Spooky season? More like application season! To help ease your fright, we've got our annual MFA application episode in preparation. Before then, we invite you to check in with last year's episode featuring MFA Admissions Coordinator Lindsay Bernal. Our new episode will be in your feed in two weeks. It’s the third annual MFA application episode! This time, Jared is joined by Lindsay Bernal, poet and Academic Coordinator for the MFA program at the University of Maryland. She answers listener questions (starting at 27:15), including: What makes a personal statement good? Should I submit similar or varied poems? How do I know whether a program is truly invested in anti-racist work? Plus, Lindsay describes her path to an MFA, taking time between degrees, and the pros and cons of academic jobs, including positions beyond the tenure track. Lindsay Bernal was born and raised in Rochester, NY, and holds a B.A. in English and Spanish from the University of Virginia and an M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Maryland, where she coordinates and teaches in the Creative Writing Program and co-directs the Writers Here & Now reading series. Her first collection of poems, ⁠What It Doesn't Have to Do With⁠, selected by Paul Guest as a winner of the National Poetry Series competition, was published by the University of Georgia Press in 2018. Find her at her website: ⁠www.lindsaybernal.com⁠. MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at ⁠MFAwriters.com⁠. BE PART OF THE SHOW — Leave a rating and review on ⁠Apple Podcasts⁠. — Submit an episode request. If there’s a program you’d like to learn more about, contact us and we’ll do our very best to find a guest who can speak to their experience. — Apply to be a guest on the show by filling out ⁠our application⁠. STAY CONNECTED Twitter: ⁠@MFAwriterspod⁠ Instagram: ⁠@MFAwriterspodcast ⁠Facebook: ⁠MFA Writers⁠ Email: ⁠[email protected]