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FIRST POET: Founded by poet Robert Frost, Bread Loaf has run continuously since 1926. (Photo: Corbis)Poet Jennifer Grotz calls herself a 鈥淏read Loaf poster child.鈥� The associate professor of English first went to the famed Vermont writers鈥� conference as a 23-year-old graduate student, paying her way by waiting tables in the dining room. Since 2005, she has been assistant director of the annual August conference that was founded by poet Robert Frost and has run continuously since 1926. This year, the conference will take on a pronounced Rochester flavor, when Grotz is joined by poet James Longenbach, the Joseph Henry Gilmore Professor of English, and novelist Joanna Scott, the Roswell Smith Burrows Professor of English, who are members of the 2013 faculty.
What is Bread Loaf like?
It鈥檚 like a summer camp for writers. It鈥檚 on this rural campus, very beautiful, on a little mountaintop in the Green Mountains, which is called Bread Loaf Mountain. That鈥檚 how the conference got its name.
What makes it unique?
People respect the history and integrity of Bread Loaf. It鈥檚 the oldest and the most prestigious writing conference in the country鈥攁nd it was at Bread Loaf that the creative writing workshop, that staple of American universities, was more or less invented. One of the things I really treasure about director Michael Collier鈥檚 vision for Bread Loaf is an ongoing emphasis that the conference remain about teaching and workshops, not just networking with editors or agents, though they attend the conference as well.
Is it for writers just starting out?
Yes, but there are different ways to attend, depending on where you are in your apprenticeship and career. Now acceptance is so competitive鈥攚e had 1,700 applications this summer for 150 slots鈥攖hat many writers attending are slightly older than in the past.
The competition is keen, especially for scholarship positions, but there is still a true diversity of people who attend every year, from the ages of about 20 to 80 and beyond.
How does it work?
Sometimes folks think you write there, but you don鈥檛. The time is much too busy and packed with readings and lectures and workshops. It鈥檚 also very social. You do your writing during the year, by yourself, in your 鈥済arret.鈥� When you go to Bread Loaf, you bring work in progress. So the workshop is about sharing work you submitted with the goal of receiving constructive feedback. Workshops are buttressed with craft classes and lectures and readings by faculty and fellows and waiters鈥攑retty much everyone reads. When I get back from Bread Loaf, I鈥檝e heard significant chunks from the entire landscape of contemporary American writing.
How does being at Bread Loaf compare to life during the academic year?
Writers by and large have been sort of tamed into the academy, and that鈥檚 a good thing. I think the university is a great ecosystem for writers, and I also think writers contribute a lot to the university environment. I consider myself a poet-teacher, and as such, I teach poetry as well as write it, so I talk about it with students, I conduct workshops, and then as a published poet I鈥檓 also traveling and giving readings. I have a hybrid and very lucky life getting to do that during the year, but most writers really don鈥檛鈥攁nd they crave ways to be part of a writing community as well as to continue to improve their skills. Often participants at Bread Loaf are lawyers or high school teachers or nurses or folks who have a professional life but still want to pursue their writing.
What do you value most in the experience?
Writing is lonely, and it鈥檚 competitive, and it鈥檚 filled with moments of doubt and rejection. Bread Loaf鈥攚ith its emphasis on nurturing new talent, reading and conversations, celebrating all the writing of the culture鈥攚ell, it鈥檚 kind of the antidote to that. That鈥檚 my hope.
鈥擪athleen McGarvey锘� CARDIOLOGYKeeping Hearts Healthy鈥攐n a 鈥楯ustice Basis鈥�
Making healthy choices easy is key to preventing heart disease and stroke, says Thomas Pearson, director of the Clinical and Translational Science Institute and Albert David Kaiser Chair of Public Health Sciences. And supporting people鈥檚 efforts to be healthy is only fair. Pearson is the coauthor of new guidelines from the American Heart Association to help communities improve cardiovascular health. Rochester has long been a leader in the kind of community-based prevention programs envisioned by the new guidelines.
How does changing the environment help heart health鈥攁nd what makes that a matter of fairness?
One example is nutrition. We did a nutritional readout of the foods served at the Medical Center鈥檚 cafeterias. One of the concerns was all the sodium in soup. So we ratcheted down the sodium鈥攐n a justice basis. If you have high blood pressure or heart failure, or any of the other reasons why you shouldn鈥檛 have a high-sodium diet, it鈥檚 unjust because we haven鈥檛 provided you with anything to eat. If you want to shake extra salt into the soup, you can. But the default option is healthy.
Why is it important to take on heart health at the community level?
If we鈥檙e going to prevent heart disease and stroke, simply relying on medical interventions won鈥檛 get us there. So we鈥檙e focused on changing the context to make people鈥檚 default decisions healthier. We came up with healthy behaviors we鈥檇 like to encourage鈥攏ot reducing bad behaviors but encouraging healthy behaviors.
How effective do you expect these guidelines to be?
We have everything we need to prevent heart disease. I鈥檓 not saying we shouldn鈥檛 be doing research, and heart failure is still a problem. But places that have implemented our guidelines have had huge reductions over very short periods of time in the number of heart disease cases. It鈥檚 been the leading cause of death for over 100 years in the United States. By 2020, in many places it won鈥檛 be anymore. Is this a new way of approaching medical care
An article in the New England Journal of Medicine recently, by David Asch and Kevin Volpp, argues that what people really want is health. Not health care鈥攈ealth. The U.S. health care system needs to figure out how to keep people healthy, not how to treat their disease.
We鈥檙e in a terrific position, with guidelines like this, to say, we鈥檙e going to spend X amount of dollars鈥攚hat should we spend it on? And to say we need another surgical suite or another CAT scan is basically to say people want health care. To have community programs, community engagement, and better outpatient facilities and wellness programs is more consistent with what people want: health. 鈥�
COMPUTER ENGINEERINGCan Your Smartphone Hear You Crying on the Inside?
(Photo: iStockphoto)If you feel as if your smartphone is your best friend, that relationship might be about to deepen. A team of Rochester engineers is developing a computer algorithm that assesses human emotion in speech, with greater accuracy than existing approaches.
Wendi Heinzelman, professor of electrical and computer engineering, is collaborating with other researchers to develop an app that will detect emotions in voices. It鈥檚 a tool designed for use in a study of family conflict among parents and teens led by Melissa Sturge-Apple, assistant professor of clinical and social sciences in psychology, but the concept has provoked broad interest. The group presented its research at the IEEE Workshop on Spoken Language Technology last December. C
omputers may have an edge over human assessors because of their lack of biases, says Heinzelman. Given optimal data to work with, 鈥淚 actually think the computer would be better鈥� than people in judging emotion, she says.
By the end of the summer, Heinzelman鈥檚 team hopes to have an app that can label an utterance emotionally positive, negative, or neutral. And the research has more to it than the mood rings of old. Such a device could ultimately aid people with autism or other conditions that make it hard for them to interpret others鈥� emotions.