As executive director of arts and culture in Greenburgh, Sarah Bracey White says, “I spent years helping others achieve their dreams. I finally feel as if I”™m achieving one of my own.”
White has been selected as one of three fellows for The Purchase College Writers Center, which will be launched this fall.
The poet, fiction writer and memoirist, who lives in Ossining, will be joined by Pamela Hart, a writer, poet, educator, curator and editor from South Salem, and Christine Lehner, a fiction writer from Hastings-on-Hudson. The three will be given small stipends, offices in the college”™s library and access to its materials.
Just as important is the opportunity for the fellows to immerse themselves in the college, says Louise Yelin, chair of its School of Humanities, who”™ll direct the new venture.
The center is the result of a conversation between Yelin and Briarcliff Manor”™s Marilyn Johnson, author of the new “This Book Is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All” (Harper), who”™ll serve as senior fellow and writer-in-residence.
“She said writers want three things ”“ a place to write, community and access to a library and its data base,” Yelin says. “My thought also was that the college is well-known for its visual and performing arts but not as well-known for its writing courses (in journalism, creative writing, dramatic writing), and it should be.”
The Writers Center, then, will raise the profile of the college in part by having the fellows engage in the academic and surrounding communities.
Hart ”“ who as a visiting writer at the Katonah Museum of Art coordinates “Thinking Through Art,” a conversation between the visual and written arts ”“ will collaborate with the college”™s Neuberger Museum of Art.
Lehner ”“ author of the novel “Absent A Miracle” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009) and the story collection “What to Wear to See The Pope” (Carroll and Graf, 2004) ”“ will meet with faculty and students in journalism and creative writing.
White ”“ whose works include the poetry collection “Feelings Brought to the Surface” (Harlow, 1980) ”“ will take part in outreach to local schools and community centers through a SUNY Diversity Grant. (The center is funded not only by a Diversity Grant but by the School of Humanities and the college”™s Lily Lieb Port Creative Writing Program.)
Mostly, though, the writers will write. White, who”™s just finished a memoir titled “My Name Is Sarah,” says she plans to polish a young-adult novel, “Letters To Sharon,” based on her experience as a black girl in segregated South Carolina and her unlikely correspondence with a white girl in South Dakota. She also wants to focus on marketing her work.
“I tend to write and stick things in a drawer,” she says, because she feels compelled to write.
It”™s a compulsion Yelin is happy to feed: “We”™re not going to ask the fellows to do extensive good works. When they get their books published, they can thank us.”
Indeed, the satisfaction and prestige of a published author is cream on the cake to writing administrators. Karen Sirabian, director of the Master of Arts in Writing Program at Manhattanville College in Purchase, says she is particularly excited to welcome back MAW graduate James King as part of the “Meet the Writers” series Oct. 5. His new “Bill Warrington”™s Last Chance” (Penguin) ”“ a tale of redemption revolving around an Alzheimer”™s sufferer ”“ has received the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.
“It”™s wonderful if someone makes it into publication,” Sirabian says. “As writers, someone”™s triumph gives us hope.”
But that”™s not why schools known for their writing programs cultivate writers, administrators say.
The Masters of Arts in Writing Program at Manhattanville came as a natural extension of Manhattanville”™s reputation as a bastion of English literature, Sirabian says.
At Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers ”“ whose faculty and alumni have included Grace Paley, E.L. Doctorow, Alice Walker and Allan Gurganus ”“Â the word permeates every aspect of the curriculum, but especially the undergraduate courses in expository and creative writing, the Master of Fine Arts program in fiction, nonfiction and poetry, the noncredit Writing Institute and various lecture and reading series.
Writing, says Susan Guma, dean of Sarah Lawrence graduate studies, “is part of the life of the college itself.”
Both she and Sirabian have seen an increase in applications to their master”™s in writing programs.
“There”™s a real appetite and hunger for writing,” Guma says. “The digital age doesn”™t provide a relationship with faculty. There are small groups of writers who meet for years after they”™ve been here.”
Sirabian agrees: “Everyone says the novel is dead, publishing is dead, print is dead. But you know what? They”™re not dead. Despite what you hear, look around the entertainment industry, blogs and how communities are formed. It is around the word.”
