Student Essays
Below are excerpts from essays the participants in the Prague Summer Series have written about their experience.
“The theme of this year’s Prague Summer Program was The Myth of Innocence: Childhood as Cultural Phenomenon. And I could imagine that this city, with its literary history – Kafka, Rilke, Rimbaud, Klima, Lusting – would inspire reflections as to what it means to have survived and recreated one’s own childhood experiences.
As an MFA candidate in fiction, or poetry, or even creative non-fiction, it is the perfect time to apply for this program, especially if one has writing which one wishes to include in a thesis manuscript. The quality of the workshop experience in the Prague Summer Program is entirely enriching and extremely helpful.”
– Bojan Louis
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“The lectures I attended evey Tuesday morning were phenomenal. My favorite of all the lectures was given by Arnost Lustig. Arnost recounted his life at fifteen, just before Nazi occupation. His lecture came after a visit I had to the former concentration camp at Terezín. Arnost spoke about how a young friend of his, among others, was killed and how after liberation he would meet with the boy’s family. He said that his mom believed her son was still alive and she would wait for hours each day, by the door. As I listened to him speak I got goose bumps. He was an amazing storyteller and a charming man, holding a captive audience for an hour and fifteen minutes.”
– Fernando Perez
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