real world? We talked about writing habits, about making time for writing in the early hours of the morning, and about doing it every day. But we also talked about the connections formed in an MFA. Their cohort still talks and reads each other’s work. They’ve invited her to read her new book at the schools they teach at. So, the MFA is more than a degree; it’s an investment in a supportive community that knows what it’s like to sit behind the closed door and stare at the blank page. A community that knows what it’s like to Modge-Podge rejection letters onto a poster board.
Sitting in workshops in East Hall 406 with our printed copies of each other’s stories and our marginal notes, each of us tossing out what-ifs and questions, I feel like I am doing a lot more than earning a degree to frame on my wall. So, do you need the MFA? While I don’t think it will get you a published manuscript by default or get your relatives off your back about your employment status, I think it’s worth a lot more than that.
Jacqueline (she/her) was interviewed for an hour in the early afternoon on September 26th, 2024. This interview occurred in East Hall at Bowling Green State University, just a few hours before Jacqueline read at Prout Chapel for our reading series. We were thrilled to sit down with Vogtman and talk behind the scenes of life as a writer. The interview is split in two parts; part 1 was posted last week. This is part 2.
Jacqueline Vogtman received the New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship, awarded earlier this year, 2024. Jacqueline graduated from BGSU’s MFA program in 2010. She currently teaches composition at Mercer County Community College in New Jersey. Vogtman’s short story collection, Girl Country, won the 2021 Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Prize and was published by Dzanc Books in May 2023. Vogtman’s book Girl Country is available for purchase with the following link:https://www.dzancbooks.org/all-titles/p/girl-country
Interviewer:
You’re a professor at Mercer County Community College, can you tell us a bit more about that?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
I mostly teach second level English comp, which is a little more fun than the first level. We get to incorporate literary sources in there, and I guide the students during a research project. It’s fun. I really enjoy working with my students.
As there is a steep growth curve for writing, there is also a steep growth curve for teaching. I was pretty young when I started teaching, and there’s this navigation of authority, like “How strict should I be? Are they going to respect me?” Maybe now that I’m older I feel like I don’t struggle with that as much.
I just give my students grace, kindness, compassion, and respect, and somehow it comes back to me. The last few years in the classroom, I’ve just felt so surrounded by love. It feels like I’m giving out love, and they’re giving it back to me. It’s a very nice feeling.
Interviewer:
It’s a big accomplishment to have your students trust and love you.
Jacqueline Vogtman
It can be hard to get to that point. I’ve felt this way for five years. Before I reached that point, I was still navigating asking, “How do I do this?” Then, eventually, I sort of found myself in the classroom, and I felt this confidence had been building inside me from being in the classroom for so long.
Maybe it’s also just being a parent. I don’t know what it is that changed in me, but I see my students as not my kids, but almost like secondary children. I imagine my daughter in the classroom and how I would want her to be treated.
Interviewer:
Has teaching taught you anything about your voice as a writer?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
My first instinct is to say no, probably not. I find inspiration everywhere. I’ve found it in the classroom with my students, their stories, lives, and even their names. I’m always struggling to find names for my characters, so sometimes I’ll look at my old rosters to see if there’s any good names there. Overall, it hasn’t played into my process a huge amount.
Interviewer:
I was wondering if growing confidence as a teacher has seeped into other areas of life?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
Yeah, basic principles like don’t beat yourself up for a shitty first draft or let yourself just write your ideas, and try to let go of that inner critic. These are some of the things that I would tell my students that I also tell myself.
Interviewer:
In your Mud Season Review interview, you were speaking about how the idea of “Girl Country” came to you after you had your daughter. Could you speak a little bit more about how parenthood has impacted your journey as a writer? Do you see your relationship with parenthood and writing as evolving or interconnected?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
On one hand, being a parent robs you of a lot of time that you might have previously had for writing. That’s the negative of it all. On the other hand, I don’t know if I would have been able to write this book if I hadn’t had my daughter. I’ve been so inspired by the journey of being a mother and watching her grow up, and, overall, just the struggle of parenthood, the struggle of breastfeeding.
The story of “Girl Country,” which is the title short story in the collection, came to me in a dream. My mind was always there because of struggles I had trying to breastfeed. A lot of the stories in the book have to do with women’s bodies and maternity.
I think sometimes when you become a parent, or when you have a full time job, those things take a lot of your time. It forces you to make time for your writing. Which might sound counterintuitive, but, sometimes, it’s helpful! Sometimes, it forces you to actually use the time that you have.
