The winter solstice has been celebrated as the sun’s rebirth for hundreds of years.  The year’s longest night brought hope and resilience. The dark season had turned a corner; the sun would soon return.

So it is on the campus of Lasell University in Auburndale, Massachusetts, the appropriately named Solstice Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program is emerging from the shadows—and experiencing an efflorescence of creativity and growth. It had been a long night, indeed.

Solstice only recently put down roots at Lasell after its former home, Pine Manor College (PMC) announced in April of 2020 that it was shutting down, a victim, at least in part, of the COVID pandemic, leaving the program without a host school. Solstice Director Meg Kearney and Assistant Director Quintin Collins were left with no choice but to don their N95s and begin knocking on doors.

“Solstice’s mission of diversity and inclusion, along with its autonomy, meant its new home needed an equal dedication to social justice along with a belief in the value of the arts and the MFA program’s existing leadership,” said Kearney.

 Looking for a like-minded host proved a challenge—all the while the New England Commission of Higher Education would not allow recruiting. Kearney and Collins watched their enrollment dwindle as current students finished their graduate degrees, but no new students could enter the program. 

“It seemed to take forever to get re-accreditation, even after we found our match with Lasell,” says Kearney. “COVID just slowed everyone down.”

As it turns out, Lasell was fertile ground for Solstice. The University’s “commitment to inclusive excellence” made it the perfect fit.

“Part of Solstice’s appeal is our effort toward innovation as well as diversity and community support. We’re doing the MFA differently,” says Kearney. “Solstice offers a concentration in comics, a unique track in pedagogy, and soon will be launching a new track in writing and social action. We’re staying relevant in the current world.”

The Solstice program first came together as a concept under the guidance of fiction writer Lee Hope, poet Dzvinia Orlowsky, and best-selling novelist Dennis Lehane, who in 2005 recruited Kearney from the National Book Foundation in New York. The program launched in 2006 with Lehane on the founding faculty—he no longer teaches there but continues his support by underwriting an annual fiction fellowship and occasional guest appearances—along with notable writers Jacqueline Woodson and Terrance Hayes (who now both also underwrite Solstice fellowships and return as they’re able as writers-in-residence). As it grew, Solstice gathered other notable authors like Renée Watson and Sandra Scofield, who return year after year to teach at residencies.

“They are tenacious about their focus on community and humility—they call it ‘radical vulnerability,’” says poet and nonfiction writer Anne-Marie Oomen, a fifteen-year Solstice faculty member.

Despite their own vulnerability during the shutdown, Kearney and Collins held onto their belief that the program would rebound.

“They’ve been nothing less than heroic,” says Oomen, of the directors’ resolve in saving the program. “Meg and Quintin are very good at identifying who will work hard in this community.” Oomen says another astonishing achievement is the leadership’s ability to maintain what she calls “academic intimacy,” whether in a Zoom or in-person world. “They really nurture that lack of hierarchy.”

“Thriving together—supporting each other’s work—that’s what’s always been important to us at Solstice,” says Collins, who is also a Solstice alum.

July 2022 marked the first Solstice on-campus residency at Lasell, where a handful of students learned their craft as well as what it means to be part of this community.

Just a year later, in July 2023, there were a dozen students on the roster—more than double the previous year’s enrollment. At the same time, Solstice held its first annual alum retreat. More than twenty-five Solstice graduates showed up to audit craft classes for free and enjoy some quiet writing time. A dozen or so rented affordable rooms in a Victorian house right in the heart of Lasell’s campus, while others rented nearby Airbnb lodging.

“I often tell prospective students that Solstice can give them a lifelong community of writers, and this retreat is another way we help our alums maintain their connections to each other and to Solstice,” Collins says. “Former students from across our more than seventeen-year history attended, showing a true testament to the strength of those bonds.”

“The Solstice MFA Program has found the ideal home at Lasell,” says Kearney, “and its story truly is one of resilience and hope.”