New York Times
By CECILIA CAPUZZI SIMONAPRIL 9, 2015
It was peak reading season, and Lan Samantha Chang,
director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, was gamely juggling a call from a
reporter, interruptions from her 7-year-old as well as a 10 percent surge in
applications to the University of Iowa’s Master of Fine Arts program in
creative writing. Ms. Chang was in the thick of decisions about who would fill
50 spots evenly divided between the fall fiction and poetry workshops.
“I’m deluged,” she said, surprised by the number of
applications she was sorting through — 1,380 — especially in a year with a
stronger economy, a condition that typically causes graduate school
applications, never mind those to fine arts programs, to drop. “I have a tub of
manuscripts,” she said. “It’s weird!”
Perhaps, she speculates, the surge is a result of the
juggernaut HBO series called “Girls,” the one where the neurotic aspiring
novelist Hannah Horvath, played by Lena Dunham, takes off to the Iowa
cornfields and shines a bright light on the venerated program.
More likely, the swell in applications is not so weird.
“Explosive” is the word routinely used to describe the
growth of M.F.A. programs in creative writing. Iowa was the first, established
in 1936. By 1994, there were 64. By last year, that number had more than
tripled, to 229 (and another 152 M.A. programs in creative writing), according
to the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. Between 3,000 and 4,000
students a year graduate with the degree; this year, about 20,000 applications
were sent out.
A graduate writing degree, unsurprisingly, turns out a lot
of opinionated writing. Sample manifestoes from blogs and chat rooms: “Why you
should hate the creative writing establishment (…as if you needed any more
reasons)” and “14 Reasons (Not) to Get an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (and Two
Reasons It Might Actually Be Worth It).” In scholarly circles, the boom and its
implications have been a subject of heated debate since at least 2009, with the
publication of Mark McGurl’s “The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of
Creative Writing.” In it, Dr. McGurl, a Stanford English professor, describes
the M.F.A. as the single biggest influence on American literature since World
War II, noting that most serious writers since then have come out of
graduate-school incubators.
Chad Harbach followed with a 2010 essay, “MFA vs. NYC,”
in the journal n+1. Last year, he edited a book of essays, with the same title,
on the credential’s influence. Mr. Harbach describes two centers of American
fiction: New York City, the traditional hub, and M.F.A., the encroaching
university writing program, or “the M.F.A. beast,” as he calls it. Even writers
without the degree, writes Mr. Harbach, who earned his from the University of
Virginia, have “imbibed the general idea and aesthetic. We are all M.F.A.s
now.”
That’s not necessarily a negative notion, according to
Dr. McGurl and Mr. Harbach (who received a $650,000 advance for his first
novel, “The Art of Fielding”). But it seems to trouble many others, especially
aspiring novelists and poets. With so many highly tutored creative writers already
out there, is success possible without the instruction and literary connections
that are cultivated in M.F.A. programs and that a volatile publishing industry
— now evolved around program graduates and sensibilities — has come to look for
and expect?
To M.F.A. or not to M.F.A.?
“It is a deadly question,” says the literary critic Anis
Shivani, author of the 2011 book “Against the Workshop: Provocations, Polemics,
Controversies.” “Everyone who wants to be a writer in this country has to
confront it, even if you rebel against the M.F.A.,” he says. “If you do the
degree, opportunities open up.” Without it, he warns, you may be able to
publish in small presses but are more likely to be “condemned to obscurity,”
particularly if you write literary fiction and poetry. And your writing will
change, he says, and not necessarily for the better.
Detractors like Mr. Shivani say the degree is responsible
for so-called program fiction — homogenized, over-worskshopped writing void of
literary tradition and overly influenced by the mostly upper- and middle-class
values and experiences of its students. Others describe an inherently unfair
system that all but requires aspiring writers to attend schools many cannot
afford or otherwise access. They see a self-generating track to the literary
establishment, on which the most fortunate jump to fellowships, writing
colonies, agents, publishing deals and professorships, where they are
indoctrinated into the status quo.
