Graduate Profile: Raisa Tolchinsky, MRPL '24

How I've Changed  

As a writer and as a person, I am more willing to take risks, with more capacity to trust the messiness and the mistakes. 

Memorable Moment 

Being part of the pilgrimage to Great Salt Lake with Terry Tempest Williams and Stephanie Paulsell-- sitting around a campfire while watching bison stampede across the hills. 

Message of Thanks  

I'm so grateful to Stephanie Paulsell, Terry Tempest Williams, Kerry Maloney, Jorie Graham, and Annette Yoshiko-Reed, whose support of my work has been world-changing. And although my degree was only one year, the friends I've made here, I've made for life. 

What I Hope to Be Remembered By 

I hope to have left HDS with a little more poetry than when I began-- and I'm honored to be one of the many poets who have traveled through this space.