Angelica Graham graduated in 2004. She writes: "In my third semester in the Adult Degree Program at Vermont College, I had the opportunity to study the short story form and to create my own original short stories. I chose to set these three stories in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, where I live. I wanted each story to be able to stand on its own, yet I wanted them to be interconnected, with common characters, in order to give them some continuity. These stories were the result. 'The Widow's Wood' is the first story in the set. It was loosely based on an actual event that occurred in the town of Norton where I grew up. As it happens, Joe Buckles became the focal character for all the short stories I wrote, and I have become quite fond of him. 'Pony' chronicles Joe's relationship with his daughter, Marie. It is set in the sixties, and features a commune much like the commune that existed in Norton when I lived there. In 'Sutton Mills Summer,' Marie returns to her home town with her teenage son, Andy. The relationship between Andy and his Grampa Joe developed in some rather interesting and unexpected ways. I made my own discoveries about Joe through their relationship. The writing of these stories was an incredible learning experience for me. Not only did I learn a great deal about the craft of writing through this work, I learned a great deal about the Northeast Kingdom and the people who live here, my friends and neighbors, and myself."
Anne Cocroft Adams is a 2003 graduate of the Adult Degree Program. She writes: “When I returned to school in 2001, I had already written a first draft of Out West. For three semesters, the novel stayed in the drawer while I studied and wrote short stories. When I graduated last June, I took a few months off to loll in the sun (well, to work forty hours a week at my job, but as most ADP students know, doing only that is akin to a vacation), and then got back to work on this book, which is still a work in progress. It’s a love story, and a story about healing and self-discovery, too. The idea came from a trip I made to Colorado and Wyoming a few years ago, when I joined the Outlaw Trail Ride in Thermopolis and fell in love with western riding and cowboy hats.”
Camille Arbogast is currently a student in the Adult Degree Program. She writes: "I don’t drive; a fact that others find mysterious. As a final answer to all the pesky questioning, I wrote this piece. All the facts are true, though some hyperbole might have been used to increase the entertainment value."
Jane E. Bryant writes: "Since I graduated Vermont College’s Adult Degree Program in 1989 with a concentration in writing, I have continued writing. I have published articles in area papers, Writers Hotel (a workshop for poets and prose writers made up of ADP graduates) and other anthologies. A memoir, My Little Life, was published in 1997. (Contact me, I still have copies for sale.) I also write poetry, mostly by putting what I think is important on a separate line. Some of my work just doesn’t lend itself to an essay or story. My ideal bumper sticker would read: 'I'd rather be writing.' It's on my mind all the time. I have topics I'd like to explore (or expose) and the beginnings of novels, and odd characters swirling around in my brain. If doing it were as easy as thinking about it, I'd be famous. Meanwhile I write about my experiences, people I know and, unfortunately for them, family."
Rhoda Carroll edits and produces RAGU/ Online. She teaches writing, literature, and visual art in the Adult Degree Program at Vermont College. Her poems have appeared in a variety of literary magazines and anthologies, and her paintings have been exhibited in many Vermont galleries.
Jane Alberdeston Coralin has been writing poetry for over fifteen years and has been published in literary magazines and poetry anthologies in the US and Canada. Her most recent collection is called The Afrotaina Dreams and she is working on completing a collection of poems called Songs of a Daughter's Make-Believe. She is a 2002 graduate of the Adult Degree Program and is pursuing her graduate studies at the State University of New York at Binghamton. Jane writes: "Through the expertise and guidance of Vermont College advisors, I was returned to the essence of my poetry, the way a ship returns to its dock. It was with them that I learned the act of process, the ways to peer into the work and re-experience it, to meet the duende (Lorca) in my writing, befriend and respect my muse and deal with them in loving, graceful ways. All this schooling in the ways of loving yourself by loving your work has helped me become the writer I am at this point in my life.”
Judith Chalmer teaches in the Liberal Studies Division at Vermont College. She writes: "This essay is about integrity. It's also about domestic labor. It's about race. It's about resistance and sacrifice. For that reason, expect digression, thick as thieves with complications, contradictions, and baffling human capacity. For me, addressing integrity requires homage to people I admire and a willingness to comb through time. This is the second part of my inquiry into race and domestic labor. The first is another essay that describes in the most personal terms the ways immigration and fateful death posed the dilemmas that led me to a wilderness of compromise in the arms of my family. This essay, in contrast, combines personal experience and academic inquiry. It's that urgent learning, I believe, the connection between the personal and the academic, that draws people to learn at Vermont College. It's that urgent desire that made me think I could write something with cares this far flung." [Editor's note: See more of Judy's work on her web page at www.somewareinvt.com/judithchalmer]
Roger Cranse served as the Head of the Liberal Studies Division — home of the Adult Degree Program and New College — at Vermont College from 1987, when it was part of Norwich University, until his retirement in 2003 from Vermont College of Union Institute & University.
