Last month I wrote about the impending demise of my graduate Master of Professional Writing Program at USC. While Dean Steve Kay has classified the move strictly as a “business decision,” no one really knows what that means, which is why some MPW students and alumni started a letter-writing campaign to convince him to sit… Read more about Shout-out from the LA Times
I’ve occasionally identified my master’s degree by the more common term MFA (Master of Fine Arts), but it’s time, once and for all, to own my MPW (Master of Professional Writing). For those of you unfamiliar, the traditional English MFA in creative writing requires the student to specialize in one genre, either fiction or poetry,… Read more about Master of Professional Writing, Limited Edition
There’s nothing quite like writing an article for a client, then looking up to see this on your wall: The celebration at the end of the movie when everyone waves streamers and cheers your name is excellent, however unlikely. Rather, life is all about those little moments of accomplishment. I love to write. It’s what… Read more about It’s the Path that Matters
Last week on LinkedIn, Hunter Walk posted an article called “It’s Fine to Get an MBA, but Don’t Be an MBA.” Walk, Director of Product Management at Google and Stanford MBA alumnus, tackles part of the “should I or shouldn’t I” debate surrounding business school. As we creative folk are aware, the same conflict applies to… Read more about It’s Fine to Get an MFA, but Don’t Be an MFA
On Tuesday, I saw a great indie film called Liberal Arts written and directed by Josh Radnor, who is best known for portraying Ted Mosby on CBS’s How I Met Your Mother. His sophomore feature, as well as an official selection of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, the story follows 35-year-old Jesse (Radnor) who returns to his old college… Read more about Liberal Arts
Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, passed away on August 25, 2012, at the age of 82. Aside from being a person of historical significance, he’s also an alumnus of my alma mater, the University of Southern California, where he delivered the commencement address at my college graduation in 2005. The speech… Read more about Neil Armstrong’s USC Commencement Address
On Thursday, May 17, author Neil Gaiman delivered the 134th commencement address at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. He spoke of his career as a freelancer and making it up as he went along—which is the nature of being an artist, for better and worse. His advice was salient to the lives of… Read more about Neil Gaiman: Make Good Art
In September 2012, City University in London will launch the UK’s first MA in crime thriller writing. The school already offers a master’s in creative writing, which traditionally translates as “a focus on literary fiction,” but now they’re branching out to explore one of the most popular genres in publishing. According to their website: Sales… Read more about The UK’s First MA in Crime Thriller Writing
When it comes to scholarship and teaching, there is one area where film schools are considerably more advanced than English departments: their comfort with genre. Cinema programs, USC’s in particular, regularly offer classes devoted to melodrama, comedy, musical, noir (actually a style rather than a separate genre), and horror. Media professors acknowledge various conventions to… Read more about What English Departments Can Learn from Film School