DAVID CAPPS, MFA ’16
A poet and professor of philosophy, Capps is the author of six chapbooks, most recently, Fever in Bodrum (Bottlecap Press, 2024) and Wheatfield with Reaper (Akinoga Press, 2024).
Advice for someone who dreams of becoming a published writer
Be humble; read the classics; read widely, both in terms of era and genre; only write if you enjoy it; travel; get used to rejection (I was rejected 15 times over the course of six years before finally being accepted by a particular journal).
What’s the most unusual or unexpected way you’ve gotten a writing idea?
One of my books began with thinking about how counterarguments are constructed. Usually, one grasps an argument, identifies some weak points, and proceeds from there. But in writing, I tend to experiment. In reading Seneca’s On the Shortness of Life and taking note of how measured his prose was, it occurred to me to see what might happen if I composed a text by contradicting Seneca’s work, sentence-by-sentence. Over a few weeks, each night by candlelight and writing longhand, I worked on the resulting manuscript: On the Great Duration of Life (Schism Neuronics, 2023).
EMILY COSTA, MFA ’13
Costa is the author of the short story collection Girl on Girl (Rejection Letters, December 2024). She is working on a novel about her father’s video store.
What led you to Southern?
I’d graduated from UConn with an English and film degree but wasn’t sure what to do next. Then I randomly got a Southern MFA postcard in the mail. Some kind of fate! I promptly quit the middle-school certification program I’d half-heartedly started, and I applied to Southern, which I can see now was a super-risky thing to do.
Southern has the only full-residency MFA program in the state of Connecticut. I wanted to stay here, and I knew that if I was going to make the leap and pursue this dream, I wanted to be fully immersed in the writing world.
At a low-res program you’re working from afar most of the time, meeting up occasionally and doing retreats. At Southern’s full-residency MFA program, you are right on campus with your peers and mentors. You are in the classroom, in community all the time. You’re in New Haven at coffee shops, restaurants, and bars talking about writing. Not only did that help me learn in such a wide-ranging, full way, but I’ve also made lifelong friends. It was a commitment and decision I will never regret.
Advice for someone who dreams of becoming a published writer
Listen to what other writers, peers, and mentors say about your work, but never change it just to please others. Don’t ignore your gut feelings about your art and vision. That’s been the trickiest part for me: becoming confident in my voice and work.
But my main advice is simple: keep writing. Even when life is throwing garbage at you, even when the rejections pile up, keep at it. Make space for writing, no matter what. If you can do 15 minutes a day, do it. A few years after I graduated from SCSU, I had a child, and I thought, Man, I should’ve been writing every day before this! Now I have no time! But that wasn’t true; I just had to make time. If you want it badly enough, you will do it, even if it’s just writing in your head. Don’t let it get away from you. Persistence is key.
JESSE EFRON, M.A. ’12 (ENGLISH), MFA ’14
Efron’s short story collection received the 2024 Ronald Sukenick Prize from Fiction Collective Two (FC2). Founded in 1974, FC2 is an imprint of the University of Alabama and one of the most preeminent publishers of experimental fiction in the U.S. FC2 will publish his work in fall 2025. [Editor’s note: In true experimental style, Efron answers these questions as he writes — unconventionally, thought provokingly, and with a bit of mischief.]
What’s the most unusual or unexpected way you’ve gotten a writing idea?
Qui transtulit sustinet (transplanted ones sustain), SCSU’s motto. I live in rural Japan — forests, rice fields, mountains, people over 100, and industrious water muskrats I often see in the river that flows into the sea. They build homes on the riverbanks that look like the Anasazi’s Mesa Verde. They, like me, are from North America. Qui transtulit sustinet. They arrived before WWII, via Tokyo, and crossed 350 miles of mountains to the river near my house. They know nothing of the collapse of their American forebears’ populations, and in that way, watching them provides perspective. They do what I do — drive to work and back, find food, shelter, companionship. They get in their little cars and drive along the river to an office and wonder why the weather is always best and brightest when they are indoors. Lotus roots taste better in the sunshine, with chosen company. Yet qui transtulit sustinet.
They motor their way home, missing sunsets. The nest is cold, the mud is cold, and they don’t feel like eating in the dark. Qui transtulit sustinet.
Briefly explain experimental fiction. What draws you to the genre?
