Scholarship will help creative writing student further her career

Colleen Rich — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 15:20:09 +0000

Scholarship will help creative writing student further her career Colleen Rich Fri, 11/01/2024 - 11:20

��AV undergraduate Jasmine Haskins is the first recipient of the Bill Miller BFA Scholarship in Creative Writing, established in 2023 to support undergraduate creative writing students who are part of an under-represented group at George Mason or who are involved in an organization that works on issues or causes related to under-represented groups. The scholarship provides $2,500 in support.

Jasmine Haskins talks with George Mason alum Bill Miller, who endowed the scholarship she received. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding

Miller, MFA Creative Writing ’87, taught at George Mason for 33 years and directed Creative Writing Program in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences from 1992 to 2018. He also helped start the bachelor of fine arts (BFA) in creative writing during this time. It is one of only a handful of BFA programs for undergraduates in the country.

“Jasmine is so clearly a worthy recipient to inaugurate this scholarship,” said Miller. “She is a talented writer, and I hope that this support and her having been selected will encourage her to develop her talent to its fullest potential. I think we will be seeing her by-line accompanying a lot of written words before long, and I wish her well as she works toward that goal.”

A Virginia native, Haskins grew up reading fantasy and supernatural fiction with her father, which led to her writing fiction throughout her childhood. Today she primarily writes poetry, a passion she discovered during a high school project.

Jasmine Haskins. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding

“I’ve always had an interest in reading and writing that has only strengthened over time thanks to my family’s influence,” Haskins said. “Their storytelling and passions still influence me to this day.”

Haskins said that her experience in the Creative Writing Program at George Mason has given her the space to grow and change as a writer. Her favorite class was an advanced poetry workshop she took with Professor Eric Pankey in the spring semester.

“It was such an insightful session,” Haskins said. “I enjoyed the poets, Professor Pankey’s feedback, and the amazing people I got the chance to workshop with. I felt so happy that I got to be in Professor Pankey’s last class before his retirement, and a poem I workshopped in that class was actually published in Volition’s spring issue.”

Haskins said this scholarship will help her pursue a career as a writer. “I had so many doubts about myself, my writing, and my career choices, so after hearing that I was selected for something because of my writing, I cried. After supporting myself through school for so long, to have this help as I finish my time at Mason feels like a blessing and a push forward to my career as a writer.”

Discover this and other scholarships from CHSS

Topics

Students

Scholarships

creative writing

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Strategic Direction

MFA alum longlisted for the National Book Award

Colleen Rich — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 19:19:22 +0000

MFA alum longlisted for the National Book Award Colleen Rich Tue, 09/24/2024 - 15:19

��AV alum Jessica Anthony, MFA Creative Writing ’04, was recently longlisted for the National Book Award for her newest novel, The Most. This prestigious award recognizes outstanding literary work by U.S. citizens and is awarded once a year.

Jessica Anthony. Photo by Matt Cosby

In addition to The Most, Anthony is the author of The Convalescent (2009), winner of McSweeney’s inaugural Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award; Chopsticks (2012), a collaboration with designer Rodrigo Corral; and Enter the Aardvark (2020), which was a finalist for the New England Book Award in Fiction. Her short fiction has appeared in Best New American Voices, Best American Nonrequired Reading, McSweeney’s, and New American Writing, among other places.

In the interview below, Anthony reflects not only on the honors for her most recent book but also on her time at Mason.

National Book Award Longlist! Where were you when you heard the news, and what was the overriding emotion/response?

I had settled onto my couch here at my house in Portland, Maine, with a stack of papers to grade. Not quite ready to dive in, I picked up my phone, as people do these days. I opened Instagram and saw a message from my friend, the novelist Bruna Dantas Lobato, who won the National Book Award for Translation last year. I was stunned to learn the news. Elated and stunned.

The Washington Post described The Most as “a smoldering, Cheeveresque mediation on mid-century, middle-class disappointment.” How would you describe it? And what was the genesis for the story?

The Washington Post's description is a good one. I would also call it a historical fiction that critiques historical fiction. Cheever could never write a character like Kathleen Beckett because in his career, he never cared to see her. I wanted to recreate the sensibility of a lost novel from the 1950s, but through a contemporaneous structure; a structure that calls attention to itself. I would call it the story of a day told twice. I would also call it a love story.

This is your fourth book. How do you think that your work has changed over the course of the decade and a half since The Convalescent came out—and how has it changed since your days in the MFA program at Mason?

I wrote some of my favorite short stories at Mason, but I don't write many now. I'm not sure why—maybe because it takes me such an absurdly long time to write one? On the advice of Alan Cheuse, my incredible and beloved professor and mentor at Mason, I try to focus on a single project at a time. I give it everything.

Each of the books I've written are wildly different from one another in subject, tone, but every single fiction is an exploration into a country of our making. I like to travel to places strange to my experience. When I look back on my first novel, I never regret seeing in it that sense of adventure.

How did the MFA program at George Mason help you in terms of craft or career?

My years at George Mason were the first in my life that anyone talked to me as though I was an artist; that the way I observed the world had meaning; that, in fact, there were people who wanted me to write, and write well. How to quantify the value of that gift? Whenever I saw Alan after graduation, he never asked "how are you?" Instead, he would look at me soberly and say: "How's the writing." It was never a question, always a statement. Alan, Steve [Goodwin], Susan [Shreve], and Dick [Bausch]—they each taught us, in their way, that a good story matters more than anything.

What’s the last great book that you read? And what made it great?

Brian Brodeur, a poet who was in our class at George Mason, has published his fifth collection of poems called Some Problems with Autobiography, and I was utterly amazed by it. How can you make a sonnet, which creates awe and newness while familiarizing 21st-century life? Brodeur has done it.