Swannanoa on My Mind

All writers need a stick. Plus new prompt.

Today I’m thinking about Swannanoa, North Carolina, the place where I was first called a writer. I think of pigs and cows and my cluttered dorm rooms on the campus of Warren Wilson College, which contains its own working farm. Between 1999 and 2001, I stayed on campus for 10-day stretches (in January and July) in pursuit of my MFA. WWC is home to one of the first low-residency MFA programs, revolutionary for me. I worked full time overseas during those years, but could still go back to school. For years I’d been singing in lounges of Hilton Hotels, background noise for cocktail hour. It wasn’t a career or lifestyle I wanted to sustain. I had stories to tell but I didn’t yet know how to tell them. Or why anyone else would care.

In Swannanoa, when I wasn’t scrambling to keep up with literary discussions in carpeted conference rooms (more pressure) or lecture halls (less, thank goodness), I walked along the muddy or frozen pastures. In July the barns were ripe with manure. The pigs were u…