{"id":4702,"date":"2024-01-19T18:01:10","date_gmt":"2024-01-19T23:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/magazine\/?p=4702"},"modified":"2025-07-23T15:47:17","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T19:47:17","slug":"three-generations-of-mentoring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/magazine\/three-generations-of-mentoring\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Generations of Mentoring"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #c70067\"><strong><span class=\"dropcapM\">E<\/span>dgar Kunz \u201910<\/strong><\/span> is enjoying a career trajectory that points straight up. In the spring of 2018, he was an adjunct teaching one class at Goucher; he\u2019s now a full-time assistant professor of creative writing as well as the assistant director of Goucher\u2019s Kratz Center. In the fall of 2023, he took a sabbatical to promote his latest poetry collection, <em>Fixer<\/em>, which was named a <em>New York Times <\/em>Editors\u2019 Choice book.<\/p>\n<p>Such success is not foreign to Kunz. After graduating Goucher in 2010, he enrolled in Vanderbilt University\u2019s M.F.A. program, one of the top creative writing programs in the country. He has been a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow, and a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and had recent poems in <em>The New Yorker<\/em>, <em>The Atlantic<\/em>, <em>Poetry<\/em>, <em>APR<\/em>, and <em>Oxford American<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Kunz didn\u2019t set out to be a poet. As a teen he wrote lyrics, dreaming of becoming \u201cthe next great American songwriter,\u201d he says. After high school, he attended community college, then transferred to Goucher his sophomore year, \u201cwithout realizing the creative writing program was so outsize strong\u2014stronger than many big universities,\u201d says Kunz.<\/p>\n<p>In his first semester at Goucher, Kunz took a class with poet Elizabeth Spires, who retired last spring. \u201cWhen I came to Goucher I had no idea she was a major poet. At that point in my life, I was barely aware there even were contemporary poets,\u201d he says. \u201cI just loved reading poems and trying to make things out of language.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In addition to Spires\u2019 classes, he took an independent study with her, and she supervised his senior thesis. \u201cSpires\u2019 mentoring was so personalized,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI felt so lucky to be receiving that level of feedback outside the classroom,\u201d Kunz says.<\/p>\n<p>As a professor, Kunz, in turn, provides the same support. \u201cI work intensely with my students,\u201d he says. \u201cWe workshop poems, read a lot of books, and discuss elements of the craft.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Through creative writing workshops, independent study, senior thesis supervision, two reading series, a summer fellowship, an off-campus mentorship program, there\u2019s a lot of programming. Kunz is also faculty advisor of the literary magazine <em>The Preface<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Over the last few years Kunz\u2019s students have gone on to study in the top M.F.A. programs in the country, including Vanderbilt University; University of Texas, Austin; Indiana University; Hollins University; University of Montana; and University of Maryland.<\/p>\n<p>Spires\u2019 legacy continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Edgar Kunz \u201910 found a mentor in Elizabeth Spires; now he&#8217;s continuing her legacy with his own students. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":360,"featured_media":4698,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7935],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[87483],"class_list":["post-4702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-goucher-today"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Three Generations of Mentoring | Goucher Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Edgar Kunz \u201910 found a mentor in Elizabeth Spires; 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