“Snode” or Ode to Snow by Samantha Kelly
TESTIMONIALS
“As a fellow writer once put it, ‘Nynke teaches the unteachable.’ She not only helps each student develop the technical craft of writing, she also helps develop their inner muse—their bright spark of creative impulse. In Nynke’s classes, I found myself in an unprecedented torrent of creative excitement. This, coupled with her genuine support and high-caliber constructive feedback, facilitated one of the most prolific periods of my writing life—and certainly the most enjoyable! Nynke creates an absolutely magical, bursting-with-creativity environment for the discovery of writing, and she brings to the table a sharper eye and more generous feedback than I have ever received from any other writing teacher before or since.”
“Whether she is teaching poetry, graphic narrative, or memoir writing, Nynke Passi is more than a teacher; she is a mentor, confidante, and muse. With compassion and care, she guides students in expressing their creativity through language—she inspires students to be bold, authentic, and honest.” - Anna Maria Cornell, MA in Creative Nonfiction, University of Iowa
“Nynke, I don’t think there’s anyone in the whole world who works as hard as you. We love you, we honor you for creating
all of this and this fantastic MFA program!”
“Your influence is evident on every page of my new novel, INMANI: Nova Mundo Blues.”
“I’m so deeply grateful for you, Nynke. Hearing you lay out what’s required during thesis semesters was helpful for knowing what to expect and also showed, once again, the deep level of care and thought you have put into this program. Thank you for your commitment and dedication to this MFA.”
“Thank you again for your support and encouragement of all of us. I’m grateful for your belief in me and your commitment to helping me achieve a greater level of Self-Expression, Love and Care.”
“Thank you, Nynke. Your ability to create space and curiosity with twists and turns is what being a teacher is all about.”
I really appreciate your sensitivity, insight and intuition. - Nathan Hudson, MFA Student
“One special thing about Nynke is her ability to make you feel as though you are the only other person in the room when she is talking to you. When giving feedback, she immediately tunes in to your individual strengths and weaknesses and tells you exactly what you need to hear. We had a visitor in class the other day who graduated from another university. After a brief discussion on the previous night’s homework, he turned to me and said, ‘I just learned more in the last 15 minutes than I learned throughout my entire college career! And that is the sweetest woman I’ve ever met!’” — Nina Benjamin, editor, freelance writer
“You create the magic space that allows people to feel so safe and cared for. You have changed me as a writer, a musician, an artist, and a person. I know that your guidance and example will always be my North star while I’m on this journey, and that is a gift.”
“I’ve never read a book like Maria Popova’s Figuring before, and this is what being in an MFA is all about to me. It’s about being exposed to things that shift your world — all due to Nynke, and everyone else who has ever helped her in her life.”
“I want you to know that you made me fall in love with Emerson. Wish you could teach me forever.”
You continue to stand out as one of my favorite teachers, one of the people who has had the most profound impact on me, and your classes stand as highlights of what I hope more of my life can be like. You gave me a vision of what creating and sharing could look and feel like, and I'm ever grateful for that. I heard somewhere that "The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” Well, you INSPIRE, and deserve the title ‘great teacher.’ — Isaac Nevas, actor, Montessori teacher
“How do you give such good feedback on so many papers? Seriously. Teach me your secret ways, your deep magics. I beg you. I am your disciple.”
Detail, “Snode” or Ode to Snow by Samantha Kelly
“Your foundation treads deeper than craft and technique. You give your students wings. Inner voice has the ability to propel or punish—and you choose to propel. Forward motion. Growth. You help us reclaim our voices to give us purpose in the world. There is no ego in you. No credit to be taken. Rather a genuine love for the art of expression and the eagerness and pride you exude in watching your students find their way.”
