Sometimes I feel as if I should have a separate blog for all the Wilkes Creative Writing Program stuff I blog about, but then again, this blog is about me, and Wilkes is definitely a huge part of me.  So, before I delve into several blog post ideas inspired by residency, I’ll start with the Twitter stuff.

A month or so before residency began, I pitched a craft class on social media for writers to our program director.  I work in it for a living at Solid Cactus, and know that writers can benefit from social media– and that’s it’s still relatively new and unexplored by most in my program.  As it turns out, the husband of a Wilkes creative writing faculty (and novelist/memoirist) Kaylie Jones is a social media expert.  He and I presented “Social Media for the Anti-Social Writer” on Monday afternoon.  The class was for the upper-level MA and then the MFA students, as well as open to faculty and alumni.  It was a great session, but one hour was far too short to discuss all the Facebook and Twitter can do to help a writer not just promote work, but more importantly, engage and share within the community.

Before the session, me and a few others were tweeting using the hashtag #wilkes, but after the session, everyone using Twitter and then the newbies to Twitter started to use it as well.  If you were to do a search on Twitter for #wilkes, you will find some great tweets and retweets about the program and week-long residency.

Here are some of my faves:

lucianacelestne Sad that the #Wilkes residency is over. Back to the real world…hoping to keep the high for as long as I can.

KaylieJones I’m home from the #wilkes mfa residency. I had a wonderful time and love all my students.

Jonathan_Rocks On the way home from #Wilkes residency. Always bittersweet…

donnatalarico Residency = over. Donna = sad. #wilkes

sarahtv3 And just like that, it was over. Awesome residency. #wilkes

Jonathan_Rocks RT @donnatalarico: So yeah. I said this before, but decision to join #wilkes Creative Writing program = best decision in my life. Ever.

Jonathan_Rocks RT: Congrats to my amazing classmate @rfellinger and mentee of @kayliejones for winning the Hiscox award!! #wilkes Congrats, man!!

TomBorthwick The good life at #Wilkes. After-Party w/William Kennedy and a ton of fabulous writers!

lucianacelestne Just got back from rocking it out with the #Wilkes crew at Burt and Urby’s. Amazed at how fast the res is going by.

donnatalarico Closing down Bart & Urby’s w/ #wilkes peeps- my last jukebox song is “hotel California” bc it’s symbolic bc I can never lv Wilkes since 96

JackieNash Great morning -Woke up still inspired by readings last nite #Wilkes brilliant-Happy I’m part of this tribe. Phenom job Kaylie

James_McCabe If Twitter were a martial art, I’d be a yellow belt. Cheers to @donnatalrico & @kevinheisler. Getting all geared up for film night.

I found myself tweeting at all  hours of the day- either after a thought-provoking class, or even on a night out on the town… we were there in person together, but Twitter helped us creative writers share that enthusiasm through another medium.

I started this new blog, www.social-media-for-writers.com too soon, as I haven’t had time to keep up with it because of the MFA program, but I am going to start blogging more actively there as well because it needs to be done.