Boston or Baltimore
Fort Wayne
1978
Back then, in 1978, there were only a handful of MFA grad schools. Boston University and Johns Hopkins weren’t even MFA programs. They gave out MAs in creative writing. I applied to 9 or 10 programs. I got into Hopkins, and George Starbuck called me from Boston with an offer. I was a bit overwhelmed. I’d never been out of Indiana, really, and I told him that. “You don’t want to go to Hopkins,” he said. “Baltimore is the world’s largest small town.” I thought about that. And I thought a big small town sounded right for me. Sixteen years later, I was now a professor, and I was moving to teach at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. A week before I arrived, George Starbuck, who had retired there, died in that small small town, I was now moving to.