In a sketch on “Laugh-In,” the comedian Lily Tomlin in the character of a little girl named Edith Ann, said of teachers, “I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.” Nynke Passi does just that. In fact, all of the classes I’ve had with her have been life-transforming. She has a way of getting you to dig deeper into yourself than you knew you could and produce genuine, deeply personal material—writing from the heart. One special thing about Nynke is her ability to make you feel as though you are the only other person in the room when she is talking to you. When giving feedback, she immediately tunes in to your individual strengths and weaknesses and tells you exactly what you need to hear. Nynke always provides a safe and nurturing environment in which to learn and share our work. She recognizes that writing is an intimate process, and that sharing that process and its results can be daunting at first. But the rewards of expressing yourself freely, without fear of censorship or criticism, are great, and in doing so, you leave each of Nynke’s classes with new comrades and a more profound understanding of yourself. She brings out the writer within each of us. She compels us to delve into our souls, unafraid, and we unfailingly come back stronger than we knew we could be. —Nina Benjamin, writer, editor
“My first writing classes with Nynke inspired me to make the smartest decision of my undergraduate career (and the one that got me into a top-ten MFA program): to take every class she offered, even if I had already taken it and would subsequently receive no academic credit for my work. The reason I did this was that Nynke’s classes offered me something immeasurably more valuable than academic credit; they offered me the opportunity to bloom creatively from the deepest level of my being.”
“You are the kind of teacher I wish I’d had as a child, the kind of teacher I love having now, the kind of teacher I tried to be when I myself was teaching.”
“I’ve always wanted to tell you that It is with great fondness that I remember the creative writing class I took with you at MUM even still some 25 years later. The main assignment was to go back into some memory of childhood and bring that up and weave it into a story. That assignment has stuck with me all through the years as a profound way to journey within and honor ourselves and our youthful innocence. To this day I still incorporate those same key elements into my writing as I can’t help but weave selective memories of a distant past into the relevancy of how I experience the world today. I can only imagine all the lives you’ve touched throughout the years with your lovely way of being, teaching and nurturing the developing writer within your students.”
“Your classes were some of my favorites during my undergraduate studies, you cultivated a sacred space for creativity to pour.”
“Nynke, you have helped so many people open up and feel comfortable to share their voice. Raw, scratchy stutters sandwich long silences, tears, and then there is the truth, the truth of one’s own experience. You carry so much of the earth and the sky, and I am blessed to meet you in between. Cheers to women from far away lands that meet and share their hearts in the sacred place that lies between the heres and theres!”
“I have been writing (finishing what you allowed me to start) my book. You were the first to see and allow. Thank you for allowing me to be vulnerable and not saying ‘Just get over it.’ Or ‘you’re such a powerful woman, stop the nonsense.’ Or ‘you have everything, why should you have any problems?’ Or ‘it happens to everyone, who do you think you are?’ Or...I could go on and on and on at tell you all of the things people have said to me over the years. Except you. Thank you.”
“A semester into my graduate teaching program, I continue to think of you as one of the top teachers I’ve ever had. I don’t think I could pick a top one, but I’d say there’s maybe a top triad, of which you are one. This is despite encountering more and more great teachers.
What you do, you do way better than anyone else. and what you do is really important. It’s not a side thing. I think it’s one of the main things people should learn in school. I have a hard time defining exactly what it is. It’s writing, but it’s also being comfortable writing, and it also kind of transfers to life in general, being comfortable being creative. And part of it is something much deeper and broader, just being... genuine... and having a safe place to be who you are... Something like that. But it’s also very specific. Other people who’ve been in your classes know what it is. I could describe it vaguely like this and they’d know, I think. Probably just by saying ‘that magic that Nynke creates in her classes.’ And they’d go, ‘yeah. I know exactly what you mean. It’s awesome.’”
“The gifts this Memoir class has produced - the list is inexhaustibly long. Thank you again for guiding us into our inner selves. I’m walking through the world with a greater level of sensitivity to both others and myself.”
“The way you use memories from childhood and the complexity of emotions that comes with being a child—innocence, hurt, wonder, curiosity, friendships—all of it, and then shifting into seeing it from an adult perspective. How you write about trauma and how it blends with the natural world. Maybe I haven’t read that many authors, but your way of doing those things speaks to me with the same level of profundity as any other writer/poet whom I have cherish deeply. I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true!”
“Thank you for putting forth classes in which I felt comfortable enough to open up as much as I did. It was so therapeutic.”
