Vivian Gornick Does Not Like Your MFA

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Jessica Gross interviewed Vivian Gornick for Longreads and they talked money, death, sex, MFAs, and other things that bore Gornick:

It’s meaningless to me. I found, as the years went on, I was very lucky not to have a bourgeois bone in my body. I don’t want anything, and that has really stood me in good stead. If you’re a writer and you’re living on the margin and you hunger for the so-called good things in life, for material stuff, you’re really in trouble. And I discovered I don’t. All I ever wanted was to just make enough to stay alive. So yeah, sex, money—and age and death, to my amazement, don’t hold my attention either.

Lyz's writing has been published in the New York Times Motherlode, Jezebel, Aeon, Pacific Standard, and others. Her book on midwestern churches is forthcoming from Indiana University Press. She has her MFA from Lesley and skulks about on Twitter @lyzl. Lyz is a member of The Rumpus Advisory Board and a full-time staff writer for the Columbia Journalism Review. More from this author →