One of the unique features of RWW is the Outside Experience. During the second year of the program, students participate in individual projects for 100 hours to further their learning about the writing life and craft. The Outside Experience offers RWW students the opportunity to reflect on what their writing lives have looked like as they arrived at the program and to envision how their journeys of reading, writing, and learning will extend well beyond the program. Students can participate in a variety of Outside Experiences: students have traveled across the world, participated in writing residencies and retreats, taught classes in their communities, and more. We caught up with two second-year students, Marty Salgado and Dabu, to provide some insight into their Outside Experiences.

Kerry Heckman: To start, tell us what you did or are doing for your Outside Experience project.

Dabu: In October [2024], I went to Peru and Bolivia for about four weeks. It was what I would refer to as a pilgrimage. My friend and three other folks traveled doing ceremonies. We went from basically the jungle outside Machu Picchu to Saksaywaman, which is in Cusco, Peru, down into Bolivia, a place called Tiwanaku. These are all places of ancient ruins. Then, we went down to Lake Titicaca and on the Island of the Sun and the Island of the Moon. We did ten ceremonies in about seventeen days. Planes, trains, boats, overnight bus—it was really an unbelievably incredible pilgrimage. I had just finished re-reading a book called The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen, and it just had for me echoes of that kind of journey.

And then I also met with a professor and writer in Cusco who writes poetry in Quechua, which is the Incan language—the indigenous language of Peru. We spoke about doing some translation. It's a magical language.  

Marty Salgado: My Outside Experience project consists of all aspects of music. So I am listening to music, visiting music-related venues and locations, and attending concerts of artists that have impacted my life and artists that have naturally had threads in my life, which I will translate into a narrative.

In the fall [of 2024]—similar to Dabu, I’m considering this a pilgrimage—I went to Nashville to the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum. There was a Christine McVie exhibit, whose music has filled my soul for over twenty years. I was able to spend time in the exhibit and sit and write about my relationship with her and her music. I used that as research for an essay that I turned in to my mentor [Justin St. Germain] just last month. So, I’ve been experiencing music in that way, but I've also been going to shows.

A big essay I'm working on right now involves Simon & Garfunkel, and last night I bought tickets to go see Paul Simon on possibly his very last tour of his lifetime, which ties into an essay that I just drafted, which I'm sure will end up in my manuscript. It’s going to be the last essay.

KH: What made you choose this particular project?

MS: As a writer, I have known that my sensibilities have always been with sound and music. It's shaped my community. It's shaped my life. It's shaped my personality. So, as a nonfiction writer, how can I not write about music? And how can I not use this Outside Experience as a way to get out into the world of music? It’s a reason to go to all these shows for a real purpose and then write about them—going to shows with the thought of fully living into it and experiencing every moment.

D: What is referred to as “the medicines” have been a part of my life for 30 years. I've gone all over the world following these plants, for lack of a better way of saying, the spirit. I knew that I was writing about faith and poetics, and I wanted to be able to see about weaving in some personal aspect into my critical thesis.

Then, I had a teacher, David Biespiel, who is a former faculty member at RWW, who said if you really want to learn your own language, do some translation, and so I'm intrigued by translation. I've been blessed by people who bothered to translate, so I just wanted to engage in the conversation. I’m not making any commitment to do translation, but I wanted to see what it would take. So that’s why.

KH: What effect is your OE having on the creative and critical work you’re doing now at RWW?

D: I've been working on a long-form poem and the first line is, “By the time I arrived inside the grounds of the ruins.” It's the metaphor of a place that we refer to as “ruins.” About places that appear ruined and how alive they are in their ruined-ness. How people speak about ruins when life falls apart. There are many references to not just this trip, but all the many trips I've taken to Peru.

MS: As a creative nonfiction (CNF) writer, going to a concert and being able to stand there with my nonfiction lens on and really, truly taking in the music, not as a passerby, but experiencing it. Being aware of how it's making me feel physically and how it's making me feel in that specific moment of my life. It’s helping, of course, boost the creative writing, but it's also helping me think of this music experience as a critical element to my thesis and how it's all connected.

KH: What have you learned the most from this experience? As a person, as a writer, or as a member of your community?

MS: As a CNF writer especially, you have to live life. This is what I tell my students. Go out and live life and then write about it. You have to experience life in order to write, and I've done a lot of living in the past year—a lot of deep experiences. I believe that if I hadn't been in this program, I don't know if I would’ve been able to really see the preciousness of writing to make sense of everything that I'm going through.

D: That's a hard question. What have I learned the most? I guess I would want to echo a little bit of what Marty says, which is part of the thing that I value about the Outside Experience is you have to go out into the world to have some texture. You have to go live. It’s good to get out of your chair, put down the pen and the paper, and go be with life.

MS: Right, it’s a hundred hours for a reason.

D: It could take years before these memories or experiences incubate and percolate. In those flashes of memory that occur through our interactions with the world. Then, how they get seeded, and all of a sudden they arise and you’re like, “I need to write about this right now.”

KH: How do you think you and other RWW students benefit from completing an Outside Experience as part of the MFA?

D: I think, obviously, the time comes when we're not in the program anymore and I think it can serve as an opportunity to practice paying attention in our everyday life. “Outside Experience”—outside of what, really? It’s a funny name for it. It’s just going out and paying attention to your living. Participating in a deliberate writing practice, and that’s an ongoing thing with or without school. To continue to frame your living as an opportunity to write.

MS: What I appreciate about the OE in the low-residency model is that we're not in class all the time, so this helps me be a working writer. Similar to what Dabu said, it’s helping me consider what happens after the classroom and what happens after graduation. Then, it’s on me to continue experiencing and living and writing, but in as regimented a way as a writer can be.

D: I like that, Marty: “as a working writer.” You’re going to work pretty much all the time when it comes to writing.

KH: This is really inspiring. Technically we only have this one Outside Experience, but we could create our own opportunities to do these for the rest of our lives. So, what has been the most surprising to you about this experience?

MS: The most surprising thing is it doesn't feel like work or a dread. I thought it was going to be like, “I have to do this whole other thing for a hundred hours and figure all this out.” But if you plan it out and think about how it's going to fit with your project or your thesis, it just slides right in, and it doesn't feel like work at all.

D: For me, it was how little writing I did while I was on the Outside Experience. Like, I had no capacity. It wasn't because I was being lazy or didn't feel like it, it was like, “No, not this. Not now.” I did a little bit of writing, but it was more about soaking things up. That surprised me.

KH: Lastly, what advice do you have for someone just starting to plan their OE who might not even know where to begin?

D: It sounds cliché, but follow your heart. Follow your intuition. Follow your interests, not what feels responsible or correct. Maybe not a rational way to go. Do that one.

MS: Do something that inspires you.