Lucy Mathews Heegaard talks about her latest project, a series of three short, contemplative films, and how the internship and mentorship at MFA@CIIS helped support her work. Contemplative Pause A series of three short films that distill wisdom from talks given at Upaya Zen Center's Socially Engaged Buddhist…studiolustories.org How did this project come about? This project, which I call Contemplative Pause, arose initially because I wanted to dive more deeply into…

Kary Hess discusses her new book, interdisciplinary art making, and her experience as a current MFA@CIIS student. Please introduce your new book and how it came to be. The book is called 1912: Poems of Time, Place and Memory. It’s a book of poetry and drawings and organized into different…

MFA@CIIS alumna Lola Victor reflects on authentic art making and her new body of work. — My recent exhibition, Guías Y Portales/Guides And Portals was an emergence of myself in the world contributing what I want to say as an artist, and it was a revealing of the most authentic work I’ve made public thus far. After a lifelong inquiry into feminism, mysticism, and surrealism, it…

Memoir or Autobiography? Serial Musings on the Fiction of Memory Written by MFA@ CIIS candidate Guy Slater Part Four: Mother is a House Fire As I alluded to in the second part of this essay, the science of memory might be worth considering as a writer of autobiographical work. I…

Memoir or Autobiography? Serial Musings on the Fiction of Memory Written by MFA@CIIS candidate Guy Slater Part Three: Mr. Mommathon I didn’t find out I was adopted until after the two divorces, complicated by the unsolved murder of one would be step-mother. It’s hard to overstate the effect of any…

Memoir or Autobiography? Serial Musings on the Fiction of Memory Written by MFA@CIIS candidate Guy Slater Part Two: Mixed-MotherMetaphors The last alien spawn of memory gestating within me is the time mother showed up after a disappearance of several years in a crappy white van filled to the brim with…

Memoir or Autobiography? Serial Musings on the Fiction of Memory Written by MFA@ CIIS candidate Guy Slater Part One: SpawnMomma A mother is the womb. A mother is the heart. She is the small comforts and she is a battleground. Above all, mother is an idea. At least mine is. …

Andrea Lynn, CIIS MFA graduate, writes about teaching undergraduate students to interrogate relationships, coexistence, and the interconnectedness of our world. “Survival of the fittest or of the most compassionate? That’s the first question undergrads meet in the ROCK (Roots of Compassion and Kindness) courses I teach. …

Written by MFA@CIIS candidate, Nathan Dean Talamantez. The two books I’ve written, Sacred Fool and The Texifornia Border, have followed a single thread: Self-healing. But while writing them I felt like a burn victim being manually exfoliated. I was often reminded of the quote by psychologist and Holocaust survivor Victor…