My mother taught me how to read when I was two. I had a few Little Golden Books that I kept on the table next to the sofa bed where we slept, but the real books lived in the hutch by the front door, including a full set of Encyclopedia Brittanica she purchased impulsively from a door-to-door salesman and grudgingly paid for from a coupon book each month.

I don’t know where the time went. Less than a week ago, we had our last workshop. Now, in less than twenty-four hours, I’ll turn in my final packet. The time in between has been intense, a microcosm of the Mark Program and how these last six months have sped by.

Mark Program: Give us a brief synopsis of your project.

Shanna Mahin: THE CONCERNS OF THE BOURGEOISIE is a fractured, messy story about my fractured, messy childhood and the fractured, messy time in my life after my homeless mother killed herself and I was forced to consider the implications. No, no, wait. Come back. It’s a comedy. I promise.

MP: Who should apply to the Mark Program?

I learned that it’s never going to be perfect.

I learned that you will never have all the answers that you need. You’ll to wing it.

I learned that you never know all there is to know about writing fiction.

I learned that writing doesn’t make better writing, awareness plus writing makes better writing.

I learned that degrees don’t mean much in fiction. It’s respect for the craft and the reader and the commitment to honor that respect.