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Stacking Stones
​A Creative Craft Blog

From the mind of Jason Kapcala comes an eclectic journal dedicated to the study of creative writing, rock music, tailgating, and other miscellany. The musings, meditations, contemplations, and ruminations expressed here are my own unless otherwise indicated. Please feel free to share your comments, thoughts, and opinions, but do so respectfully and intelligently.
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Some Thoughts on MFA Backlash and the Article that Angered the Internet

3/7/2015

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Every once in a while I’ll come across an article (or have one sent to me by writer friends) that inspires me to put together a blog entry. Nine times out of ten, it is because the author has written something valuable—offering an artist’s insight that I find educational or illuminating; I want to engage with it intellectually and artistically, and I’d like to pass it along to my friends, my readers, and my students, in the hopes that they might feel inspired to enter into that larger discussion, as well.

This isn't one of those times.

This is that tenth time where I find myself so irritated by the wrongheadedness and pretentiousness of an article that I feel the obligation as a writer, reader, teacher, and scholar of craft, to provide some counter-point. . . .


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Must Read! -- Interview with Natalie Sypolt

8/26/2013

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In Renee Nicholson's excellent interview for r.k.v.r.y. quarterly, Natalie Sypolt talks about book reviewing, dog ownership, and what it means to be a West Virginia writer! This is one you definitely don't want to miss!
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What Makes a Writer: The Verdict

6/7/2013

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About a month ago, I posed the question: "What Makes a Writer?" and you readers have spoken. The post generated a number of interesting comments, and I have since gone through and tried to summarize your thoughts on the subject. According to all of you, a writer is someone who . . .


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What Makes a Writer?

4/26/2013

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I'm a "writer."
When I was in grad school in Ohio, I knew a fellow student/teacher who was, to use his words, "very protective of the title: writer." So much so, that he would not allow his students to refer to themselves casually as writers. (I believe the term they used was "rhetors" or some such nonsense. And so, when students discussed each others' work in class, you'd end up with conversations that started something like this: "What I think this rhetor is trying to do here is . . . .")

I always found this to be kind of silly.


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    Jason Kapcala

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