Phillip S
- Research Program Mentor
MFA candidate at University of Notre Dame
Expertise
Creative Writing, Law, English, Philosophy
Bio
In 2007 I received my B.A. in English and Philosophy from Georgetown University, and then attended Cornell Law School, earning a J.D. in 2012. After working as an attorney in New York City for six years, I decided to pursue my passion and joined George Mason University’s Creative Writing MFA program, eventually transferring after one year to the University of Notre Dame. My work is cross-genre, blending elements of fiction, non-fiction, and prose-poetry. As an attorney, I gained expertise in a wide range of subjects, from constitutional and federal statutory law all the way to more practical matters like securities and commercial law. So, basically, my academic and professional experience sort of runs the gamut! I have had the pleasure of gaining significant tutoring and teaching experience. While working as a graduate student in GMU’s Writing Center, I provided tutoring services to over a hundred students, often working with individual students through multiple sessions on semester-long projects. I have served as a TA in Comp 101 classes at GMU and will be teaching Intro to Creative Writing at Notre Dame. These experiences working with students have been especially rewarding to me, and I am looking forward to helping you with projects that you are passionate about!Project ideas
Creative Writing
Whether you’d like to work on short stories, or a set of poems, or narrative non-fiction like personal essays or memoir – or even a novel! – we can set up a plan for your project that leaves you with polished work that, for example, you can submit to journals and other publications. I’m basically doing the same thing right now while getting my MFA! The contours of the program will depend on where you are in your process. If you’re just starting out, we can figure out what brainstorming techniques work for you, whether that be free-writing, or something graphic or conversational, and develop a plan from there. If you’re further along, we can talk about what your vision for the piece is and ways to go about getting there. Throughout, we will make use of outside model texts to see how other writers effectively build worlds, write dialogue, set scenes, create believable characters, etc. An important way to grow as a writer is to determine what other writers your work is in conversation with – none of us, nor our writing, exists in a vacuum, and situating your vision in the larger writing landscape can help you gain clarity and insight into your own work. Prerequisites: A sincere desire to hone your craft and the commitment to put in the work to do so is all that is necessary to tackle a creative writing project. If you have those things – and I imagine you do, if you’re here – this can be an incredibly rewarding endeavor, which I know from first-hand experience.
Legal Projects
Having spent nearly half my life in the legal field, I have the expertise to assist with any law-related project. Whether you’d like to research and write about, for instance, the constitutional, statutory, and regulatory landscape related to today’s hot-button political issues; or dive into a topic related to securities, commercial, or bankruptcy law; or perhaps prepare for moot court or mock trial, we can set up a plan for the length of our time that leaves you with finished work product worthy to be kicked up to the Partner for review – so to speak! Researching and writing about the law was by far the best part of being an attorney, and I’d love to do some more of that with someone passionate about it! Prerequisites: Fear not, you needn’t be an expert on the law, or have written or researched it prior to starting your project here. A willingness to tackle sometimes complicated subject matter will suffice!
