An online home for the American University Creative Writing MFA community
By Nick Chhoeun I must break the rule slightly because the sentence that stuck out to me when thinking about my favorite sentence is actually two lines from the poem The Circus Animals’ Desertion by W.B Yeats. The lines are, I must lie down where…
By Yohanca Delgado In Japan, repairing broken pottery is an art form called Kintsugi (“golden joinery”), which uses gold to meld the broken pieces back together. In her book of essays, Quiéreme (“Love Me”), Juliana Delgado Lopera’s outlines the ways in the which the self…
By Vince Granata Admittedly, I’m not a twitter aficionado. Admittedly, I have a deep and abiding fear of the looming Singularity. But, with the help of some of my non-luddite friends, I’m coming around to the idea that a marriage of these two—twitter and A.I.—might…
By Nick Chhoeun “Oh no, you’re into that crap, too?” a woman on campus said to me. I was sitting on a bench next to her wearing my Chance the Rapper hat with the word “Coloring Book” on it. She told me her kids listened…
By Jessica Harris Dear Ms. Mary, You always knew it was me, I guess by the drawl in my voice when I say “miss.” I’ve tried to write you this letter without crying—guess that’s why I put it off for so long. But I know…
By Vince Granata The question–a troubling one I’m still contending with–came out of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. In the novel, Calvino imagines a dialogue between Marco Polo and Kublai Kahn, a back and forth in which Polo describes cities that Kahn believes span his empire. Eventually, Kahn…
Café MFA is happy to introduce the newest member of our editorial staff. Jessica Harris is in her second-ish year in the MFA program at American University. While she declares no specific track, she tends to write poetry. Her other interests include cooking, music and random adventures.
By Yohanca Delgado Ahead of tomorrow’s Visiting Writers Event, I had the pleasure of talking on the phone with the charming and gracious Imbolo Mbue about Behold the Dreamers, character development, drafts, and Motorola RZRs. YD: How is all the travel going? Are you working on any…
By Sylvia Jones Norma, I did it by doing the things I was afraid of doing so that I would no longer be afraid. This is my favorite sentence in literature. It comes from Sandra Cisneros’ essay “A House of My Own” and appears…
By Karan Madhok Behold the Dreamers By Imbolo Mbue 397 pp. Random House. $17 Over a million immigrants a year are granted permanent residence in the United States. They leave behind their families, their homes, their favorite foods, their language, culture, and often, the…