The MHC SoCal Digest Issue 3
A Message From The Board
Here is your sneak peek into the June MHC SoCal Digest. We hope you enjoy the June issue focused on alum authors residing here in SoCal.
Featured as a Leading Light is Dr. Linda Dove, a Woodbury University faculty member, who mentors budding writers.
Under the Focus on Young Alums column, get acquainted with published authors Holly Grigg-Spall (an MHC foreign fellow) and Katharine Coldiron (class of 2003).
Moho Buzz acquaints us with the college’s Miller Worley Center for the Environment and the “Summit on Women’s Leadership in Climate Justice” sponsored by the Center in mid- April.
Club News summarizes the Club’s annual meeting which featured keynote speaker, Dr. Kavita Khory from the MHC, Department of Politics. And as always, we capture some great photos of Club engagement up and down the counties in MHC Scene Around SoCal.
Happy Reading…..
LEADING LIGHTS
Linda Dove, PhD, who majored in English at Mount Holyoke, and is now Participating Faculty in the Writing Department at Woodbury University located in Burbank, is the focus of our Leading Lights segment. Since this issue is devoted to Club alums who are authors, writers, and essayists we were thrilled to interview Dr. Dove about her own creative journeys and how she mentors her current students as they approach their future writing careers.
“Mentoring students is my favorite part of teaching, and I take on a number of independent study students every year who are hoping to publish work and to learn how to create a chapbook of their poems. I enjoy the one-on-one process, watching their poems evolve with each revision, become more risky, become more playful. I enjoy the give-and-take with a student over how to solve a problem they’ve encountered with a word, or a line, or a stanza. When they bring me a new draft and, almost mysteriously, it represents a huge leap forward in their ability on the page, and they’re suddenly writing a poem that I envy! That’s so rewarding for a teacher.”
After leaving Mount Holyoke, Linda entered a graduate program at the University of Maryland. Those young alums that are starting, or applying to graduate school should read what she has written about her graduate studies:
“I started graduate school as an Americanist, writing about Emily Dickinson and women poets of the 20th century. But—as a good teacher can and should be able to do—I was swayed by the course I was required to take in medieval and Renaissance literature to prepare for my master’s degree, which was taught by a feminist scholar of early texts by women…I loved every aspect of it—imagining the lives of these women who had been ‘lost’ to the patriarchal lens of history, becoming an expert at reading Elizabethan handwriting, tracking down the material aspects of their lives in ledgers and gift exchange records, etc.”
For any young readers of this newsletter who might have thoughts about starting a family, Linda has revealed the way that she benefited from her own need to follow her family, while searching for jobs in academia. Lovers of poetry have also benefited from the way that Linda chose to deal with her changing academic positions … “as I left jobs for personal reasons and followed family across the country, I found myself in teaching positions that didn’t require scholarship. But I wanted to keep my foot in the door, so I turned to writing poetry since I didn’t need to be close to a library with an extensive early modern manuscript collection or conduct research away from home. The passion grew.”
In that comment, Linda was referring to her passion for writing poetry.
Linda’s description of her graduate studies and her passion for poetry underscore her reference to her academic life and her creative life. She credits her experiences at Mount Holyoke for helping her to deal with the challenges that she has encountered in both of those lives.
She has stated that the “Lit Crit” course that she took during her senior year introduced her to the concepts of literary theory. She has emphasized the value of that introduction. She has indicated that most English majors do not get introduced to the theoretical framework until graduate school.
She also worked with 2 influential mentors, when composing her senior thesis. One was the Nobel Prize-winning writer Joseph Brodsky. The other was the poet Mary Jo Salter.
Here is what she has written about that experience: “It allowed me an early entryway to
reading and interpreting literature as a professional.”
As a teacher at Woodbury University, Linda has provided guidance to both aspiring writers and aspiring editors. Read what advice she gives to aspiring writers: “I tell them to keep going. I tell them to grow a thick skin.”
“I tell them not to take rejection personally. I really tell them to read, to read a lot, to read widely, to read against their tastes—in other words, to step outside their comfort zones and survey the larger world that exists beyond the type of writing they gravitate towards or are most familiar with.”
The aspiring editors get a chance to work with Linda, during publication of the literary magazine that is known as MORIA. Linda is proud of that magazine. That becomes clear to anyone that has read what she said in answer to a question about that particular publication.
“MORIA is a national (and international) literary magazine for professional writers and poets—my students serve as the editorial staff on the magazine, who are responsible for reviewing and evaluating the submissions, corresponding with and interviewing the authors we accept for publication, producing the pages assigned to them, and promoting the work of the magazine. We are one of only a handful of literary magazines nationwide who have an all-undergraduate team of editors.”
All of Linda’s students receive guidance from a woman that stays up-to-date on the challenges faced by both writers and editors. Her awareness of those challenges could be seen in her answer to the last of the interview questions:
“I’m not conceding to the computers, yet! I read somewhere that the AI digital writing platforms still can’t fool a team of judges when it comes to “authoring” poetry, although they apparently can with fiction and nonfiction. I imagine that’s because poetry involves a level of mystery and absence and unpredictable referent that is hard for an artificial mind to replicate. At least, I hope so.”
SPOTLIGHT ON YOUNG ALUMS
Perspectives on Writing
Meet Holly Grigg-Spall, a foreign fellow from the United Kingdom who attended MHC during academic year 2003-2004. She is the author of Sweetening the Pill: Or How We Got Hooked on Hormonal Birth Control published by Zero Books. Holly has also contributed to The Washington Post, Easy Living, and the UK Independent in addition to other media outlets. She and her family reside in greater Los Angeles.
