This week, I asked my undergrads to annotate the bio, acknowledgments, and blurbs from a recent debut novel or collection, researching every person, place, publication, or institution who appeared. The idea was to sketch out a map of a writer's path to first book. 1/ Results were illuminating and probably a little daunting! It's good to be reminded how much a person might study and publish and work before a first book; it's obvious from the huge lists of names in every debut acknowledgments of how much community it takes to get there. 2/

Here’s what I’ve seen, heading into Week 4: we have a state ban on mandates, but my university requires masks in class. I have a 38-person class and a 15-person workshop: everyone’s masked, with no pushback. I teach with a lapel mic, which works well.

nytimes.com/2021/09/07/us/… There’s no requirement to wear masks outside on campus but I’d say 50% or more of the people I see always have them on. My open, transparent attendance policy has resulted in my students just emailing me to stay home if they feel sick at all, which I’m also for in normal times.

I've been thinking a lot about aspirational reading, most of which I didn't recognize as such. For instance, I probably started reading the New Yorker because, by doing so, you become the kind of person who reads the New Yorker, which at 21 seemed like the person I wanted to be. Magazines seem like prime candidates for this sort of thing. As a bartender, I deliberately subscribed to Sports Illustrated and read it religiously so I could be a "sports guy" and successfully talk to the customers who sat at my rail all afternoon watching ESPN.

Just finished my syllabus for my spring MFA class on style, the sentence, and acoustics, where we’ll be reading excerpts from all of these books, plus a few others whose copies are in my campus office. I can’t wait to dig in. Missing from the photo: Ursula K. Le Guin, Blake Butler, Christine Schutt, Renata Adler, Susan Steinberg, Peter Markus, Zadie Smith, Bryan Washington, Edouard Leve, Denis Johnson, and Dylan Landis.

It's getting to be MFA application season, and I know one of the parts of the application students always worry about most is the personal statement. In hopes of demystifying this, here's some of what I'm thinking about when I look at one as part of an application. (Disclaimers: I've done seven years of MFA admissions, at two universities. What I read for might not be what someone else does. And remember: The personal statement matters, but always remember that the writing sample is the prime piece of the application.)