Of course, one doesn’t need an M.F.A. to write. “Just ask
Samuel Delany, George R.R. Martin, J.K. Rowling, Colson Whitehead, Hilton Als
and Emily St. John Mandel, who is not only M.F.A.-less, she’s B.A.-less,” says
Junot Díaz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and M.F.A.-holder who has been a
vocal critic of the degree.
With so much seemingly working against it, it is
astounding the degree has gained traction at all. But there is another
argument, and another list — prominent literary writers and poets with M.F.A.s
and a diverse pool of work: Jhumpa Lahiri (Boston University), Phil Klay and
Gary Shteyngart (Hunter College), Michael Chabon (University of California,
Irvine), Ayana Mathis (Iowa), Jay McInerney (Syracuse University), Saeed Jones
(Rutgers) Manuel Muñoz (Cornell), Ocean Vuong (New York University), David Foster
Wallace (University of Arizona). The list could go on. And on.
In an essay in the book “MFA vs. NYC,” George Saunders, a
professor in Syracuse’s program, writes that there are so many negative myths
about the M.F.A. that they have become clichés. “Most critiques I read of
creative writing programs or writing in the academy are kicking entities that
don’t actually (in my experience) exist.”
Karen Russell, whose book “Swamplandia!” was a finalist
for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize when she was 29, is similarly inured to the
critics. What did Columbia’s M.F.A. program do for her? “Basically everything,”
she says. “I’m not even sure what I’d be writing now if I hadn’t gone.”
Success stories like Ms. Russell’s or Mr. Harbach’s fuel
the fantasy. “It’s no surprise that the promise of the M.F.A. — to make you, if
you’re lucky, a famous, well-paid author — strikes so many people with even the
smallest literary dream as utterly irresistible,” Mr. Díaz says.
Other realities conspire to make the M.F.A. one of the
fastest growing graduate degrees. Among them: the pervasiveness of digital
media and celebrity culture, where anyone with a blog feels like a best-selling
novelist-in-waiting; the rise of memoirs, a natural extension of the online
selfie writing culture; the popularity of magical realism and noir fiction
novels, which have turned many 20-somethings on to literature; and changes in
generational attitudes, aspirations and culture.
“The younger generation is making career choices
determined by quality of life,” says Jeannine Blackwell, dean-in-residence at
the Council of Graduate Schools and a professor at the University of Kentucky.
That, she says, goes hand in hand with a focus on reinvigorating urban
communities through theater, art installations, food culture and centers for
literature and writing.
Jean McGarry, a chairwoman of the Writing Seminars at
Johns Hopkins, says that the teaching of creative writing has taken on even
more significance because the way we learn has changed. Evolution in the
Hopkins program reflects that. The program started as a one-year Master of Arts
and attracted students older than the average 26-year-old in today’s
full-residency programs. They were mainly writers with material in need of
guidance and derailed by career or family, says Ms. McGarry, who earned an M.A.
at the school under John Barth in 1983. Mr. Barth, a National Book Award winner
in 1973, called his students “advanced apprentices.”
M.F.A. students today, Ms. McGarry says, are less
developed writers; faculty “are doing more of the work of writing” for them.
She sees that as a reflection of undergraduate education that emphasizes
specialization and pre-professionalism, with little room for the arts, reading
or writing. Students have come to expect education to be prescriptive, she
says. In 2006, Hopkins changed the program to an M.F.A., adding a year because
students needed more time to develop.
“Our understanding of what it takes to be an artist is
geared to an era’s myths,” Ms. McGarry says. What the rise of the M.F.A. tells
us about our era’s myths, she says, is that “the arts are more inculcated than
they were before. It’s no longer the genius coming out of the ground fully
fledged.”
Every program has its own character. Hopkins is known to
be cerebral; Brown, experimental; Boston University, at one year, intense;
University of Arkansas, at four years, academic. The best provide a temporary
respite from a fast-paced culture unsympathetic to the pursuit of art for art’s
sake, and an opportunity to find a community of like-minded people who validate
your work and motivations. They allow students to test their stamina (and
talent) for what Timothy Donnelly, chairman of the Writing Program at Columbia,
calls a “radical lifestyle choice.”
