Back East

I recently started a new position at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, PA, as the new Director of the Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing, and while it’s been a strange experience to meet my new colleagues via Zoom, or masked and socially distanced, I have nonetheless received a warm welcome from them, and from the brilliant writers in the Wilkes program. Cynthia and I will be close to our families now, and that, in addition to enjoying the familiar chill of the autumn air (here’s to deciduous trees!) and being a short drive to Manhattan and the Atlantic Ocean, is making me quite happy; while at the same time I sorely miss my dear students, friends and colleagues in Colorado.

Oddly enough, Regis and Wilkes have the same school colors, so on some days, I wear the face masks from both universities. After all, a scholar of 19th Century American Literature, I appreciate blatant symbolism.

If you’d like to read more about my big move, here’s my post on “The Write Life,” currently edited by Kristin Ivey.