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Dayton Shafer

 

After several years of attending community college, working in restaurants and performing with a theater company, Dayton Shafer emerged with a clear vision: He wanted to keep writing.

He started looking for a “studio atmosphere where I could focus on my writing.” He found that at Johnson State.

“I came here because of the Vermont Studio Center, which is not only one of the biggest artistic communities in the country but in the world,” Dayton says.

He transferred into JSC with 58 credits from Clark State Community College. He’ll leave with an award that most writers would envy: a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship providing him with a four-week residency. Each year, the VSC hosts 600 artists and writers from across the world. Two are chosen from Johnson State’s BFA Program in Creative Writing.

Although Dayton’s primary goal at Johnson State was to receive the VSC fellowship, he also has gained valuable experience working on two literary magazines, the Green Mountains Review and The Gihon River Review.

“I get to read a lot of wonderful work and introduce all these new voices,” Dayton says. “I’m one of two interns at the Green Mountains Review. I read work and write comments on the submissions, then pass them along to an advisor. It’s great work, and you get to debate with others about literature.”

A playwright, Dayton spent the years following high school performing with his own theater company, the Corduroy Field Ensemble, at open-air festivals in Ohio. At 27, he has written two full-length plays and five one-acts as well as creative nonfiction, essays and interviews. He has published in the Jeffersonville-based Mountineer and in JSC’s student newspaper, Basement Medicine.

His BFA thesis is a 33,000-word novella. “It’s a piece of fiction, with a struggle between two protagonists,” Dayton explains. “There is lots of coincidence and miscommunication. They experience the same things, and if they actually talked to one another, they would actually understand each other.”

While at Johnson, Dayton has immersed himself in the campus writing community, helping organize poetry slams and meeting visiting writers.

“It’s a collaboration of writers,” he says. “I think that is key. Everyone is open-minded in all my classes, fiction workshops and poetry workshops. The students are really enthusiastic.”

Several days a week, he works as a paid technician for Vermont Interactive Television.  “It’s serendipity, really. I responded to an email one day about non-work study employment,” he recalls. “I manage the video equipment for all the video conferencing. I’m the troubleshooter. I’m learning a lot. I’m not really a technically savvy person, but it’s taught me the language and provided me with new skills.”

But even more, Johnson State has helped Dayton launch his life as a writer. “I’ve accomplished everything I’ve wanted to do at Johnson State,” he says. “When found out I won the fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center, I said, ‘Now, I’ve got to set the next goal: graduate school.’ So I’m shooting for the stars, and I’m applying to six of the top MFA programs in North America.”