Interviewer:
That’s definitely a challenge. For the fellowship, is there anyone that you’re checking in with, or do you have to be on top of your own schedule?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
The fellowship is a lot of working with your own deadlines. You have to give yourself deadlines. I believe a lot of fellowships are like this, but this is the first fellowship I’ve received. It’s really flexible. When you’re chosen as a fellowship recipient, there’s money, there’s resources to help with writing, but, the money doesn’t have to be used for anything specific.
Some people might use fellowship funds to pay off debt if you can make a justification for why it’s going to help you. For example, someone might say, “I’m going to pay off a bit of credit card debt because the debt is really weighing on my mind that’s going to help me write better,” and that’s OK. For me, I paid for a couple of summer camps for my daughter, so I could do a little writing. It’s pretty open and flexible. I don’t really have to check in with anyone, but there’s an end of year report.
Interviewer:
In one of your previous interviews, you talked about coming from a working-class background and how that’s influenced your writing. Have you always been drawn to writing working-class stories?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
When I started writing fiction, I wanted to write characters that were similar to my family growing up. A family that maybe you don’t see as much in fiction. I remember one of my first weeks here in Bowling Green, I was talking with one of my fiction cohorts, who was a year above me, Dustin M. Hoffman.
He said something to me that resonated. He said something like, “I want to write real, working-class stories. People working, really working. I want to write stories that my dad will read. I want to reflect on the real-life experiences of blue-collar people which you don’t see as much.” And when he said that I was like “Yes, that’s what I want to do.” Do it in a different way, but that really matters to me.
Interviewer:
Definitely. The New England Canon of literature is so bound up in wealth. It’s interesting to see prose about characters who are different from that. We also wanted to ask what topics or themes have you been gravitating towards recently?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
The novel I’m working on has something to do with the American Dream. The family is a working-class family. Part of the novel has to do with finding out about a secret relative that someone’s father had a child from a previous marriage. Part of the novel also involves new genetics testing, and I’ve been looking into that. The novel’s set along the Delaware River, so I’ve been researching its history.
Interviewer:
I’m going to read a quote from an interview to get your thoughts, ‘I’m a poet from a working-class background, and I write poems about myself, and the people I grew up with who are working-class. I can’t really do anything else, which is why I don’t see my poems as a form of resistance against social expectations or economic pressures. I see them as approximate depictions of my reality,” is a quote from poet Sydney Mayes, interview is published in Only Poems. Does this quote resonated with you?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
Yeah. That rings true because I’m not… I’m not trying to make a statement. Anyone could say, “I’m going to write about this social experience because I think we should make a political statement about it.” But that’s not necessarily how I go about it. I approach writing by thinking about how I grew up, what I want, the people I want to write about, and the emotions, love, and complicated feelings that I have toward my childhood and background.
Interviewer:
That’s awesome. Do you see the literary world becoming more inclusive of working-class stories? Do you feel like working-class stories are adding to or expanding the canon of what’s considered literary instead of rebelling against the canon?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
In the past five years, maybe ten years, it feels like the literary community is becoming a bit more inclusive of different identities and backgrounds. Hopefully, that’s an expansion of the canon, right?
Interviewer:
We saw in one of your recent interviews that you’re bad with titles. We love the title, “Girl Country.” Do you think that’s still the case?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
That interview happened very early on in the writing of this book. Pretty soon after I had written the short story, “Girl Country”, that was probably the first story I wrote where I feel like the title came to me. And I liked it right off the bat. Thank you for saying you love the title.
When I came up with the title “Girl Country,” I could even see it as the title of the collection rather than just of a short story. I’ve gotten a little better at titles since back in the day. Sometimes, it’s still a struggle.
I figure out titles by brainstorming whole pages of different words and phrases to figure out what works best. But with some of the stories I wrote recently, I thought, “oh, that title wasn’t that hard to come by.” And I’m OK with that. Coming up with titles gets easier.
Interviewer:
What does a good title do in your opinion?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
A good title advances the theme of the story. Sometimes a good title adds something to the story that’s not necessarily even in the story. A good title catches the reader’s attention. But much of writing is still a mystery to me and forever will be.
Interviewer:
Do you think the mystery of writing is part of what draws you to writing?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
Maybe because of the lack of clarity. There’s no correct way to do writing. For instance, there’s no right or wrong. You don’t have to make definitive decisions all the time. I don’t know if mystery is what draws me to writing. Sometimes, writing feels like an impulse that’s existed in me forever, almost like dreaming.
I’m not necessarily drawn to writing because I like mystery. It’s just that mystery is part of writing. I know this is not a popular opinion because we don’t want mystery in the academy. When you’re teaching creative writing, you want to be able to say, “yes, you can teach creative writing.” And you can teach certain aspects of it.
