A writing program at UMF celebrates the nonfiction side of creative writing.
By Maria Landry
Special to the Sun Journal

FARMINGTON – Creative writing goes beyond the classroom in Farmington.

“We want to find every opportunity to connect writing with the world,” said Wes McNair, program director and poetry professor at the University of Maine at Farmington.

UMF’s Creative Writing program, established in 1992, grew out of tradition as well as a desire to bring writing back into the national culture in a time of movies and video games.

“Farmington has a longstanding interest in teaching students about writing,” McNair said.

“There were already creative writing classes when I came here,” in 1987, he said. “The program didn’t feel like something that was imposed. It developed organically out of the curriculum that was already here.”

McNair and fiction professor Pat O’Donnell were faculty at UMF at the program’s inception. They decided to hire a creative nonfiction instructor to round out the curriculum.

“Nobody at the undergraduate level then had a tier of classes in creative nonfiction,” McNair said.

He added that even now, UMF is unique in its offering of nonfiction courses.

Gretchen Legler is UMF’s creative nonfiction instructor. There are also adjuncts connected with each of the three major writing areas, including local resident Elizabeth Cooke and many visiting fellows.

“We also have courses in the area of journalism,” McNair said. These “are connected loosely with the Mainestream,” the campus newspaper.

Journalism classes usually involve submitting to the Mainestream or another paper as part of the course requirements.

Taking part in an internship is another way UMF’s writing curriculum connects with the outside world.

The internship is a writing apprenticeship class that involves work in a writing, editing, and/or publishing environment for one semester.

Most students complete this requirement by interning at Alice James Books, the poetry press affiliated with UMF and located on its campus. Others become correspondents with local newspapers.

“These internships often lead to jobs,” McNair said.

Creative Writing majors enter the work force in a variety of ways.

“We’ve had people in television, people doing radio news, getting into publishing, going on to get library science degrees, teaching, journalism,” said McNair.

He said one graduate in the program’s early years became a press secretary for former Maine Gov. John McKernan.

“It’s a good ticket,” said McNair, speaking of the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree earned by graduates.

The program includes a Visiting Writers Series, in which established poets, essayists, and fiction writers come to the campus to read and discuss the writing life. Some teach special sections of classes.

“We have had some of the most important writers in the country,” McNair said, citing winners of such awards as Pulitzer Prizes and National Book Awards, including Tobias Wolfe, Billy Collins and Lucille Clifton.

The studies of literature and a foreign language are other aspects of UMF’s writing program.

“It’s important for writers to understand the thinking and cultures of other countries,” McNair said. “Studying a foreign language teaches the writer an awful lot about their own language and even increases their vocabulary.”

Writing classes are set up in a workshop format in which students read and critique each other’s work and revise their own. Classes happen around a common table or in a circle of desks.

“Everybody in the workshop becomes a teacher, and everybody is a student, including the teacher,” McNair said.

There are 15 slots each year for incoming freshmen and transfer students. The program is selective, but since UMF is a state university, McNair and his colleagues try to keep admissions relatively open.

“We’re looking for intelligence and a sense of self-discipline,” said McNair, “and especially for a spark in the writing.”

(Maria Landry is a student in the Creative Writing program.)