Author Maggie Anderson will be visiting Morgantown on October 30th to do a reading at 7:30 p.m. in the Milano Reading Room in the downtown WVU library.
Maggie Anderson received her M.A. in Creative Writing from West Virginia University in 1973. She is the founding editor of the Wick Poetry First Book Series and the Wick Poetry Chapbook Series. She is the author of five books of poems, most recently Dear All. She is retired from Kent State University, where she taught Creative Writing.
Maggie was nice enough to discuss what it was like attending WVU in the 70’s and what she looks forward to upon her return.
Q: I understand you attended WVU and lived elsewhere in West Virginia, correct? Is there anything you're looking forward to when you visit Morgantown and/or West Virginia?
A: Yes, I attended WVU from 1968-1970 (B.A. in English) and then until 1973 (M.A. in English/Creative Writing).
Some years later, I also received an M.S.W. from WVU. I have lived in Buckhannon, Charleston, Moundsville, and Keyser (where I went to high school). I'm looking forward to seeing how Morgantown has changed and to seeing some old friends. I am told I will not recognize Sunnyside.
Q: What was going to school like for you here when you attended WVU?
When I was an undergraduate at WVU the Vietnam War was at its height (the invasion of Cambodia and the Kent State shootings happened while I was there). Much of my time was spent in various local and national political protest events and in trying to figure out how reading Wordsworth and Donne and Alexander Pope might be relevant to my life in the 1970s. Also, I spent a good bit of time wondering (and complaining) about how there were no women writers represented on the syllabus in any course I took. Just as I was graduating from the M.A. program the first "women in literature" courses were being offered at WVU. The days were frightening and heady and joyful and a little crazy. I was writing my first poems.
I wonder what it is like to be going to school at WVU now.