Toward a Better Creative Writing Degree
With so many voices in the discussion about what is wrong with MFAs in creative writing, it’s worth looking back at one piece of criticism that asks a vital question, namely: how can the MFA be improved?
Elif Batuman’s September 2010 piece “Get a Real Degree,” in the London Review of Books, Batuman notes that the Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing “stands for everything that’s wonderful about America: the belief that every individual life can be independent from historical givens, that all forms and conditions can be reinvented from scratch.” Batuman’s implied critique is that the MFA is, at best, ahistorical. Using a model first established in the Iowa Writers Workshop during the mid-1930s, the MFA is also trapped in time.
Most MFA programs have not given much thought to how the MFA might be reinvented to better serve literature and writers. Such an assessment is long overdue.
MORE
Elif Batuman’s September 2010 piece “Get a Real Degree,” in the London Review of Books, Batuman notes that the Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing “stands for everything that’s wonderful about America: the belief that every individual life can be independent from historical givens, that all forms and conditions can be reinvented from scratch.” Batuman’s implied critique is that the MFA is, at best, ahistorical. Using a model first established in the Iowa Writers Workshop during the mid-1930s, the MFA is also trapped in time.
Most MFA programs have not given much thought to how the MFA might be reinvented to better serve literature and writers. Such an assessment is long overdue.
MORE
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