Everyone’s born an artist. For some people it somehow thrives or takes off, maybe a little more in others. For some it ends up fading away for some reason or lingering inside them. Maybe it comes out in weird ways throughout their life.
Interviewer:
Thank you for your thoughtful answer. Your short stories are really stunning and incredibly powerful. In your short story, “Girl Country,” the girl is not named until the end of the story. We thought this was a very powerful technique. One of the many powerful craft techniques employed. Could you talk a little bit about the power of naming in creative writing?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
In that particular story, it is very intentional that she doesn’t get a name until the end because we don’t know her, we don’t get to. She’s a mystery who appears on the side of the road. We don’t know who she is. Then, at the very end, she transforms into a person with an actual name.
Interviewer:
Can you talk a little bit more about the power of naming?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
Naming can do so many things without even telling the reader much about the character, just the name can tell you certain basic things about them. With a name, sometimes, you can tell how old the character is or their culture or background. Certain things emerge from a name that are just basic stuff.
Names give you a level of specificity for a character. I have a story in the collection that there’s a character, a woman is just called, she’s “a woman” and not named throughout. Sometimes, I leave the characters deliberately unnamed to create a surrealist feeling.
The book isn’t realism. It’s a story that is almost dreamlike, not a real-life scenario where so-and-so has a name. Sometimes, I like to leave characters unnamed.
Interviewer:
When I was reading “Girl Country,” it felt very emotional to me when we got to the naming because in the story, I figured it was intentional. It felt incredibly powerful, to use a quote, “this girl who had braved escape and had come back just to save him.”
Jacqueline Vogtman:
Thank you.
Interviewer:
Do you have any tips for someone who has to figure out how to be a writer alone?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
You have to give yourself deadlines. It’s nice to have at least one other person holding you accountable like sharing work together on a deadline. It’s important to set up a writing routine. It’s great to have a writing routine where you do something every single day.
One of my old MFA cohort members, Dustin Hoffman, said he was going to force himself to write everyday even if it’s just a single sentence. I think that’s a manageable goal.
I’d also say give yourself some grace and don’t beat yourself up. Sometimes people when they don’t meet their goal will get down on themselves and end up throwing away their work which isn’t good.
Jacqueline (she/her) was interviewed for an hour in the early afternoon on September 26th, 2024. This interview occurred in East Hall at Bowling Green State University, just a few hours before Jacqueline read at Prout Chapel for our reading series. We were thrilled to sit down with Vogtman and talk behind the scenes of life as a writer. This interview is split into two parts; the second part will be posted next week.
Jacqueline Vogtman received the New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship, awarded earlier this year, 2024. Jacqueline graduated from BGSU’s MFA program in 2010. She currently teaches composition at Mercer County Community College in New Jersey. Vogtman’s short story collection, Girl Country, won the 2021 Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Prize and was published by Dzanc Books in May 2023. Vogtman’s book Girl Country is available for purchase with the following link:https://www.dzancbooks.org/all-titles/p/girl-country
Interviewer:
You were recently in the woods as part of your fellowship. Could you tell us a little bit more about that experience?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
I used some of my fellowship funds to book a cabin in the woods for a week as a DIY writing retreat. I went alone, with my dog, to this nice, little cabin. What was really amazing was returning to a solitude that I hadn’t experienced in so long. I normally dedicate so much time to being a mother, caring for family, and my students. The silence and the solitude were really refreshing, and they helped me have headspace to think through my novel and begin working on it.
The first part of my writing process is on paper: brainstorms, scribbles, mapping things out. I did some of that, and then I was able to begin actually writing. I did a decent amount while there. Being out in nature is inspiring to me. I took a lot of walks while there. I find walking to be meditative and a good way to let ideas flow. The combination of solitude, silence, and just being surrounded by nature helped me get started on this novel.
Interviewer:
Has it always been your natural inclination to go to secluded spaces or natural spaces when you’re in the writing process?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
Absolutely! For me, it’s helpful to have a private space to write; I’ve never been one to do my best work in a crowded coffee shop. I find so much inspiration in nature, being surrounded by woods, or being in the countryside, even in a suburban backyard visited by birds and deer. These are things that help my creative process.
Interviewer:
Can you tell us more about the moment you realized that you had a collection of short stories that would eventually be Girl Country?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
I can’t recall an exact moment—but after writing several of the stories, I realized that they were all fitting together thematically and that my short story “Girl Country” was kind of the thematic thread holding them together. From there, I was writing new stories with these themes in mind—that they’d all somehow have something to do with girlhood, womanhood, motherhood, the body, nature, magic, and finding light in the darkness.
