Hilary Sigismondi: 'I've Always Wanted to Be a Writer'
July 15, 2020
Contact: Office of Government and Public Affairs
Phone: 410.837.5739
"I always wanted to go back to school. I'm 58 and let me tell you the story."
We asked Hilary Sigismondi, who will join the University of Baltimore's M.F.A. in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts program this fall, what drew her to UB.
"At the end of my life, I don't want to have any regrets. That's one of my things. I don't want to have any regrets. And I really got clear that if I didn't go back to school, it would be a huge regret because I've always wanted to be a writer even when I was a little kid. ... So [my daughter] was like, 'Mom, you know, enough's enough. You've got to commit to this.' So she started the ball. This was last summer, sitting up at this restaurant with her laptop looking up MFA programs.
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"I've known some people who had done the UB program, through the grapevine, through different things I've done, I knew people. So that's when I went to the website and looked at it. And I really liked the idea of the publishing arts piece. I'm very creative and artsy, too. So I like the idea of being able to physically make a book. I like the idea of the cohort. I looked at the courses. I do like writing memoir pieces, and they had that piece, too. But what got down to it was there was an information session.
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"That's really what clinched it for me, that experience of that information session. … I didn't have to pretend who I was. I didn't have to make myself seem more literary than I was or smarter than I was. I could just tell the truth."
Learn more about the MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts.
Find out about UB's upcoming information sessions.
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