With the deadline for the BA/MA program this upcoming Wednesday, March 15, several current BA/MA students were asked why they decided to apply and what they love most about the program. If you needed more than one reason to apply yourself, here it is!

“I was really drawn to the program because of the opportunity to teach ENGL 15 along with my writing. This has proven to be the most fulfilling part of the program for me this year!” –Carter Clabaugh, Class of 2017

“I wanted to expand upon my creative writing skills, and once I found out I could do that in an extra year, receive my master’s degree, get funding, and potentially gain teaching experience, I knew that’s what I wanted. Also, I was definitely not ready to graduate and leave Penn State for the ‘real world,’ quite yet–with this I have an extra year to cherish.” –Erin Servey, Class of 2018

“I had always written poetry, but I never thought it could be a tangible pursuit. One day I just up and decided to really try, and here I am.” –Makensi Ceriani, Class of 2017

“I chose to join the BA/MA program so that I could give myself a chance to write. I have always enjoyed writing as a way to organize my thoughts and emotions, and I saw this program as a way to give myself time, especially as a young person, to try to seriously write a body of work.” –Melanie Brusseler, Class of 2017

“I chose the BA/MA program because writing is what I want to do and I wanted to challenge myself among people who write differently and similarly to myself.” –Kylie McCool, Class of 2018

“To receive my master’s degree and teaching experience in only one extra year seemed like an opportunity I couldn’t refuse! All involved in this program, from faculty to fellow students, are also extremely helpful and incredibly fun to work with!” –Lauren Barron, Class of 2018

“I joined the BA/MA program because it gave me a huge opportunity to grow as a writer, work intensively on creative writing, and a way to move very meaningfully forward with pursuing creative writing.” –Nina Eckel, Class of 2018

For more information, check out the English department website and be sure to get your application in!

Join us Wednesday, March 22, at 7:30 p.m. in the Foster Auditorium as Sarah Manguso is set to read as this year’s Fischer Family Writer-in-Residence.

Manguso is the author of five books of prose, including Ongoingness, a meditation on motherhood and time; The Guardians, an investigation of friendship and suicide; The Two Kinds of Decay, a memoir of her experience with a chronic autoimmune disease; Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape, a collection of very short stories; and 300 Arguments, a book of essays.

She is the author of two poetry collections, poems from which have won a Pushcart Prize and appeared in four editions of the Best American Poetry series. Her work has also appeared in Harper’s, McSweeney’s, the Paris Review, and the New York Times Magazine, among other publications.

Her most recent book, 300 Arguments, published in February 2017, defies labels and blurs genre lines. Tess Taylor from NPR notes, “This collection transcends any category to be something totally its own…. Manguso’s captured the argumentative voice of a mind sifting through a problem, circling it, animated by sorting it out. We enter Manguso’s mind – her puzzle, pleased to be puzzled, too.” Leslie Jamison of The Atlantic says of it: “[Manguso’s] prose feels twice distilled; it’s whiskey rather than beer.” Joshua James Amberson of the Portland Mercury calls it, “perspective-altering.”

Manguso received her MFA from the University of Iowa, and she has taught creative writing at Columbia, NYU, Princeton, the New School, the Pratt Institute, the Otis College of Art and Design, and St. Mary’s College, where she was a Distinguished Visiting Writer. Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Rome Prize, Manguso currently serves as the Mary Routt Chair of Creative Writing at Scripps College in Los Angeles.