Interviewer:
Is nature integral to your writing? How do you not go crazy being alone in the woods for so long?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
I’m definitely inspired by nature. I feel like I am at home in the woods. I have more of a fertile imagination when I’m out there. I know some people thrive in a city but that doesn’t do it for me. It was nice being alone in the woods because I constantly have stuff to do: teaching, mothering. I like stepping away from all that to be alone in silence. Silence makes me the opposite of crazy. Silence gave me clarity for the first time in a long time.
Interviewer:
I can see how that would be a relief. How do you feel about being back at BGSU? We read in one recent interview that your cohort had great rapport.
Jacqueline Vogtman:
Yes! It feels surreal being here. On the one hand, everything looks the same. On the other, things feel different. It’s all such a long time ago but feels like yesterday. I would say some of the best years of my life were at BGSU.
I don’t know if everyone feels this way, but when I came here and met everyone, I felt like I was finally meeting my people. When I was growing up, I felt like a bit of a weirdo. Probably a lot of writers do, so getting to the MFA and meeting people who are on the same wavelength and interested in the same things was eye opening. I finally found myself.
Interviewer:
That’s awesome. Do you keep in touch with your cohort?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
Yeah, I made some great relationships. Now, we’re all sort of scattered around the country. It’s nice because we still have those connections. This past summer, a few of us had a mini workshop via Zoom because we’re all in different parts of the country. It was so nice to reconnect. I felt like I lost my writing community after leaving the MFA.
Interviewer:
We are scared to graduate! Thank you for the wise words. So you live in New Jersey now. How did you go about making a literary community where you are?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
The sad and short answer is I haven’t really. I find a lot of inspiration in non-writing communities and through my kid. She’s a kid, you know? Kids are imaginative. For my own adult writing community, I don’t really have one aside from sporadic mini workshops with my old BG friends. I don’t want to sell myself short though. I advise a creative writing club on campus where I teach. Obviously, the club is more focused on students, but it still gives me a sense of being a part of that world.
I was also the editor of this literary journal called the Kelsey Review that has been running for a really long time. We focus specifically on the county. It’s not a national literary journal; it’s for people in Mercer County, NJ to submit their work. I felt lucky when I got the job as Editor-in-Chief. That’s another writing community I was a part of. It was really nice to see work from the community.
Interviewer:
So you were the Editor-in-Chief of the Kelsey Review, you aren’t anymore? Do you still have a role on the masthead?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
Yeah, I recently handed it over. I’m no longer the editor. Some of my colleagues took over. I was the Editor-in-Chief for nine years. That was nice. But at this point, my main involvement is helping the new editors transition into their roles.
Interviewer:
How did you make that decision to give it up?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
It was difficult. On one hand, it was such a nice part of my job that was a refreshing break from grading research papers. It was also very time-consuming, and there was a lot of red tape, working with the administration on money things. I don’t have a head for money. I don’t want to. I don’t want anything to do with money.
Running the Kelsey Review took a lot of time and headspace. At times, it became stressful. That all played a part in my decision to move on. I also wanted to step away from helping others publish, so I could focus on my own work. After publishing Girl Country, I am working on a novel now. I want to focus on that now.
Interviewer:
When you were in the MFA, was your thesis a short story collection?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
Yes. I worked on short stories. Actually, three of the short stories from thesis ended up in the book. I wrote a whole thesis here. At the time, I was happy with it. When I left Bowling Green, I tried submitting the manuscript to a few places.
I wasn’t very aggressive about it. It wasn’t picked up. As time went on, I was not super happy with it. I basically put the whole project aside for a long time. Years later, I sat down and wrote a few, new stories that are in the book. One day, I realized that I have a collection here. I looked back at my thesis; some of my short stories fit into the new collection. It was a matter of taking those three old stories and somehow fitting them into the collection.
Interviewer:
Did you ever consider taking your thesis in a novel direction?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
Not really. I didn’t feel ready to write a novel. It’s such a different beast than a short story collection. I didn’t feel ready, and I wasn’t that interested at the time.
Interviewer:
What changed to make you feel that you’re ready to write a novel?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
I finished this project of short stories, Girl Country. I figured I’d written all the short stories that I wanted to write. Sure, I still have ideas jotted down for a few new ones. But I’m not as interested in writing them right now. I want to try something new, the novel. I’ve had these thoughts of a novel for so long. Maybe there’s some maturity that’s happened like I can handle it now. Back then, the novel felt like a beast.
