Suzanne Barnecut

My time at CCA has rewarded me in the ways I imagined it would: I've spent more time writing, felt some improvement, and watched in relief as many technical roadblocks became scalable. Yet being part of the CCA community—surrounded by art, but also by so many talented and different writers and readers—challenges and surprises me in ways I didn't expect. I came with the single-minded intention of writing a bunch of short stories, but the quality of the courses, in particular, has enriched my life on a broader scale.

Before I took the Chekhov and O'Connor course, for example, you couldn't have paid me to read Chekhov. I've since come to appreciate him, as a master storyteller and possibly my literary hero. Likewise, my mentor suggested an Alice Munro story that is currently my favorite piece of short fiction. A few months later I realized that I'd owned a copy of that same story for years, but had never given myself the time to read it.

By contrast, in Writer/World I read a few books I'd never choose on my own—some that I treasure and others I'll never read again—but all valuable in their own ways. While studying structure and craft, these books were so rich in content that I learned a lot about life, and especially about the Vietnam War.

I was equally surprised to make the largest breakthrough in my fiction while taking a screenwriting course. Some of my best stories and essays grew out of class exercises.

So this is what I like best about CCA: you may travel in a direction you didn't intend to go, and that's okay. That seems to be the point.

Suzanne plans to graduate in 2007.