Experimental fiction is expected to break convention in some way. It often manifests in form: a pueblo, the fox, who isn’t bigger but led by instincts, still might attack out of necessity. Or, for example, by telling a story via an interview. “It’s only Monday morning, but (fill in the blank).” They are dealing with hungry foxes because of the recent riverbank reinforcement. That riverbank doesn’t need reinforcing; it needs burrowing. That’s where the nest is.
And yes, it often goes underappreciated. A home is a place from which we travel to and fro, to escape from time to time, to reinvent in different locations, both spatial and temporal, and with different people. Threat of concrete, that particular muskrat appreciates its doma, no longer minds cold mud, looks slowly at the walls, paw marks, rushes and grass packed, knows it must say goodbye. Yet qui transtulit sustinet. There are rooms in which we spend thousands of hours, impressions indelible. We keep recreating them: memory, sand castles, vine-covered apartments, and mud-packed burrows. Qui transtulit sustinet.
SHELLEY STOEHR, MFA ’19
Stoehr is the author of four award-winning young adult novels and many short works of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Among these is her poetry chapbook Glitterotica, which was published by Dancing Girl Press. She has received awards from The de Groot Foundation, The North American Review, New Millenium Writings, Writer’s Digest, WOW: Women on Writing, the New York Public Library, and the American Library Association.
Share a skill or lesson gained from your time at Southern that you continue to use in your career today.
One of the most important skills I learned while at Southern was flexibility, a trait that didn’t come naturally to me. Before coming to Southern, I was very rigid in both my ideas and my ways of doing things. Today, I am more fluid. I am now an adjunct faculty member, and colleagues have praised me for my flexibility when plans go awry. My students love that I am so easygoing, despite the rigor I demand in the classroom. Flexibility has also affected my creative writing. Whereas I used to plan out every part of a piece of writing, now I am more willing to allow the characters to motivate what happens in a story.
What are you working on next, and what can readers expect?
I am presently working on a final revision of my first memoir, Girls, Girls, Girls, which will be published by Legacy Books Press in summer 2026. Girls, Girls, Girls is a literary memoir that explores my experiences as a sex worker in the 1990s. It grapples with themes of survival, shame, artistic expression, and the societal marginalization of sex workers.
JACLYN WATTERSON, ’08 (ENGLISH)
After majoring in English at Southern as an undergraduate, Watterson earned an MFA from Oregon State University and a doctorate from the University of Utah. Her first book, a collection of fiction and horror entitled Ventriloquisms (Willow Spring Books), won the 2016 Spokane Prize for Short Fiction. Her work of experimental horror — here & here & here is where it hurts — was published in 2022 by Orbis Tertius Press.
What led you to Southern?
Like many, I came to Southern because it was affordable. I began my undergraduate studies planning to become a teacher. Then I signed up for a creative writing course. Then another. Then another. I thought of my writing as a guilty pleasure, a distraction from the serious business of earning a living to support myself. But Tony Rosso (now retired), Robin Troy (now departed from Southern), and especially Tim Parrish, [professor of English] encouraged and challenged me. I found that I could not and would not stop writing. It became an addiction.
From Tim I learned that MFA programs exist, and that I might be able to earn a teaching fellowship to pay for one. I crossed my fingers and applied, and as luck would have it, I got into a program that offered me a fellowship with a full tuition waiver in exchange for my teaching. After completing my MFA, I went on to a Ph.D. program, again fully funded, and although I am still figuring out exactly how to earn a living almost 20 years later, I still cannot and will not give up writing. I’ve been fortunate enough to publish two books with small presses.
Advice for someone who dreams of becoming a published writer
A wise teacher once told me, “Publishing does not make you a writer. Writing makes you a writer,” and I have held this close to my heart. Publishing is nice and necessary for professionalization, but in the end, I’ve found it’s always a disappointment. It’s the writing, the high I get when I’m in the middle of a project and fully immersed in the world of it, that makes me keep going.
I think many young writers believe so much in their own talent and vision that they expect everyone else will, too. I know I did. But if you’re going to live the writing life and publish your work, there’s going to be lots and lots of rejection. It’s best to develop a thick skin as early as you can, and don’t write for publication or any notion of fame or glory. Do it because you can’t not do it, because you’re addicted to the feeling of who you are when you’re writing. ■
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