Good news

What, no cookies? I know, I know– look, I’ve already got a post half-drafted including a beautiful story and the most threateningly delicious chocolate cookies I’ve ever conjured, so cool your jets.

After months of waiting, I was finally notified last Saturday that Southern Illinois University, Carbondale had accepted me off their waitlist and into their fiction MFA program. I got the email, screamed, laughed, started crying, and then called my mom. I hate to defer to cliches, but this is a dream come true, and something I have wanted for so, so long.

In just two month’s time I’ll be selling off most of my worldly possessions here in Seattle and shipping off to sunny Carbondale, Illinois for three years of tuition-waived, teaching-assistantship-funded literary bliss. Teacher training starts on August 8th, as does the beginning of a new chapter of my life. In the wise words of Rebecca Black: I so excited.

So, what does this mean for this blog? Nothing will change for a couple months, at least; as long as there is butter in this world and flour to mix with it, there will be cookies, and there is never a shortage of stories. I’d like to promise I’ll continue to blog once I start my MFA program, but not even all the cookies in the world can mend a broken promise, so I’ll have to bake it by ear. Worst comes to worst, I’ll want to impress my new fiction cohort and professors with my skills in the kitchen, and I don’t doubt they’ll have some very, very interesting stories to tell. As will I.

As for now, read on, dear readers! If you do exist. Do you exist?