mfa programs
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The CIA and Creative Writing
Did the Iowa Writers’ Workshop take money from a CIA front? Has it left a profound impact on literature as we know it? The folks over at The Chronicle of Higher Education seem to. “The Iowa Workshop, then, attained national…
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Creative Writing, Creative Careers
The two central myths are one, that literary citizenship is all about self-promotion, and two, that it’s connected deeply to the “marketplace.” In an interview for Ploughshares, Tasha Golden talks to “writing geek” Stephanie Vanderslice about teaching the business side of…
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Master of Feeling Ambivalent
There are a lot of people who have very strong feelings about MFA programs, but Blake Butler’s Vice piece “What I Remember from Getting an MFA in Creative Writing,” just sort of lays out the details and holds back on the…
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Making Sense of the MFA Debate
We’re all familiar with the great MFA debate: Can an MFA program teach you how to write? Is it just a Ponzi scheme? Why should you enroll in one, or not? Jia Tolentino, a University of Michigan MFA student, zooms…
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Questionable Ranking Systems for MFA Programs
Poets & Writers recently ranked the country’s MFA programs, and as rankings often do, it is being received with some hostility. Their hierarchy of MFA programs is based on the word of mouth of MFA applicants, rather than the US…
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What’s It Like at Your MFA Program?
John Gallaher is looking for responses in what he’s calling his “Market Research Friday.” Yes, it’s Saturday, but I suspect he’s leaving comments open for a while yet. Here’s what he’s mainly asking for: “1. Is there an reigning, asserted…
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MFAs, for Better or for Worse
Creative programs are increasingly common and so are their criticisms. The difficulty with pinpointing creativity to an academic institution or justifying a trend where tuition money and literary prowess are both major contributing factors to success make MFA programs a…
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The MFA Rankings Wars
Last week in my Poetic Lives Online column, I wrote a little about the immediate reaction to the Poets & Writers MFA program rankings. Well, it’s blown up a bit more in the last week, with the Association of Writing…
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Poetic Lives Online: Links by Brian Spears
Can you tell the difference between E. E. Cummings and a YouTube commenter? (It’s really not as hard as it looks.) Caroline Guinzio has been guest blogging at Unstressed this week, and I enjoyed this piece very much in light…
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Don’t Be a Coward: The Rumpus Interview with Philipp Meyer
“All of us, all the time, are searching for some order in the world/universe/our lives. We’re searching for guiding principles and explanations. Especially in times of stress, we tend to find sayings, aphorisms, mantras to help guide us.”
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Poetic Lives Online: Links by Brian Spears
Barbara Jane Reyes has a good response to the New Yorker article on MFA programs I posted earlier. At Harriet, Don Share takes on poetry reviews, even though he’s tired of the whole story. I took his post as an…
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Louis Menand on Creative-Writing Programs
Louis Menand has really been on a roll this year. First the must-read article about how the Village Voice changed journalism, then the article on Donald Barthelme, and now this week, an essay about The Program Era by Mark McGurl,…