Coffee and Content Come Together in MFA Collaboration

For coffee lovers, there is just something warm and comforting about curling up on the couch with a cup in one hand and a book in the other. So a collaboration by two UT Master of Fine Arts in creative writing students — one who has content and one who has coffee — seems totally natural.

Cynthia Reeser and David Ebner, both MFA candidates anticipating graduating in 2015, merged efforts with Reeser’s Prick of the Spindle nonprofit publishing outlet and Ebner’s artisan coffee roasting company, Lectores Coffee. Reeser held a poetry contest last year, and the winner’s entry was printed on a bag of Ebner’s coffee early this spring. A portion of the proceeds from the sale help benefit Prick of the Spindle.

The idea is to use Ebner’s coffee for arts-based fundraising efforts.

“We have a need to monetize the journal further,” Reeser said. “We’re a nonprofit, but we like to pay our writers. A portion of the proceeds go to operational expenses for the journal and a portion go to Lectores Coffee.”

Since April 2013, Ebner has been roasting coffee under the label Lectores Coffee, a nod to Tampa's cigar rolling history and the namesake of the annual MFA reading series. Reeser was hanging out on UT’s campus during one of the MFA residencies when Ebner approached her with an idea for the collaboration. It was the first for his company, but seemed a natural fit.

“It was a mutually beneficial collaboration,” Reeser said.

The coffee is on sale online, and Ebner is currently pursuing another collaboration with an arts-based nonprofit.

“I want to bring, if only for a moment, a glimpse of abstraction into the routine of the average person,” Ebner said. “I also want to help organizations and artists propel similar efforts. Teaming up with a nonprofit literary magazine for a fundraiser will only further our mission, and if we can assist in the expansion of literature in the world, there are no losers.”

For both Ebner and Reeser, the MFA at UT has not only been rich with networking opportunities, but has been a boon to their own creative juices.

“It’s nice for me to be able to come in as a professional and to see a different approach to writing,” Reeser said. “I’m an editor, so this carves out time for me to work on my own writing as well. Not only just in terms of time and space to write, I pick up on techniques from peers.”

Ebner said it not only would be impossible for him to reach his goals but to realize them without the MFA program at UT.

“The faculty, other students and the course structure has helped me see past my present abilities and view the artistic possibilities of the future,” Ebner said. “I know where I want to go, and how far I can go.”

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