MFA
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The Rumpus Interview with Les Standiford
Prolific writer and Director of the FIU Creative Writing Program Les Standiford takes a look back at his career in books, including Water to the Angels and Bringing Adam Home, and tells us what’s next.
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Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
(Dan Weiss is out on tour with his band The Yellow Dress. He’ll be back on August 3rd.) Getting your MFA at 68. Utopias have nothing but trouble. Fetishizing food. Is Gawker good?
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The Rumpus Interview with Lori Rader-Day
Lori Rader-Day discusses her second novel, Little Pretty Things, the “five lost years” when she didn’t write at all, and her favorite deep-dish pizza.
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The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Patrick O’Neil
Patrick O’Neil talks about his debut memoir Gun Needle Spoon, being big in France, the drug/recovery genre, and writing through trauma.
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Another Order
In an essay reprinted over at Longreads, Alexander Chee looks back on finishing his MFA, moving back to New York, and the interiority of class that cater-waitering allowed him to peek into: In 1997, I began working as a waiter…
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Vivian Gornick Does Not Like Your MFA
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…
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The MFA Way
In large part, I get to live it now because of those creative writing programs—one MA and one MFA—and also, at least equally, because of the time between them, which I spent out in the real world. Here is some…
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To MFA or not to MFA? That Isn’t the Question.
Recently, it has become fashionable to debate the pros and cons of pursuing a MFA. However, for the Millions, Hannah Gersen suggests that this debate has steered the conversation away from a more difficult question: how do we support writers who…
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Super Hot Prof-on-Student Word Sex: Julia MacDonnell
Julia was one of those “students” whom you suspect, after maybe fifteen seconds, should actually be teaching the class you are currently (allegedly) teaching.
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The Rumpus Interview with Greg Baxter
Novelist Greg Baxter talks about living abroad as an American, writing his new book, Munich Airport, and why he doesn’t buy the defeatist clichés that people use to define our world and time.
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Why Writers Love to Hate the MFA
Haven’t gotten enough of the MFA debate? Here’s Cecilia Capuzzi Simon in the New York Times.
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Gambling on an MFA
There is a certain writerly allure to casino gambling that I find difficult to resist — or perhaps I should call it a not writing allure. Having a crowd chant my name as I shoot dice is not something I’ll…