Student Profile: Micah Wyatt
Where Art and the Law Converge
By Meagan K. Ciesla
Second year law student Micah Wyatt hasn’t taken the straight and narrow path towards becoming a lawyer. The Sheridan native graduated from UW with an undergraduate degree in Philosophy, but says he’s always been pulled in the creative direction.
In high school, he was a student at the Young Writer’s Camp, a week-long intensive camp for teens interested in creative writing, located in Northern Wyoming. That experience stuck with him so wholly that after college, he pursued a Masters in Fine Arts degree in Fiction from Goddard College in Vermont.
Wyatt has since published a chapter in a book sponsored by the Wyoming Wilderness Association, a short story in the 2005 Owen Wister Review, and a poem in The High Plains Register and is now faculty at the same summer program that gave him his start as a writer.
In
addition to his writing pursuits, Wyatt also plays blues and jazz guitar in a
local duo, J&M Blue Routes Review, with American Studies graduate student Jascha
Herdt. The two play at local bars and are in the process of recording their
first cd…in the back classroom of the Law School late at night when everyone
else is home sleeping and the building is empty.
Why did Wyatt decide to pursue law when he's already a successful artist? First, he doesn't feel that the two fields are actually that divergent. "There is as much craft in an appellate brief as there is in a piece of fiction, and musical improvisation is nothing more than taking rules and expounding on them," he says. Second, Wyatt claims the law is a family affair. Wyatt's always been interested in family law and is planning on joining his father's practice in Sheridan after graduation. Finally, Wyatt notes that success at artistic pursuits doesn't necessarily mean food on your table and a roof over your head. Plus, he knows music and writing are two things he will always do, no matter where his law career may take him.
To learn more about the Young Writer’s Camp, please visit www.youngwriterscamp.org.
J&M Blue Routes Review will be playing at the Big West Arts Festival in Sheridan on August 3, 2008, at noon (the festival goes from August 2nd to August 3rd). For more information, email Micah Wyatt.