he more MFA programs spring up, the more people seem to look down on them—as if some kind of MFA-inflation and devaluation were taking place. Novelist Lev Raphael, however, recently wrote about why he found his MFA program valuable:
I was at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst MFA program for two and a half [...]
Literary magazines: is there a source of greater guilt for writers? We submit to them. We cross our fingers, make a small-animal sacrifice, and hope they’ll publish our work. But do we really read them?
The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) has launched a new program to encourage creative [...]
Andrew Porter is the author of The Theory of Light and Matter, which won the 2007 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and was recently republished by Vintage. Each one of these critically acclaimed stories is beautifully paced and plotted–a veritable nesting box–and full of lovely sentences you’ll want to read aloud just for the pleasure of it.
In this interview, Porter discusses how crafting stories is like editing film; what particular advantages peripheral narrators can afford; and why it’s “completely surreal” to hear actors read from your work.
hould you get an MFA? On Big Think, novelist Lionel Shriver discusses the downsides of attending an MFA program:
[It] does have a kind of indulgent, middle-class gestalt. The grim truth is that most people who get MFAs will not go on to be professional writers and therefore when I’ve been on the other [...]
“When I was asked whether I’d be interested in taking part in a panel on turning the MFA thesis into a first book, I said yes right away, but I wasn’t sure what I could contribute. In fact, I felt like a bit of a fraud because my journey from the thesis to the published book was so long and roundabout. But I’ve convinced myself that this is part of what makes my story worth telling here, because long and roundabout might be just as common as quick and straightforward, and my particular kind of roundabout experience makes me feel emboldened to give certain bits of advice.”
Are you currently weighing the benefits of an MFA? If you heard Michael Chabon’s take on MFA programs in his amazing AWP keynote, you’re probably hitchhiking to UC Irvine, a typewriter strapped to your heart — but even so, you might be wrestling with important questions like these:
Will an advanced degree help you with [...]
McGurl, a professor of English at UCLA, is a literary scholar who actually likes writers. More amazingly, he likes MFA programs. In The Program Era, published by Harvard University Press, McGurl argues that the rise of the MFA program in the twentieth century made a uniquely significant contribution to the excellence of postwar American literature.
The numbers are in…and the top 50 creative writing MFA programs are ranked in the new issue of Poets & Writers. Here’s an excerpt from the accompanying article by Seth Abramson, who compiled the list based on extensive research. (Note: The full article is available only in the print edition.) Abramson admits the difficulties of [...]
Erika Dreifus at the Practicing Writer posted about this recently, and it was too interesting not to discuss here.
Admission to college is getting tougher ever year, and as the New York Times reported, highschoolers hoping for an edge can now seek help from independent college counselors. But what about applicants to MFA programs? [...]