“I will be doing The Artist’s Way this month. Morning pages were a huge stress release for me during your class this time last year. It was the best class I’ve ever been in. Thank you so much for all you do in inspiring, rejuvenating, and nurturing all of your students.”
“My first self directed book attempt. 3rd grade. Sadly the poem by this title is missing. My best friend was a little fox like border collie who was expert at catching both gophers and moles but for reasons unknown to us ate the gophers and left the moles. It’s a testament to Nynke Passi that I got from this to an MFA.”
SOUL BONE LITERARY FESTIVAL TESTIMONIALS
and Professional Testimonials from Peers
“You are such a warm, generous, inspiring person—you create such a wonderful environment, somehow even on the Zoom platform. Thank you for allowing me to spend time in your community of writers. It felt nourishing and uplifting. I could feel all the warmth and love as I read. What a wonderful community! It was a great honor to share my story with you, to feel it was safe to speak deep truth. I would be thrilled to visit your community again. Wopida, thank you, for granting such a warm space to land with our difficult stories.”
“Nynke, what a joy last night was! I was so proud to be part of such an amazing panel!”
“Everything you did for Soul Bone blew me away. Not only did you juggle all those events, but you were always so on top of the questions and understanding the work. And if you weren’t actually on top of everything, as I love to tell my students, way to fake it!”
“I feel treated so well at Soul Bone as an author.”
“I have to tell you that that was the best festival lineup I’ve ever seen. I didn’t even attend the workshops, but I’m sure they were mind-blowing. Your introductions and your closings were so thoughtful and attentive, they were the perfect thread, leading me from reader to reader.”
“I wish I’d had the opportunity when I was a student to study with you! I feel you transform lives.”
“Nynke, you are the most gracious and graceful moderator I’ve ever seen, and such good questions tonight! I am basking in the glow of our reading. Thank you so much for being open to including and celebrating this important book, Dear Human at the Edge of Time, and for how you have created this festival and nurtured it to bloom the way it has. And for letting me come back and be a part of it again. I so appreciate your mind and your heart. And your writing!”
“My friend Alice Paige attended the memorial reading of Kamilah Aisha Moon, and she asked me to tell you that you have cultivated and created a beautiful space that she hasn’t seen elsewhere in academia and that this event was magical and empathetic in a way that caught her by her surprise. She was really moved by how diverse the panel and audience were and by how respectful everyone was. She was so in love, she’s coming back to listen tomorrow night. It was so beautiful, Nynke.”
It was such a feast of poetry & it’s a blessing to know you & to be part of the Soul Bone community. The Soul Bone Festival still resonates with me all these weeks later. Every year I think it’s not possible to top that & yet you do time after time. Out of all the classes I’ve attended none have come anywhere close to the excellence & spirit of Soul Bone, with you steering the Mother Ship. I feel such blessings & gratitude to be part of it & always given such a beautiful welcome from you. I’ve been looking forward to the next Soul Bone, as soon as this one finished! It must be challenging to keep everything fresh & unique & yet you achieve that too, time after time. Such an excellence of speakers & facilitators each & everyone. I also love to see how your students’ talent grows & flourishes in such a nourishing environment.
You are a Wonder Woman & I’m so happy & grateful our paths intersected when they did. Thank you for everything & for your grace & the essence of you, which also makes it so special & all those souls of the light that are part of the cohort, which flock to you, Soul Bone & the MFA. If I’d found out about your degree, when I was going to study, I would have signed up in a heartbeat. I feel you’re all part of my Clan. Wishing you, Soul Bone & everyone all magical blessings in life.
— Mandy Beattie
“I want to tell you how much I appreciate being part of the MFA, how astoundingly hard-working and dedicated you are (in the face of many obstacles), and how I Iove everything about your poetic mind and spirit. You are a gem in the world.”
“You have created something beautiful and amazing in this MFA program. It has heart and mind. and it is a gift for the students you work with. They receive your gift, still have it, and their experience in the MFA has changed their lives.”
Detail, “Snode” or Ode to Snow by Samantha Kelly