Second-Year Spotlight: Anna Morcerf
Anna Morcerf is a second-year student who primarily writes prose.
We interviewed her to learn more about her thesis project, a novel called The Breakers.
Café MFA: Introduce yourself. Who are you and what do you like to write?
Anna Morcerf: I’m Anna Morcerf. I am a full-time marketing professional, the Managing Editor for FOLIO Literary Journal, and an adjunct writing professor who loves New York, dogs, and rainy days. I write predominantly literary fiction, but I also love a prose poem or a Proem for anyone who is a fan of Mona Awad’s work!
Café MFA: What is your thesis about?
Anna Morcerf: My thesis is a literary fiction novel called The Breakers. The Breakers is a coming-of-age novel about the fragile lines between friendship, love, and betrayal, set against the class divides and coastal belonging in a town that survives off “summer people’s” money and locals’ labor. It wrestles with performance and authenticity while leaning into the ephemeral—those fleeting moments that vanish even as one girl longs for permanence. I try to weave a strong sense of setting in all my work and am especially doing that in this novel through flashback and nostalgia.
Café MFA: Who is on your advisory board for the project? Why did you select them?
Anna Morcerf: My advisory board consists of Kyle Dargan and Rachel Louise Snyder. I chose Kyle because he was my thesis advisor when I was an undergrad in the lit program at AU ten years ago. His primary genres are short form and poetry. It was important to me to have a poet on my thesis committee because I favor sentence-level lyricism in all genres. I chose Rachel because, for my first two years in the MFA program, I was set on writing a non-fiction piece that would serve as a memoir. Rachel is a skilled journalist and non-fiction writer, and I took several classes with her and wrestled with my memoir formatting with her. I ultimately decided it wasn’t time for my memoir to come to light and pivoted to The Breakers, but The Breakers carries similar themes from my memoir, and I knew Rachel would understand the context I was bringing to my fiction piece.
Café MFA: How did the idea for your thesis come about?
Anna Morcerf: In a Young Adult Fiction course, we had to work on the first chapter of a novel. I think there could be more queer lit for young adults, and I also love the beach and growing up on Long Island, so I tied all of those components together and ended up having a lot of fun.
Café MFA: What has been your biggest challenge with your thesis thus far?
Anna Morcerf: Honestly, I can’t say I’ve come across many challenges. Everything kind of clicked into place, and I felt inspired and excited to write the piece. I spent the entire summer crafting the novel. Maybe one challenge was that I didn’t know where the novel would end up when I first started writing, so I had to keep writing to find out. This encouraged me to keep the momentum in writing so I could write into the ending since I didn’t start with one in mind.
Café MFA: What has been your biggest success thus far?
Anna Morcerf: I’m really proud of my setting descriptions and the nostalgia that comes through. I’m proud of The Breakers at the sentence level…and there are a lot of sentences in a novel : )
Café MFA: What has this project taught you?
Anna Morcerf: I had been so focused on non-fiction for the two years prior that I didn’t think I would be able to think of an original fiction idea. Turns out it’s like riding a bike.
Café MFA: What advice would you give first-year students who are planning their thesis work?
Anna Morcerf: Don’t force it. I thought I was so set on my memoir that I really closed myself off to other ideas until I was assigned a first chapter in my YA class. The memoir felt forced in the years I was working through the content. I felt too close to the life events that shaped the piece. I felt like I had spent so much time on the memoir that I couldn’t pivot in my third and final year in the MFA program. But the words on the page will come if you’re excited and inspired. I could immediately feel the weight come off my shoulders when I made the choice to shift. I had a full summer of writing ahead of me, but it was about something that made me feel refreshed.
Below is an excerpt from Anna’s work, The Breakers!
“Elle’s side of town was already long awake. She rounded the corner past the Tipperary Inn, where most of the college-aged restaurant workers from Ireland stayed for the season. From the bay, she pedaled toward the ocean, toward the neighborhoods where the summer people lived. Over there, the streets were still drowsy, sleeping off their Veuve rosé from late nights at Navy Beach and the Surf Lodge.
Soon, the moment Elle had been turning over in her mind for months would dissolve from daydream into memory. She pictured it—June holding the twenty-foot glass front door open, propping it with the curve of her pedicured foot. Should she launch straight into the speech she’d been rehearsing in her head for weeks? Or close the distance with a hug, before words tangle in the air between them?
Elle kept pedaling, her tires whispering over the sand-dusted pavement. She passed the bait shop, the pancake hut, and White’s Drugstore. The only real sign of life was the line spilling out the bake shop door—early birds staking their claim on jelly croissants before they were gone.
She coasted past the tiny pink shack where, at the end of last summer—after June had left for college—Elle bought her first deck of Tarot cards, along with a rose quartz and moonstone she’d picked with deliberate care. Salt-washed cedar houses gave way to breeze-twisted pines. The homes grew larger, more performative, teetering between city-transplant polish and pretend humility, all trying to blend into Montauk’s weathered style. Here, rich families with a relatability complex bought their summer places—not quite the Hamptons, but close enough to tell their friends they “preferred it this way.”
Rounding the turn off Main Street onto Ditch Plains Road, Elle caught sight of a glass dome bobbing over the horizon. June’s family summer house— an architectural statement of money and taste. June’s parents owned an architecture firm—a full family affair now that June had just finished her first year in Pratt’s architecture and design program. The home was an attempt at visible invisibility rising from the dunes in a tessellation of hexagonal windows. They caught the sky, the surf, the bleached curve of the beach, reflecting it all until the house seemed to dissolve into the shoreline. Weathered wooden accents framed the glass, the same gray as driftwood stranded along the clay cliffs.
It was overcast, the salty mist still clinging low over the waves. Seagulls tilted in the wind, necks stretched toward the breakpoint as they hunted for clams. The surf’s roar deepened as Elle walked her bike up June’s pebbled driveway and leaned it against the curved retaining wall that resembled the organic curvature of crashing whitecaps.
Elle walked toward the front door. With each step, the house shifted—less a mirror of the shoreline, more a translucent shell. The rising sun cast glitter ripples in the ocean beyond the back door. She paused, letting the scene settle over her. From her vantage point, the house seemed utterly still.
Elle’s jaw tightened as she drew a breath that caught in her throat. Blood pulsed hot in her fingertips, a prickling edge of adrenaline. All she had to do was reach up and ring the bell—but she needed a moment.”
Thoughts from Café MFA:
Anna’s thesis shows us that sometimes, the thing we want to write is not the thing that we need to write at that moment - not the thing that speaks to us at that moment. There is an importance in letting the writing find you - in pursuing the writing that you are passionate about and fills you with energy. While Anna’s memoir is sure to be as stunning as all her writing is, The Breakers found her at an unexpected time to show her that sometimes you can’t just force writing into being. It is as emotional and spiritual of an act as it is intentional. We feel honored to get a first look at an exciting new novel that will likely find its way onto shelves in the next few years! Incredible work Anna!
