Making It: Four MFA Alumni Talk Writing and Living After the Degree

MFA Alumni Deena ElGenaidi, Nina Lary, Davon Loeb, and Shelby Vittek return to Rutgers to talk about their experiences making a life in writing after graduation. Some questions they’ll address include: how do you get started freelancing? How do you write a good magazine pitch? What is it like to make a living as a writer? Where do you find time for your creative work? 

Join us for this conversation on December 4 at 6 pm. Open to all. 

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Shelby Vittek is the associate editor of New Jersey Monthly magazine, and currently teaches a magazine writing class at Rowan University. Her essays and articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Longreads, Catapult, Narratively, Bon Appétit’s Healthyish, National Geographic, Wine Enthusiast, Saveur, SevenFifty Daily, New Jersey Monthly, The Kitchn, The Smart Set, Philadelphia Daily News, among others. Her work has won awards from the Association of Food Journalists and Folio Magazine Awards, and has been listed as notable in Best American Travel Writing. She graduated from Rutgers–Camden’s MFA program in 2016.

Deena ElGenaidi is a writer and editor based in Brooklyn. Her work has been featured in Nylon, MTV News, Longreads, Electric Literature, Lithub, and elsewhere. She writes regular book reviews for the Brooklyn Rail and is completing a novel about Egyptian-Americans living between two cultures. She completed her MFA at Rutgers-Camden in 2016.

Davon Loeb is the author the lyrical memoir The In-Betweens (Everytime Press, 2018). He earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers-Camden, and he is a poetry editor at Bending Genres andConnotation Press: An Online Artifact. Davon writes creative nonfiction and poetry. His work has been featured nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and one Best of the Net, and is featured in Apiary Magazine, Split Lip Magazine, Harpoon Review, Tahoma Literary Review, Portland Review, andelsewhere. Besides writing, Davon is an English teacher, husband, and father in New Jersey. His work can be found here.

Nina St. Pierre is a culture writer and essayist with a focus on art and feminism. Her work has been published in Catapult, InStyle, Narratively, NYLON, Brooklyn Magazine, and Electric Literature. She’s at work on a memoir about mysticism and madness set in rural northern California.