The best also hone technique and train students to read
analytically. Ideally, as Mr. Donnelly puts it, students develop an
appreciation for the “sensuous aspect of language” and the ability to translate
their experience of life onto the page. “I look at this very idealistically,”
he says. “And then I think, ‘Well, let’s roll up our sleeves.’ ”
Creative writing programs are designed as studio or
academic models. Often, programs combine aspects of both. They typically offer
fiction and poetry tracks, though “creative nonfiction” is gaining ground, as
are screenwriting and playwriting. Some distinguish themselves by focusing on
thematic writing. Antioch University, Los Angeles, has a social justice
emphasis; Chatham University in Pittsburgh emphasizes environmental writing;
Pratt Institute in New York has social justice and environmental tracks.
About a fifth of M.F.A. programs are low-residency — they
meet for about two weeks on campus or some other on-ground spot (New York
University, for example, gathers low-residency students in Paris); the rest of
the semester is conducted online.
Studio programs mimic conservatories and focus
exclusively on the writing craft. Academic programs require other coursework,
sometimes literature, foreign language or translation courses.
At the core of every program is the writing workshop, the
so-called Iowa model because it originated there. In its strictest form, it
works like this: Classmates evaluate and write detailed comments about
students’ work, then sit around a table and “workshop” the piece. The writer
sits silently while classmates comment first on what is working, then go back
around to comment on what is not. The instructor weighs in. Only then can the
author respond.
In the workshop, writing is deconstructed and put back
together. Relationships are formed. A skilled instructor can point out flaws
and suggest techniques it might otherwise take years to figure out. “You
develop a keener sense of your readers,” Ms. Russell says. “When 14 people tell
you something isn’t working, you listen.”
The workshop is so central to the experience that
programs often screen out applicants who could be problematic. “We read the
personal statement closely,” says Ellen Tremper, chairwoman of Brooklyn
College’s English department. “We try to see if a person seems rational and, frankly,
unneurotic, because if you get someone with a screw loose, it can be disruptive
to the group.”
Achieving workshop harmony can be a challenge. John
McNally, an Iowa graduate who based a satirical novel, “After the Workshop,” on
a washed-up graduate of the Iowa program, has described his own experience
there as affected by “bitter jealousies, competition” and writing to please
instructors and classmates.
Writing can get “workshopped to death,” Mr. Shivani says.
He also points out that criticism is coming primarily from peers who “are
people who don’t know anything about writing, which is why they are in the
program.”
The workshop can take getting used to. David Win-grave, a
New York University student, says that at first the camaraderie, the attention on
his work and the mounds of feedback were “thrilling.” But it was easy to lose
focus and feel frustrated, and he learned to rely on only a few trusted
readers.
Most famously, Junot Díaz wrote in a New Yorker essay
last year about racial and ethnic insensitivity during his time in Cornell’s
program in 1992. “Too white,” he wrote, “as in my workshop reproduced exactly
the dominant culture’s blind spots and assumptions around race and racism (and
sexism and heteronormativity, etc.).”
Cornell’s current director, J. Robert Lennon, says that
while the program lacked a diverse faculty 23 years ago, half of today’s
tenure-track faculty members are “writers of color” and split evenly between
men and women. And, Mr. Lennon notes, Mr. Díaz’s student cohort was “100 percent
writers of color,” which Mr. Díaz did not report.
“I don’t doubt that Junot had a hard time here; some
students do,” Mr. Lennon says. “The workshop can be a contentious and at times
hurtful environment, and I’d imagine that it can be particularly vexing for
students who experience discrimination every day outside of class.”
One equalizer has been the availability of more financial
aid. Some elite, smaller programs waive tuition and provide a stipend (Hopkins
pays $30,000 a year, Cornell $26,000) for every student, typically requiring
work in a related position, such as being a teaching assistant. Iowa, Syracuse
University, Vanderbilt University, the University of Wisconsin and the
University of Michigan also have fully funded programs.
