Graduate Profile: Monica Rentfrow
Are you in the mood for a snack? Or is it words and poetry you’re craving?
After taking a creative writing class at Alma College, Monica Rentfrow ’08 has an appetite for little else.
“I knew I had a strong interest for writing poetry when I left Alma,” she says. “I entered graduate school with a hunger for more techniques, experience and writing time.”
Rentfrow was at least partially able to satiate her hunger at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she earned her Master in Creative Writing in 2010.
“As a professor’s assistant, I learned how to draft conference proposals and edit a whole fiction manuscript,” she says. “I also was excited to assist a professor with her prison poetry exchange.”
Rentfrow’s thesis, “Rethinking Repair,” is a collection of writings speaking to her experience with dwarfism. Now, she is ready to begin her studies in creative non-fiction as a doctoral student this fall.
“A scholarship donor at Alma once advised me: ‘Make sure you enjoy what you are doing, and you will never really have to work,’” says Rentfrow. “Though there have been troublesome days, I can tell you how possible it is to be proud of where you come from, enjoy where you are and have excitement for where you are going.”