Rickey Gard Diamond teaches in the Adult Degree program; she is also an ADP graduate and holds an MFA from Vermont College of Norwich University. She writes: “My first novel, Second Sight, surprised me with its animal messenger, and this latest novel has one, too. I drafted Measure of Life last summer and have been revising this year, thickening its characters. The 'funhouse face' painted on Annie’s house came out of nowhere and yet I recognized its rightness. It delighted me, though why remains a mystery for now. This is why I love writing fiction. It taps the unconscious, revealing things I would never get to by means of logic alone. Fiction’s meaning-making has impulses I don’t control—though I pay attention to its symbols and feelings, taking its discoveries as seriously as the fact-finding of other kinds of writing.”
Ellen Dudley graduated from the Adult Degree Program in 1989 and completed her MFA at Warren Wilson College. She founded and edits The Marlboro Review. Ellen writes: "'The Genitive Case' and 'Shenandoah' are two poems included in the book I just finished, The Geographic Cure, which is my second collection of poems. 'Shenandoah' isn't exactly a narrative but more a ruminative meditative piece. 'The Genitive Case' is a conflation of something I wrote years ago when I first started writing. My 10th grade Latin teacher really did such a thing as happens in the poem, swirling her arm like an orator, à la Cicero (pronounced 'Kicker-oh!' when she quoted him). Years after Latin II, I made a story up for her and couldn't finish it. I had the hardest time with this poem and by 1993 it was in a drawer somewhere gathering dust. Then I won a fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center for a month and one day in a workshop one of the guys brought in a new poem about inscriptions on gravestones he found while taking a walk. The resident writer was Bill Matthews that spring and one of the inscriptions had Latin in it which he translated as something ending in 'brief.' Something about the Latin clicked in my head and I knew right then I could finish that damned poem. I took it to the workshop the next day, the two pieces of story were linked by the genitive case, and there we were. All done." [Editor's note: visit the Marlboro Review at www.marlbororeview.com. For an inside look at what it means to be the founder and editor of a literary magazine, read an interview with Ellen at http://webdelsol.com/Algonkian/Poetry/interview-ellen.htm].
Victor P. Ehly is currently Acting Dean of Liberal Studies at Vermont College. He writes: “I think of myself as a 'public intellectual' but a 'private poet.' Inspiration for my creative writing often comes during noontime jogging—either down the rural road or a forest path. A single line or image or smell or feeling—or even an entire narrative--comes to mind, and when I return all sweaty and tired, but exhilarated, I know through long experience that if I don’t sit down at the keyboard immediately, the inspiration will fade and the idea will be lost. Inspiration also comes from immersion in nature—hiking up a mountain, searching for a beaver pond, or a lost (but mapped) old cemetery, etc. Sometimes inspiration comes from total exhaustion, sadness, or defeat. Writing saves me in those circumstances. I often just bang out that which is trying to come out — a half page paragraph of narrative, for example. Then over time I go back to it and either keep editing it down by deleting all of the extraneous words until it becomes a poem, or shaping it and expanding it into a short essay. It is the material itself that seems to make this decision for me."
Will Fleming graduated from the Adult Degree Program in 2002. He is pursuing graduate study in writing and literature at City College in New York. He writes: “Like most of my writing tends to be, 'Cannonball' was a tool I used as a way for me to gain a better grasp on a particular issue, a means to try and solve some nagging riddle. It emerged in my fourth of five semesters in the ADP, and came immediately following a visit to my hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, a city fraught with vast social and economic hardships. It was a route toward further understanding loss of work and loss of pride. At the time, I also happened to be deeply immersed in the works of Raymond Carver, and I suppose 'Cannonball' was also a subconscious attempt to emulate Carver’s lean and succinct style.” About his novel-in-progess, Will says: "Baltimore, Maryland, nicknamed Charm City, has the highest per capita number of intravenous heroin users of any city in the country, has maintained some of the highest national homicide rates for the last decade, and remains one of the most violent cities in America today. Writing the book was a route toward further understanding what I had witnessed in Baltimore throughout my young life and was again seeing upon my return."
Kim Govoni is currently a student in the Adult Degree Program of Vermont College's Brattleboro Center. She writes: "As I studied international hunger relief I became disheartened by the self-interest of wealthy donor governments. I began to search for a beacon, some kind of human interaction that could be replicated on a large scale and used to fight world hunger. I found the answer in the symbolism of the oryoki and the practical advice of economist Amartya Sen."
Jade Harmon is currently a student in New College at Vermont College.
Charlotte Hastings teaches art and writing in the Adult Degree Program at Vermont College. She lives in and maintains an art practice in Burlington, Vermont. Her work has been shown throughout the country, mostly in New York City and now in Vermont, where her great grandparents once farmed.
