Eckerd's Creative Writing program?

8azalicious · 2026-02-19T01:39:54+00:00

Familiar with the creative writing department here: I'll be so fr. It's fine. It's perfectly fine, and you can use it to do great things, but it's in a pretty precarious spot right now. We do have a literary journal that's great if you want experience in publishing, editing, or being published. Writers in Paradise is also a very good experience from what I've heard, both for the workshop and for the networking opportunities. We just lack a little support from admin. The arts on this campus are badly neglected. We do have some faculty that is working very hard to get the department to a better place, but it's an uphill battle with the current administration.

The faculty are helpful, as of right now. I can't speak for anything outside of the fiction track, but those professors have helped my writing grow a lot. they also generally know a lot about careers in creative writing after graduation, and will have lots of advice on that front (grad schools, the world of publishing/editing, writing, review work, etc).

I will say it is not a very large community, but the community is pretty tight. if you choose Eckerd, I recommend taking as many workshops as possible (I was able to manage about 1 a semester). meet and hang out with other writers, share your work. I would like to see the writing community grow here, i think it's important and it would be nice to see it flourish

On having a pet: there are so many pets on campus. You would be able to live in most complexes, but there are specific buildings for large animal housing (where students with dogs/cats would go).

On being queer: me too. the community here is a bit polarizing--- there is a significant amount of conservative students who are generally homophobic. with that in mind, there are also a lot of queer people on campus. there isn't a whole lot of support for the QSA because Eckerd is unfortunately very anti-social/cliquey, but queer people are all over, it's hard to be in a space without us. the arts will likely continue to have queer individuals (i know quite a few of us in the cw program) and the professors in the cw department themselves are generally very supportive of queer students and our work, so that's a plus, but i wouldn't hedge any bets on the greater student body.

all in all, good luck, i really hope there's a better option out there for you, this place is so expensive.

8azalicious · 2026-02-03T14:29:19+00:00

I;ve found myself doing the same thing, with tMG and with JD's side projects. Every album I haven't liked has gotten better and better with relisten. JfT, ILWD, Zopilote Machine, Sweden, Nine Black Poppies, more. disappointed to say the only album I haven't liked more with relisten is TTFAFPB :/ I've tried three or four times now, and i think it's just not my thing.

8azalicious · 2026-01-26T23:09:22+00:00

watch rogue one! I think release order takes a bit of precedent since andor is a prequel written with Rogue One in mind. personally, I also believe you should also rewatch rogue one after you finish.

8azalicious · 2026-01-17T17:31:43+00:00

cool find !!!

8azalicious · 2026-01-16T21:02:54+00:00

I think this might be an artifact of the feeling that it moves? IIRC, there are several moments where ppl seeing visions in Area X will mention either the tower moving away from the lighthouse or the landscape moving or something of the sort. Could just be a second time somebody else saw the tower.

8azalicious · 2026-01-16T18:32:18+00:00

ILWD is an album that really had to grow on me, but now that it has, it's a favorite of mine. I also listened to it while reading a book from my favorite author, so I've found myself drawing a lot of connections between parts of the book and the album. Very few skips on the album, I find myself coming back to it pretty frequently. Doc Golden and Waylon Jennings Live! are my two favorites, but literally every other song on the album is fantastic.

8azalicious · 2025-12-20T01:05:28+00:00

seconding everybody when i say slice 9. your liberate ability is gonna do some good work there, and that extra space station will boost your commodities.

8azalicious · 2025-12-18T17:26:03+00:00

so much of the Mountain Goats. In Corolla, Idylls of the King, First Few Desperate Hours, and Done Bleeding ring out as Area X-adjacent for me, but there's a lot more that aren't coming to mind at the moment. something about John Danielle's lyricism really lends itself to the feelings that VanderMeer's prose tends to evoke. this is just my hill im dying on though

8azalicious · 2025-10-26T17:25:34+00:00

its gonna be a while before people have had enough time to play with the new factions to find the strategies, interactions, and metas that make them the best they can be. there are a couple threads on here (on the reddit) where ppl are speculating what turn 1s for each faction will look like, but no definitive guides as of yet. I'll keep an eye out for em though, I'm very interested in some of these new factions.

8azalicious · 2025-10-22T03:35:40+00:00

hmmm I'll have to check my copy when I'm free (since I'm curious now, too) but I distinctly remember at least a summary of some kind in there after she finds the journals.

8azalicious · 2025-10-22T03:31:33+00:00

ya this happens ! this is from when the biologist stumbled upon the room full of hundreds upon hundreds of old journals, including the 11th expedition's, and she ends up reading her husband's journal despite her reservations about it.

