Doctorate in Creative Writing

I am about a week away from my Doctorate in Creative Writing Residency. This will be my final one–it has been three years already.

It is fitting that Presbyterian’s Today published and shared one of my poems just in time for the end of the school year.

I wrote it because my family has extensive experience with restraint collapse.

However, it is especially relevant this year as my eldest is struggling with 9th grade. As is often the case, puberty has complicated everything.

We are grappling with their diagnosis and have stopped their meds, and have been in survival mode all year. The poem fits as we have been waiting to exhale–and the end is in sight, we will restart different meds after they have gained weight during summer, because they are in the midst of a growth spurt as well.

During my residency, I will be assigned an advisor and “all” I have to do is write a book–I have been given a tenative approval (i.e. as much approval as one can get) to write poems with essays, I am hopeful that I can actually do that well.

As you know I try to share my work widely for any and all to use. I happy to say I am well on my way to this year being funded. All donations make a difference! If you can spare some money towards my work I would greatly appreaciate it! I crowdfund 1/3rd, my church pays 1/3rd and I pay 1/3rd. Please donate here: https://gofund.me/391febb1

Thank you for all those who have given! I so appreciate you allowing me to write and grow!!

“I want to tell you, Go thinks you are beautiful and perfect, exactly as you are.” Rev. Katy Stenta Restraint Collapse: A Prayer” a bouquet of white flowers and the PCUSA symbol in the corner

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Author: katyandtheword

Pastor Katy has enjoyed ministry at New Covenant since 2010, where the church has solidified its community focus. She now works at Capital CFO plus as the Non Profit Director. All opinions expressed on this blog are her own and do not reflect those of Capital CFO plus. Prior to that she studied both Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She also served as an Assistant Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and as the Christian Educational Coordinator at Bethany Presbyterian at Bloomfield, NJ. She is an writer and is published in Enfleshed, Sermonsuite, Presbyterian's today and Outlook. She writes prayers, liturgy, poems and public theology and is pursuing her doctorate in ministry in Creative Write and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She enjoys working within and connecting to the community, is known to laugh a lot during service, and tells as many stories as possible. Pastor Katy loves reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, theater, arts and crafts, music, playing with children and sunshine, and continues to try to be as (w)holistically Christian as possible. "Publisher after publisher turned down A Wrinkle in Time," L'Engle wrote, "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adult's book, anyhow?" The next year it won the prestigious John Newbery Medal. Tolkien states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[66] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times.

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