L. D. Huff graduated from Vermont College’s Adult Degree Program in 1994 and the Master’s Program in 1996. He writes: “'It's Like When You Were Eight' is about returning to school in your forties. 'Somewhere in the Middle' is a new story I've been working on. There are so many pinpricks of awareness and change in my life and in my writing because of the time spent in Vermont that anything I say concerning the multi-leveled experience runs a major risk of being swallowed by cliché. In fact, the whole experience was an experiment in risk: the value of risk as a purge, risk as a truth teller, risk as a creative vehicle, risk as a goal, and, most important, risk as a life style. My simple attempts do more for me than, I would guess, for the reader but, I always hope, a small sliver somewhere resonates with part of somebody some place. When that happens there can be, for me, no greater joy.”
Jay Kauffmann graduated from the Adult Degree Program at Vermont College in 2002. He writes: "For the longest time, I resisted writing about this experience, mostly because I didn’t think I could do it justice. It seemed altogether too personal and strange and indefinable. I knew, however, if I was ever going to attempt it, I would have to keep Jay 'the writer' out of the mix and be as simple and true as possible. Normally, writing for me is agonizing. But when I finally sat down to write 'Shaktipat,' was nearly effortless. It came, as is, in one sitting."
Sheila Swan Laufer is currently a student in the Adult Degree Program at Vermont College. She writes: “’Something to Die For’ came to me in sadness and frustration about my mother-In-law who mothered me. Her situation, blind, not hearing well and with dementia caused me to think of how a mother can become a child to hers. I had almost died some months before. A mirror to mortality. The difference between quality of life and simply living longer. My hope is that the poem speaks for itself, that all writing does just that but especially with poetry. ‘Laz-E-Boy’ began with an ad in a paper. The Muse came to me at the same time I was observing life outside my circle. Good people who do not have what should be in the U.S. — health care and education. While billions of dollars are spent on unholy wars, people are grappling with what should be a given in this country. This was also the first piece of fiction I have written that had no autobiographical aspects. Some who have read this have wept, some have laughed. I am always surprised at the reactions to a writer's intent."
Molly Power writes: "I started writitng poetry after culminating in 1997, inspired by the wonderful poems I read as part of my studies, and those read aloud by students and teachers. These three poems are reflections of my life on our farm. I have abandoned the territory of short stories and young adult fiction to concentrate on poetry, but I remain ever committed to the narrative."
Michael Sherman teaches in the Adult Degree Program at Vermont College. Michael writes: “I don’t write a lot of poetry, which is how I know that I am not a poet. I am a historian, so I usually write non-fiction prose—at least I hope it is non-fiction, and I’m sure it is prose. Over the years, however, I have dabbled and experimented with poetry, and even someone who reads and writes mostly prose knows there are a few moments when you know that what you have to say is best said in poetry. These two poems were an attempt to capture those moments and honor that realization. 'Tuba mirum' was written, as the subtitle says, as an answer to a question posed by my youngest son. For many years I played the tuba. He once asked me if I ever played the Sousaphone. There are not a lot poems written about tubas, so for the title, I borrowed the most appropriate phrase I could find from the Requiem Mass of the Roman Catholic liturgy. The statue from the late second century B.C. of Laocoön and his sons being strangled by serpents is justly famous and probably needs no additional comment. 'Sisyphus in Vermont' was inspired by my daily walk down a long hill to downtown Montpelier and the return trip up the hill. During winter, when snow and ice cover the streets and make the walking laborious at best, hazardous at worst, the return trip is difficult. But the view of the mountains in the distance as I reach the top of the hill is often spectacular. I have always enjoyed reading myths and about mythology. The myth of Sisyphus—both as we receive it from the ancient world and as Albert Camus tells it and uses it for his own purposes—is one of my favorite stories. I thought of it instantly as I struggled up my hill one winter day."
Gene Snyder graduated from the Adult Degree Program at Vermont College in 1999. He writes: "I've always been inspired by past art. I think of it as the measuring stick for all art that will be produced collectively and individually in the future. If there is not a book of some sort about art in my hand, there is something considerably amiss. Although my interests may be in the Pre-Raphaelite movement this week, you may catch me reading about Proto-Geometric Greek Sculpture next week. This has both a positive and adverse effect on my art. I'm never without new ideas; however, executing all of those ideas would take several lifetimes. Sifting through and choosing which ideas that should be pursued and their relevance to my immediate point in my art/life path is what art is all about. It's about gathering little moments over the course of a lifetime. It's not about the canvas and the paint on it, but about the time shared with that canvas and the subject. The interaction of the artist and environment that is important. It's also about choices, which never stop. Once you stop learning or feel you know it all, the journey is over. Have you ever seen a Rembrandt sculpture? Me either, I think he just ran out of time." [Editor’s note: this statement comes, with permission, from Gene’s web page. Visit www.snyderart.com to see many more of Gene's paintings and drawings and a biographical statement.]