Interviewer:
Is the novel not a beast now?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
It still is just not as big of a beast. I think it will always be a beast. With a novel, it’s so big. There is more structure, more to plot out. In general, there’s lots of pieces to put together with the novel. And that was the most challenging part.
Interviewer:
Have you heard the hypothetical: would you rather fight like ten horses, or thirty duck-sized horses, or one horse-sized duck? Would you say that is accurate to short stories versus a novel?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
Oh, I haven’t heard of that. It’s an interesting hypothetical to be sure. Short stories are more of a fight with a bunch of duck-sized horses, while novels are more of a fight with a horse-sized duck. A huge duck is one solid thing. So that feels right.
Short stories feel more manageable. Arranging the collection was putting pieces where I wanted them. Right now, I’m still in the thick of the novel, and there are lots of pieces. I’m trying to figure out how to create and mold the huge duck.
Interviewer
That’s awesome. It’s interesting how a writer’s voice changes over time. I’m at the stage now where I’ll look back at my previous writing and not like what I was writing a few months ago. Does that stage end?
Jacqueline Vogtman:
You mean that feeling where you’ll look back on something you wrote like six months ago and go “Oh that’s such utter shit?”
Interviewer
Haha. Yes.
Jacqueline Vogtman:
It has changed a little for me. There’s always going to be shitty first drafts. It’s always going to be messy in the beginning. I think what I write now, like even the stories that I wrote for this collection, a lot of them came not fully formed. Obviously, there had to be a lot of revision, but I didn’t look back on them six months later and think “Oh god that’s so awful I’m so ashamed I don’t want to show this to anyone.” That does change. As you navigate this steep growth curve, it sort of levels out. Again, the first things you write are going to be messy for the most part, and once in a while, you’ll get a gem that just comes out and it’s like “oh my god I wrote this almost perfect thing and I don’t even have to do much to it”. That’s very very rare, but it might happen.
Interviewer
Thank you for your time.
The final part of this interview will be posted on Wednesday, 11/21/2024.
Abigail Cloud and Haley Souders were interviewed on October 30th, 2024. This interview took place almost 1.5 months after the first interview with Souders and Cloud. Abigail Cloud is the Editor-in-Chief of MAR, and Haley Souders is serving as the Winter Wheat Coordinator this year. During this interview, we discussed preparing for the festival and advice for attendees. Winter Wheat 2024 starts tomorrow Thursday, November 7th. We hope to see you there!
Winter Wheat, created in 2001, is a festival celebrating writers and readers, produced by Mid-American Review and hosted on the campus of Bowling Green State University. In workshops, students, faculty, and guests from the Bowling Green community and beyond come to learn, discuss, read, and most importantly write. Through “keynote” readings, special guest authors read their work, sign books, and talk with Winter Wheat participants. Winter Wheat creates the ideal environment for graduate and undergraduate students, faculty and staff, community writers, and those from other states to mingle and create new work, effectively planting the seeds of new writings for future harvest. There is no fee to attend Winter Wheat. The festival is sponsored by MAR, the BGSU Ethnic and Cultural Arts Program, the Creative Writing Program at BGSU, Prairie Margins, the Graduate Writers Club, the Creative Writing Alumni Fund, and donations from attendees. The festival would not be possible without donors! Donations for Winter Wheat and MAR can be made online, or through checks made out to BGSU Foundation, with Mid-American Review in the Memo line. Donations may also be made onsite, with cash, check, or credit card. Thank you for your support. Now, please see the interview below.
Interviewer:
What advice would you give a first-time attendee for the Winter Wheat writing festival?
Haley Souders:
Last year was the first writing conference of any kind that I’d been to. I remember when I went to AWP later, I was really overwhelmed, but I think since Winter Wheat is only two days, I didn’t feel as overwhelmed. It’s good to plan one workshop period where you don’t go to any sessions and just take a break for your mind. I remember after some of the workshops I just wanted to sit down and write afterwards because it’s a very fun environment to be in where everyone is talking about writing. You get to write in the workshop, and it just makes you want to write more.
Abigail Cloud:
That’s true. You’ve got to have a good notebook, a couple pens & some pencils. When you’re thinking about coming for the first time and wondering what it’s going to be like, we don’t know either. We know to some extent, but it’s a little different every year. We don’t know who all is going to show up. It’s never really chaotic (I need some wood to knock on), but it’s flurried at some points and then super quiet at other times. So it’s good to be ready for that ebb and flow of traffic and flip traffic. And, understanding your role in it is as a creator. We’re in charge of the festival as staff members of Mid-American Review, but we’re also creators, and we need to take advantage of that. And that’s the same thing with AWP. You never do get a chance to settle down at AWP, not really. At Winter Wheat, you have the opportunity to talk to presenters. We do our own book fair table where our presenters can bring their own books and we sell their books for them. So you can actually meet those people onsite. And it’s a nice opportunity to support authors directly because we’re not ordering the books from the presses or through a bookstore; they’re bringing the books, so that money goes directly back to them. That’s a great way to support them and also to have an immediate reminder of the types of things that you were working on in their workshop.