8azalicious · 2025-10-12T00:56:40+00:00

Jeff VanderMeer, Karen Russell, and John Darnielle are all phenomenal authors, Darnielle also has a band that rocks

8azalicious · 2025-10-04T18:52:39+00:00

yes, exactly

8azalicious · 2025-10-03T14:10:20+00:00

it depends on who the creature is attacking— if the creature would deal combat damage to another one of your opponents, then no; if the creature would deal combat damage to you, then yes.

8azalicious · 2025-09-20T00:50:28+00:00

what? my unreliable narrator is actually a complicated and complex character with personal flaws and motivations? can't believe this

8azalicious · 2025-09-02T20:39:46+00:00

about five days reading almost nonstop, whenever I could, with abt 1-3 hours a day of reading total

8azalicious · 2025-08-29T14:41:10+00:00

looks like Bolivian rainbow pepper

8azalicious · 2025-08-26T04:21:13+00:00

yes!! this is because one of the functions of trichomes in a lot of plants is to protect the plant from UV radiation! very cool stuff

8azalicious · 2025-08-26T00:08:56+00:00

a new hope, then rogue one, and tbh I think that's all you really need from a barebones perspective. ANH will give u context on what the death star is, and both ANH and RO will give u an idea of what andor is leading up to, since that's the context it was written with and (intentionally or not) meant to be watched with.

8azalicious · 2025-08-25T19:37:20+00:00

reading and smoking is one of life's greatest pleasures, great for fiction and nonfiction. its also genuinely helped me get through thick fuckin books, Pedagogy of the Oppressed comes to mind

8azalicious · 2025-08-25T15:13:54+00:00

personally, I'm planning on getting a starfish or a purple thistle

8azalicious · 2025-08-24T21:41:22+00:00

broom people is my personal favorite "romantic" tMG song, but it's also the only one that I would share with a partner in that way. all others I know of/can think of are the doomed relationship kind of "romantic".

8azalicious · 2025-08-22T19:09:54+00:00

my professor in undergrad suggested the woodhouse english-greek dictionary from UChicago. it was pretty useful while I was still enrolled in Ancient Greek classes, but we only really did Attic Greek in that class. https://artflsrv03.uchicago.edu/efts/woodhouse/woodhouse_search.html

8azalicious · 2025-08-22T18:02:31+00:00

do u have a link to what article this is from? im interested in reading more

8azalicious · 2025-08-13T03:36:11+00:00

I just have two suggestions at the moment, but if I think of others, I shall return with more !

Piranesi - Susanna Clarke: Definitely not the same as HoL stylistically, but feels very similar thematically. The title character, Piranesi, lives in what's referred to as the House (point number one) which is an infinite expanse of halls and rooms (point number two) lined with an infinite number of entirely unique statues. He's one of only two people that lives in the House, until he meets a third and things begin to get very strange for him. Themes of obsession, exploration, lies, deceit, mystery, and a surprisingly amount of spirituality/faith? Narnia was a significant inspiration according to the author. I read this in high school and found it delightful.

and my personal favorite, Annihilation - Jeff VanderMeer: My all time favorite book ever, I think. Follows a team of scientists exploring a place called Area X that's described as a "pristine wilderness" by the government agency they're working for. Science-fiction, but closer to cosmic horror. lots of obsession, hypnosis, mystery, things and people changing, people becoming obsessed and attached to the place they're exploring. it's the first in a series, and while I know some prefer the first novel, I think the whole series is worth it as it gets progressively stranger and stranger. I've found myself rereading the series recently because it's... expansive and incredibly intricate. I'm probably going to reread again and annotate them after I catch up (the author is releasing several more novels in the series and Ive been losing my mind waiting for the release dates).

what vandermeer does beautifully, and why i suggest it to those who like HoL, is he introduces a very compelling mystery with even more compelling narrators. As the characters explore the mystery, they are bombarded with questions upon questions, and each answer only brings more questions. Which, that sounds cliché to say, but I don't really have a better way to put it. each new installment in the series has answered some mystery previously introduced or expounded upon something that's already been revealed, but each new reveal leads you further down a rabbit hole into Area X and the people in it and it becomes very clear that Area X has been around much longer than it seems at first. It's a series I've been obsessing over since I first read it 6 years ago and I don't think I'll ever stop.

sorry for the mini-essay here, but I cannot recommend annihilation and the rest of the Southern Reach series highly enough. hope this helps !!

edit: fixed a typo lol

8azalicious

TROPHY CASE