Meet Katharine Coldiron, a 2003 graduate, an accomplished author, essayist and editor. She majored in Film Studies and Philosophy at MHC as well as completed an MA in Creative Writing at Cal State Northridge. Katharine’s works include: Ceremonials (an experimental novella), Plan 9 from Outer Space (a monograph) and Junk Film (a collection of critical essays) to be published in May 2023. Her writing has appeared in MS., The Washington Post, the Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, and a host of other publications. She and her family reside just north of metropolitan Los Angeles.
Both agreed that authors must be persistent. From Katharine - ”persistence is a lot more important than talent. This is depressing, but it’s true. Keep writing, keep submitting, keep reading, and keep learning.”
Holly referenced that promoting your work can be an arduous process. “Be persistent, have no shame, and follow up. Get your book talked about, even if it’s not always positive. All publicity is truly good publicity. Don’t think you can publish a book and your job is done. If it’s a small book (and you’re not a name or have real support) you will need to keep promoting - podcasts, social media - for years.”
What did they have to say about their creative processes? Katharine noted her books were about different subjects, but she approached both in much the same way. “For most of my book-length projects, I spend a year or multiple years thinking, researching, and taking notes. Then I write very quickly, for just a few months. After that I just tinker - I’m not much of a rewriter.”
And as a critical essayist as well, Katharine ” has found “one of my biggest challenges as a critic is feeling like I haven’t done enough research… Another challenge is narrowing down the topics I want to write about. There are too many intriguing books and movies out there!”
Since Holly’s writing involved investigative journalism, we were interested to learn about how she came to the topic of birth control dosing and the challenges she faced in researching some of the scientific and medical data she needed. She comments: “The book was rooted in my own experience taking a very popular brand of birth control pills that, when traveling in the US, were constantly advertised on television as the best option. I discovered they were causing some mental health and physical health side effects for me and, putting my journalist hat on, decided to investigate.” And she adds : “(Since) this topic is controversial and it is a topic we tend to sidestep or dismiss because we would rather focus, at least in the US, on maintaining access to birth control pills. Our focus on access issues and attacks on access mean we have overlooked side effects and safety… This made it hard to approach those who made assumptions about my perspective or had the knee jerk reaction to dismiss the conversation because of fears of giving ammunition to the other side.”
MOHO BUZZ
Highlights from On-Campus Events
This newsletter has shared information on several alums that are authors. One of America’s first authors, a nature lover and essayist, had a connection to the location for one of the 2 on-campus events that took place in April. The Summit on Women’s Leadership in Climate Justice was held at the College’s Miller Worley Center for the Environment.
Few women were leaders at the time of Henry David Thoreau, but he would have supported the Center’s efforts to promote a culture of sustainability. Such efforts continue the emphasis on sustainability that had become part of the Nonotuck culture. South Hadley was built on the ancestral land of the Nonotuck people.Lovers of the environment gathered at the Miller Worley Center on April 13, 14 and 15 of 2023. While taking part in conversations, the Summit attendees shared their thoughts on climate refugees, migration, innovation in sustainability, and the need for arts and humanities in the climate movement.
The conversations took place at different venues. Some of the attendees spoke with the members of a panel; others visited the in-person networking reception; a 3rd group explored the posters at a workshop that was held by the Sustainable Development Goals lab. Those that devoted their time and energy to the full Summit experience could qualify for pursuit of certification. Hopefully, some of them will now hear about the alums that are authors, and perhaps authors that could contribute to an infusion of arts and humanities into the climate movement.
On Sunday, April 30, 2023, a second on-campus event had ties to the interests of the alums featured in the first of our newsletters. That event was the Second Annual Mount Holyoke Film Festival. Fans of films gathered at the Gamble Auditorium in the Art Building. There, between the hours of 7 and 10 pm, they viewed the works of students that had studied narrative and documentary films. Some of the movies that got screened during the Festival did not fall into either category, because each of them was some type of experimental film.
Commencement 2023 was on May 21! You can watch videos of the ceremony and other events on MHC’s website. Congratulations to honoree (and SoCal club member) Lan Cao, Esquire (class of 1973)! Lan Can is on the faculty at Chapman University, Fowler School of Law and is a renowned author of two novels, Monkey Bridge and The Lotus and the Storm.
MHC SEEN AROUND SOCAL
Co-Directors of College Admissions meet recently admitted prospective students
Lunch in Santa Barbara before then group visit to Lotusland
Gifting to Champion our Moment(tum)
Alums are enthusiastic about the SoCal Club’s future. And with the assistance of fabulous volunteers, we can proudly report accomplishments to date. But there is much more to do to ensure we are self-sustaining in the future.
Did you know: MHC does not provide financial assistance to local Clubs? Therefore, the SoCal Club’s capacity to organize events, secure venues, engage speakers, communicate, build out the regional concept, and provide members with assistance for fee- based events rests with you!
Please make a gift at any of these levels: -$500- $100- $50-$25
The SoCal Club is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization. All gifts may be tax deductible to the extent that the laws provide. If your employer provides opportunities for matching gifts as part of charitable initiatives, please let us know by contacting mhcalumssocal@gmail.com.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!!!
VOLUNTEER WITH THE CLUB
The club is looking for volunteers for a Marketing/PR board member and additional Regional Connectors. If you’re interested in helping the club, please email: mhcalumssocal@gmail.com