Interviewer:
You mentioned every year being a little different. What’s new this year?
Abigail Cloud:
DnD! So we had Dungeons and Dragons a few years ago–an organization called Tales of Initiative did some one-shots and it was really fun. There were a whole bunch of people who were interested in learning about DnD. So this year we’re doing a little workshop ahead of time using Dungeons and Dragons character sheets to talk about characters, the brainstorming that goes into storytelling, and how that practice can help you write your own fiction. We’re doing the one-shots again, and we’ll have an experienced table and a beginner’s table so people can learn how to play. People can also spectate if they so choose. A couple people two years ago just wanted to spectate, which I thought was amazing because I like doing that too, just doing some work while people are joyfully coming up with all manner of magical excitement. So it’s a fun little thing that embraces the ability to tell a story on the spot well as collaboratively. Also, Jennifer Pullen is coming for the Saturday keynote reading/craft talk, and she’s also giving a workshop on fantasy fiction. And since we don’t have fantasy fiction here as a class, this will be a good opportunity for students to embrace that side of writing. We certainly have many students who are writing fantasy fiction and we want to give them the opportunity to learn and grow. Also, this year our Saturday night open mic is at Juniper downtown. We’ve had a couple different locations over the years and Juniper happened to be available this year. So I’m greatly looking forward to fair fries.
Interviewer:
Are there any other workshops or readings that you’re especially excited about?
Abigail Cloud:
I typically do not get to go to stuff. I’ll make Haley go to stuff. It’s so easy to get distracted by the business side of things and everything else that’s going on constantly, people with questions, and so on. But as much as possible, it’s important for us to also show up and to be there as participants. Haley, which ones are you excited about?
Haley Souders:
I’m excited for the “Walking with(out) Purpose” workshop with Brad Aaron Modlin. It seems like it’ll be really interesting and different. I think getting that movement in during the workshop will be fun. And Sydney Koeplin’s Workshop, “Dreamweaver,” which is about writing from your dreams. I’m excited for that one because in the past I used to write from an idea I’d get from a dream but I don’t think I’ve really done that much recently. So I’m curious to see if going there will start that back up again for me.
Abigail Cloud:
We also have a couple specific workshops that are about finding your own voice and your own craft. Sophfronia Scott is doing one called, “Almost Straight to the Heart,” on the self-discovery process, using self-discovery as a way to unpack ideas and thoughts. And Naomi North, who is an alum, is doing one called “You Can Tell Me Anything” about finding your own authentic writing voice. They’re both framed almost in terms of an adventure (just as the walking one is), that challenge of digging into your internal self. We also have a couple that are based on family history or using history in your own writing. We see this sometimes in trends, a trend toward wanting to find authenticity and wanting to uncover memories and use them regardless of genre, not just in creative non-fiction or memoir, going deeper into that and seeing what it can spark. So that’s great and it’s feeling very organic in that way.
Interviewer:
I think I’m going to Jessica Manack’s “Writing Your Family Tree” and Naomi North’s workshop, so I’m really excited for those.
Abigail Cloud:
It might feel a little bit like we’re on a retreat. It just sort of has that vibe right now, and I’m not mad about it. I love that.
Interviewer:
Shifting over a little bit, do you have any advice for starting up a regional conference like Winter Wheat?
