Study Abroad in Slovenia

Writers enrolled in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts may choose to attend a summer residency in Slovenia, in lieu of Vermont. These residencies are scheduled at the same time as the Vermont residency and are open to all but those entering their first semester, including our alumni and postgraduate writers. The group typically consists of 14–24 people, including 3–4 MFA in Writing faculty.

The setting: The 2011 residency is centered in the ancient town of Škofja Loka, known as the most well-preserved medieval town in all of Slovenia. The village itself provides an authentic cultural experience and it is within a short distance of Ljubljana, the capital and cultural center of the country.  The trip will include time with a number of Slovenia writers as well as excursions to the award-winning WWI museum at Kobarid, Dante’s cave in Tolmin, both in the scenic Soča Valley, as well as visits to the alpine towns of Bled and Bohinj, with its 15th century Church of St. John the Baptist, and a hike to the famous falls in the national park, Slap Savica, where one of France Prešeren's most well-known poems is set. 

The program: An intimate and intense series of workshops, lectures, readings (by the Vermont College faculty and Slovene writers and translators), and field trips to literary and historic sites and to beautiful natural settings described by various writers, in order to introduce you to one of the oldest European cultures. Some recent visiting writers have included Tomaz Salamun, Andrej Skubic, Mira Rosenthal, and Ana Jelnikar, among many others.

Fred Chappell, novelist, essayist, poet, and winner of the Bollingen Prize, once wrote an essay describing his ideal MFA program as one having a smaller than usual percentage of craft workshops, and in place of them, writers would focus on such things as local fauna, astronomy, music appreciation, natural history, geography, art appreciation, and so on. Chappell's point is that a writer who knows only craft and not the world writes in a vacuum, and that the resulting writing can be sterile and self-referential. If one looks at the recent book Planet on the Table, one finds writers’ recommendations for reading that include philosophy, psychology, history, theology, social science, politics, music, in addition to standard suggestions both from our own culture and times, as well as other cultures and times. The idea is that happy collisions occur when we read and experience out of our comfort zones; the result is an influx of creativity.

Vermont College of Fine Arts • MFA in Writing • Slovenia Residency from Roger Crowley on Vimeo.

The philosophy of the Slovenia residency subscribes to these general principles. The point is to introduce you to the culture of another country known for its extraordinarily high percentage of writers in the hopes that such useful collisions will occur in the context of a basic workshop atmosphere. To that effect, we plan a number of excursions, usually in the afternoons after morning workshops and lectures, though one or two may involve an entire day. These excursions are to cultural, artistic, historical, and natural settings, as well as to meetings, lectures, and readings with half a dozen Slovene writers. Our excursions may take us to the Soca valley where Hemingway began Farewell To Arms, a cave Dante visited before writing the Inferno, several castles and mountaintops, Roman ruins, a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp with wall writings including a quote from Dickens, a writers association club in Ljubljana, medieval churches with intriguing frescoes, and other such places.

This approach has been termed "life changing" by some participants. The more open and adventurous you are, the greater effect you will gradually see in your own writing. If you want, for instance, to meet with other writers, even to attempt to translate, with them, their own work, then we can arrange it. In many ways, the whole country is a classroom and learning experience. Readings and workshops can take place in a variety of amazing settings: an Italian WWI memorial, an eighth-century island church, outside by Lake Bled, inside historic cafes, and so forth. On many of these excursions, the visiting Slovene writers and translators accompany the MFA students and facuty, and several often visit the workshops to offer further insights and perspectives.