An online home for the American University Creative Writing MFA community
By Will Schick I’ll never forget the way certain things could make me feel on deployment. The way a rocket blast could jolt me awake, and rattle its way through my bones. The way a helicopter could make me feel utterly helpless as it would…
By Jessica Harris Mattie rocked her out of that bed, out of that room, into a blue vastness just underneath the sun and above time. She rocked her over Aegean seas so clean they shone like crystal, so clear the fresh blood of sacrificed babies…
By Emily Moses I’ve offered to write about Joan Didion and, as I sit here, watching The Center Will Not Hold for the fourth time in half as many weeks, I regret my offer. I am not sure what I thought I would find…
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 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 Karen Keating After reading Vince Granata’s exquisite dissection of his favorite sentence, I felt inspired to revisit my own favorites, to examine them with the keen eye and grammatical astuteness of an MFA student, to marvel at their structural prowess, at their rhythmic delights.…
By Vince Granata I don’t love how my favorite sentence became my favorite sentence. In fact, this origin story embarrasses me so much that I almost skipped sharing it. When I was a senior in college, a girl I was trying to date had a…