Abigail Cloud:
When you’re dealing with a festival or conference that’s part of a university, your rules are so much different than when you’re doing it yourself, when you’re doing it independently or as part of an organization that is non-university. You have rules at a university but you also have resources. Technology for instance–it’s in the classrooms already. We have the educational buildings available. If we need it, there’s catering. If we need tech services, there’s tech services. So all of that is built in but there’s also the need to follow policies. So just little bits and pieces like that. And being aware of those types of things. I think the main thing that most people face is just getting people to go, getting people interested, using social media and other forms effectively to build up your base. We have a base that’s been built up over twenty years of people, of past participants and contacts. We’re constantly updating the contact list, adding more ideas, things like that. But as an independent organization, getting all of that work done, in addition to all the infrastructure, there’s just extra to do. So, I think it’s good to know whether you want to do it as part of a joint project with a university or an organization, or if it’s something you’re going alone. And then figuring out who your base is going to be. Especially because we’re not out here giving each other our participants list, which I know is a common business thing, but it’s not something that we do. I’m also very stingy with subscriber lists. I’m not into just making those available to people. So I think having some idea of costs and some idea of your base is kind of your go-to, but also just deciding on your vibe. They’re all different. AWP has a very AWP vibe. I don’t even know how to explain it. It’s more scholarly, less craft. There is some focus craft but it’s more about writing than doing the writing, at least on the spot. We’re about doing the writing on the spot. I also think it’s important to think about what you need in your area. What is your area missing? That’s not easy to do sometimes. You really have to be plugged in with the community in order to know what’s missing and what people want. It’s good to do that ahead of time and that also helps if you then go for grants. Arts council grants want to know what your goals are and who your constituents are and what those people have said and what they’re interested in. Having feedback and community involvement increases your panel score generally, so that’s good to utilize.
Interviewer:
Sounds like there’s a lot of networking going on. And a lot of moving parts.
Abigail Cloud:
So much networking and a lot of moving parts. And there’s planning that you can do ahead, but you also just have to let things happen in their own time. I have trouble with that sometimes but Winter Wheat has helped teach me not to over-manage. It’s going to happen regardless. It’s happening. We have the things done. Haley’s been working so hard and getting the word out. People are registered. So I just need to not flip out about it all the time. And that’s probably my best advice for someone starting a writing conference. Get some help you trust and then don’t flip out.
Interviewer:
Haley, any big lessons from doing the Winter Wheat assistantship this semester?
Haley Souders:
I think the biggest thing I’ve learned is the importance of having a spreadsheet. I feel like there are so many things to keep track of for something like this and with me doing it for the first time, it would be really easy for me to get overwhelmed. But because of the way that everything has been organized where we have the list of things that need to get done and we have specific spreadsheets for the book fair and for workshops, there was never a moment where I wasn’t sure what I needed to do or where something was, or where to find information about anything. It was very well organized by Abby.
Abigail Cloud:
Well, by legions of past Winter Wheat people. This stuff grows up over time and we change the duties and the plans list every year. It has to change as new things come up or as policies change, as venues change, and whatnot. But it does at least give you a completion timeline and helps you understand what the direct lineup is. Here we are in one to two weeks before and we’re seeing the list gradually getting italicized as things get done. Even looking at it, I’m just like, ‘yep, okay, got some things that we need to do.’ This list gets longer and longer the closer we get, but again, it’s coming and it’s time. It’s happening as it needs to happen.
Interviewer:
How do you expect or hope Winter Wheat to evolve over the next few years?
Abigail Cloud:
I always like to hear from our participants about what they want even though getting feedback is really difficult. It’s hard to get people to fill out the feedback forms. I think hearing those ideas and seeing how our student population looks and what they’re interested in has always been a guiding force. And understanding that part of our job with a festival is to bring something to the community that it doesn’t already have. So whatever we don’t have, that’s what we do. For instance, we have Jessica Zinz who does collage poetry. She and Amanda McGuire Rzicznek do graphic novels and comics and they’ve worked on the word and image combination, which is why we now have the minor here at the University that students can do. They’ve really brought that to the forefront. That’s just not a thing that we had 10 years ago. So looking ahead, testing out new things like the D&D event, and knowing what our participants are interested in. It’s hard to predict where the writing world’s going to go but we do know that there are things that people are interested in more than they used to be, and we can bring those things to Winter Wheat. Bringing in different types of writers for the keynote is a great one that helps us keep pace with that. I’m also curious to know if we’re going to continue doing the hybrid sessions and how that might evolve. We do have some sessions on Zoom so people can participate and present from all over. So if that’s going to remain popular, we’ll try to do more with it. When we were all online the one year, I didn’t love it because part of Winter Wheat is the on-site community. But having some things hybridized still brings in the wider community. And being able to bring back people who have been here like alums and past participants is still important. I just didn’t like how it worked out with the open mics and receptions. Nobody really loves those online. So, finding new ways to make the online component work I think is going to be a challenge continuing forward.
Interviewer:
What about you, Haley? Any thoughts about the future of Winter Wheat?
Haley Souders:
I hope that I’m able to keep going in person and can see future Winter Wheats. I’ll definitely keep trying to attend online wherever I am, but I hope I can still make the trip back sometimes.
Abigail Cloud:
That’s one of our favorite things, having alums back. And seeing how their writing has changed and grown, and giving them the opportunities for further professional development and continuing that education. It’s nice to keep building those relationships and keep those people close.
