The Master of Fine Arts (MFA) incubator series held its first meeting of the year, providing writers with an opportunity to showcase their work.
The event took place on Friday, Sept. 26, at the Commonwealth House on the University of Kentucky’s campus and featured readings by three MFA students and a professor.
Erik Zepeda, a second-year MFA student with a focus on poetry, said he helped organize the event as a good place to get the nervousness of sharing your work out.
“Not only is it just a nice time for people to kind of have an intimate, vulnerable moment with each other, it really does break barriers,” Zepeda said.
The incubator readings have been occurring for 10 years and take place on the last Friday of every month, according to Zepeda. He said he hopes people listening feel like they can write like the people who share their works during the event.
“These are all my friends,” Zepeda said. “More than anything, it’s fun to see the faculty in a vulnerable position because we always look at the faculty as somebody that that are untouchable, and then they come up and they are completely different people when they’re reading.”
Melissa Scholes Young, a UK creative writing professor, also read at the event, presenting three poems and an excerpt from a memoir.
“It’s the MFA students that invite a professor, and this is my first year teaching at the University of Kentucky,” Young said. “I moved here after 15 years at American University in D.C., and so to have grad students reach out and invite me, to welcome me and be willing to listen, that was my favorite part.”
The point of the incubator event is to share unfinished drafts of works, and Young said she would like to see more undergraduate students come and participate in the future.
“I think the idea of taking risks is something that I would hope they’d get out of the event,” Young said. “If you’re really, really feeling that, you’re sure that it’s a good draft, it probably isn’t as risky. I think we have to take risks in our creative writing to figure out what we really want to say.”
Dani Summerlin, a first-year MFA student, said this was her first time reading at an incubator event. The works she shared featured topics related to her upbringing.
“I grew up in East Tennessee, and a lot of those poems (her poems) are very regional to that,” Summerlin said. “There are a lot of things like drug epidemics, but also just a lot of rural kinds of things that really connect to me.”
Summerlin said that attending this type of event gives writers inspiration and value in knowing that people came to listen to what they have written.
“A lot of the time, as a writer, you can be discouraged by thinking that a lot of your work is either for yourself or it’s not really going for anything, “ Summerlin said. “To be in a community that is so safe to not only read, but also people who will listen to you and understand, it’s a really good outlet.”
