Farmington Faculty


Patricia O’Donnell

Professor - English and Director of the Creative Writing program

M.F.A., University of Massachusetts at Amherst
M.A., University of Northern Iowa
B.A., University of Northern Iowa

In the Classroom: Engaging Students — Setting High Academic Expectations
Patricia O’Donnell said that all classes in Fiction Writing and Creative Writing are discussion-based, not lecture-based. So in addition to reading and analyzing the stories of published contemporary writers, she focuses on developing the work of the students through workshop discussion.

In small classes — limited to just fifteen students — Pat leads the class in giving specific, supportive critiques that hold the bar high for students, yet help them to achieve more of themselves than they may have thought possible.

In addition to short writing assignments, Patricia’s students write and revise two complete short stories. This fall students in her Advanced Fiction class will start the semester by studying and writing "Flash Fiction," very short fiction limited to one or two pages.

Last spring, students in her Advanced Fiction class read from their stories at the yearly UMF Symposium Day, highlighting student work. In her Senior Seminar class, Pat’s students develop a project, such as leading a writing group for area senior citizens — a project that uses their writing skills and also helps the community.

Outside the Classroom: Innovation and Excitement — Putting Theory into Practice
As Director of the UMF Creative Writing Program, Patricia also coordinates the student Writing Apprenticeships. Here, she helps students find hands-on work at the on-campus poetry press, Alice James Books, or The Beloit Poetry Journal and The Aurorean, both located off-campus in Farmington.

Other Writing Apprenticeships she oversees allow students to write for local newspapers such as The Franklin Journal, The Daily Bulldog, The Sun Journal, and the student newspaper, The Farmington Flyer. Pat’s Creative Writing students have also gained hands-on experience editing the UMF literary journal, The Sandy River Review, Ripple (UMF’s feminist 'zine) and working for Literacy Volunteers.

Many Farmington students take active roles in the UMF Writers' Guild, a club of students interested in Creative Writing, which is open to all majors. As the club's advisor, Patricia meets every Monday evening with these students. This year meetings will be held in the new Creative Writing House, located in the center of campus. One of the Writers' Guild’s activities is publishing the literary magazine, The Sandy River Review. They also sporadically publish a satiric newsletter, The Monthly Flow.

Pat’s role as the Writers' Guild club advisor is to enjoy the students’ humor, help them schedule things such as readings and visits by writers and editors, and try to keep their energies under control at the end-of-the-year formal dinner.

Patricia has traveled with a group of Farmington students for the past three years to the Associated Writing Program conference, held last year in New York, the year before that in Atlanta, Georgia.

A True Academic — Areas of Special Interest
Patricia says she has a deep and abiding love for good literature of all kind, but especially the contemporary novel and short story. Her focus is on the contemporary American short story. She is also interested in South African fiction.

Respected in the Field — Noteworthy Accomplishments
Pat O’Donnell received the Martin Dibner Award for Fiction, and she has had short stories appear in a variety of publications such as The New Yorker, The Agni Review, The North American Review, Prairie Schooner, The American Literary Review, The Short Story; The Quotable Moose, The Eloquent Edge, and other journals and anthologies.

An agent is currently representing her novel, The Perfect Taste, while she has nearly completed a second novel, called Necessary Places. Both are works of literary fiction.

Outside of Academia — Personal Interests and Activities
Outside her busy academic life, Patricia says some of her favorite activities include: reading, kayaking, jogging, yoga, walking the dog, steeping tea, shoveling snow, stacking wood, contemplating her mortality, checking for messages from students on her Facebook page, trying to distinguish whether her dog is merely smiling at her or jeering, watching the resident snake at her camp eat frogs, waiting for loons to resurface, and taking delight in her three children.

She also enjoys traveling, recently to Greece, before that to Europe and Japan. Patricia lived for a semester in Cape Town, South Africa and for a semester in London. In South Africa she met writer and theater director Michael Williams, and invited him to teach courses at Farmington last fall in Writing for the Stage and South African Culture.

Patricia O’Donnell lives in the neighboring town of Wilton, Maine with her husband, UMF Professor of English Michael Burke and their teenaged daughter, Harper.

Faculty Profiles