Interviewer:
What are you most proud of about Winter Wheat and/or your involvement in it?
Haley Souders:
This is a weird thing to be proud of, but the social media part of it. I’m not a big social media person, and I feel like that is one skill I’ve directly learned from this job. I don’t know if I want to do marketing or social media things in the future, but it’s now a skill that I possess and can say that I have done and know how to do.
Abigail Cloud:
We have concrete examples to add to your portfolio. I’ve been pushing that really hard on my students lately, having a portfolio of the work we’ve done. Because when you’re applying for jobs or further schooling, you have that already there. You can already point to it and say, ‘this is a thing that I have achieved.’
Haley Souders:
Also, anytime I’ve directly answered an email from someone and I’ve gotten to see the excitement from people who are getting to attend, especially if it’s someone who is not currently affiliated with Bowling Green in any way. It’s just exciting to see how far Winter Wheat can reach.
Abigail Cloud:
Yeah, and it’s always nice when you see new people, new faces. As I’m looking at the registrations coming in, there are a lot of familiar names on there, which I love, but I also love seeing the new folks, ones who have identified that they haven’t attended before. And then sometimes we have alums and friends teaching elsewhere and they bring their students, which I love. I think having something that people feel comfortable coming back to is one of the things that I feel most proud of. It’s a comfortable environment. There’s a lot of camaraderie, there’s a lot of face-to-face conversation. One of the things we’re going to do this year is bring a large collection of our out-of-date literary journals and let people go through them and talk about submission strategies. And that’s how we’re going to start. We’re inviting people into the mess of submitting work right away, giving each other advice and so on. And I hope that that’ll spark conversation. Let’s face it–writers, we don’t always want to be perceived or out there talking to people. It’s not really what we do. It’s kind of literally the opposite of what we do. But Winter Wheat is our opportunity to be in a safe environment to do those things, to talk to people, to be perceived, and to make something new. That’s the spirit in which Winter Wheat was created, and continuing in that vein and representing, in a larger aspect, the spirit of Mid-American Review, is really important to me. I feel really good about that. And also my registration spreadsheet.
Interviewer:
If you had to describe Winter Wheat using only food metaphors, how would you describe it?
Abigail Cloud:
Mashed potatoes. I’m a potato person. I like potatoes, potatoes are part of my regular diet. They are my safe food. I find them comforting. I always want them. I’m always excited about them and you can do so many cool things with them.
Haley Souders:
My first thought was a bowl of Lucky Charms.
Interviewer:
Are you the kind of person who eats the charms mixed in, or who saves the charms for last?
Haley Souders:
I save the charms for last and have a bowl of marshmallows.
Abigail Cloud:
Lucky Charms is such a great answer because if you eat them straight from the box like I do, you can’t really see ahead of time what you’re about to consume–you just know it’s going to be delicious.
Haley Souders:
Thank you for validating my metaphor.
Interviewer:
If you could invite one of your favorite authors, dead or alive, to Winter Wheat, who would you choose and what do you think they’d be most excited about?
Haley Souders:
That’s so tough. My first thought is Charles Yu just because I was talking to Jane Wageman (MAR’s Managing Editor for 2024-2025) when we went to package everything to ship about how whenever I recognized a writer’s name, I was so excited and I was like, ‘oh my gosh, I’m touching this person’s mail right now.’ One of those people was Charles Yu. I don’t know what he would get most from it though.
Abigail Cloud:
We’ve published his story “Class Three Superhero” in Mid-American Review. He would come. If we could afford him we’d bring him. As for what he’d get from it, he would mostly receive our adoring eyeballs because we love him so much. I was going to say Brenda Hillman because she’s always my answer, but Dana Levin would be super great here. She is one of my poetry fairy godmothers. I love her enthusiasm and her dig-in mentality. I feel like she would be a really good reader but I also think she would in turn enjoy the generative workshops. I think she would like to create.
Interviewer:
Awesome. So we’ve covered a lot of ground. Anything else you’d like to add before we wrap up?
Abigail Cloud:
Everyone should come to Winter Wheat. It happens every year–put it in your calendar. It’s such a good opportunity because during the year we tend to get distracted from our writing. We’re doing all these other things, we’re wearing many different hats, and it’s so nice to be able to say, ‘this weekend, I’m going to write and that’s it. I’m going be with my own kind. I’m going to be with my people.’
Haley Souders:
Yeah, I’ll just just a second that. I feel like anytime I’m in a place where everyone is really interested in writing and we’re also talking about writing, it always makes me so much more excited to write than I am when it’s just me and my mind thinking about how I haven’t been writing.