With tuition high for a degree not known for its
marketplace potential — on average $27,600 for a two-year program at a public
university, $72,600 at a private — funding is often the deciding factor in
program choice.
Financial aid at most M.F.A. programs is likely to be
partial, if available at all. Low-residency programs typically offer no grants
or T.A. slots.
Brooklyn College may seem a bargain at $14,580 in tuition
for its two-year program ($20,700, out of state) but the program loses talent
to schools that provide full tuition remission and stipends, Ms. Tremper says.
The class entering Boston University’s one-year creative
writing program this fall will be the first in which all students receive a
full tuition waiver and a $12,800 stipend. Before that, says Leslie Epstein,
who was the director for 36 years before stepping down last year, it too lost
students to schools with better aid packages, prompting it to up its game.
But Mr. Epstein and some others in the M.F.A. community
get impatient with the discussion of whether it’s worth taking on debt for an
M.F.A. Debt is important to consider, he says, but so is passion. “It’s art!
It’s not so bad to make a sacrifice.”
Still, there is reality. Few will write the great
American novel or, let’s face it, even publish work. In fact, the surge in
M.F.A.s has intensified the competition.
The monthly magazine Poetry receives 100,000 submissions
a year and publishes 300 poems. “The number of writers has increased, but the
number of readers has not,” says Joseph Harrison, senior American editor for
Waywiser Press. Mr. Harrison is coordinator of Waywiser’s Anthony Hecht Poetry
Prize. This year, the competition drew 33 percent more submissions.
“We can only publish so much,” Mr. Harrison says. “I have
to sound a cautionary note: M.F.A. programs make money off of people’s dreams.
Everyone in the system is implicated. Writers, too. It’s a bit of a house of
cards. One hopes people at least understand the odds and how difficult it can
be.”
Including the odds of teaching at college, which many
hope to do with the terminal degree. Last year, there were just 112
tenure-track creative writing positions.
Rahul Kanakia, who graduated from Hopkins’s M.F. A.
program last May, says that once out of the cocoon, degree holders face a tough
adjustment to the unstructured writing life, and the grind of sending work to
multiple journals and receiving multiple rejections, if they hear back at all.
“It’s like, is anybody out there even reading this stuff?” he says. “Often it
doesn’t feel very productive.” (Mr. Kanakia is more fortunate than most, with
pending publication of a young adult novel begun at Hopkins.)
Chris Brecheen, who blogs on the M.F.A. and is
contemplating pursuing the degree, says: “What writers don’t understand is that
there is little pragmatic about the M.F.A.” Of a dozen writer friends who went
on to earn M.F.A.s, most, he says, are now doing “whatever they might have done
before getting the degree,” including restaurant management, real estate and
writing Web content. One person “leveraged” the M.F.A. to work as an organizer
of literary open-mike events.
Perhaps the definition of post-M.F.A. success needs to
include work like that of Dr. Ronald H. Lands, a professor at the University of
Tennessee Graduate School of Medicine in Knoxville. He earned an M.F.A. from
Queens University of Charlotte, in North Carolina, at 53; publishes stories and
poems about patient experiences in JAMA and other journals; and created a
course in narrative medicine for medical students. Or Jane Monteagle, an Antioch
graduate, who pioneered creative writing programs in Los Angeles correctional
facilities.
Many graduates, Ms. Tremper says, are likely to return to
“normal jobs.” If highly motivated, they will try to squeeze in writing in
hopes of the big break, and they will struggle. Prospective M.F.A. candidates,
she says, need to ask: “Am I prepared for that kind of life?”
David Wingrave is willing to roll the dice to find out.
He is finishing his first novel, will graduate from N.Y.U. in May and will then
look for an agent.
“Before,” he says, “I had no contacts in the literary
world, no sense of the process a book must go through, no ability to discuss
the craft of literature, and on a day-to-day basis, no time to dedicate myself
to it. At N.Y.U., I got those things.”
At the same time, he harbors no illusions about the road
ahead. “I definitely need employment very soon,” he says. “Do you know of
anything?”
Cecilia Capuzzi Simon teaches writing at American
University’s School of Communication.
