Experıence
MFA
My
93 POETS & WRITERS^One of the tried-and-true pieces of advice
dispensed to the hundreds of writers applying
to MFA programs each year goes something
like this: “Talk to current or former students.”
While this remains a valuable tip—who better
to tell you what a certain program is like than
one of its recent graduates, after all—it assumes
everyone has equal access to those writers. This
isn’t a problem to be taken lightly. As one of
the graduates featured in the following pages
pointed out to me, “Given the creative writing
world’s bias toward whiteness—like the rest of
society—this practice can further inequality
among marginalized identities.”
Rather than repeat the suggestion in this,
our annual MFA Issue, I made contact with
writers who had recently graduated from MFA
programs and asked them some questions about
the application process, their selection criteria,
their time in the program, and their perspec-
tive now that they’ve received the degree.
To the writers who e-mailed in response to a
Twitter call for participants, I chose ten whose
thoughtful consideration, candid impressions,
and insightful answers to my questions may be
helpful to those who are looking to start the
whole process themselves this fall.
Seven of the ten writers graduated this
past spring; the other three graduated in- Five earned degrees in fiction, three in
poetry, and two in multiple genres. Although
none was awarded a degree in creative non-
fiction, several of the featured writers discuss
the support they received in their programs
while they worked in that genre. Indeed,
half of the programs represented here offer
the MFA in creative nonfiction. Addition-
ally, two are low-residency programs, and the
other eight are full-residency. Not one of the
featured programs is located in a city near a
coast (the closest, the University of North
Carolina in Raleigh, is 140 miles inland). In-
stead I chose to focus on programs located
in what could be considered the interior—in
Arizona, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, Nevada,
New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Vermont,
and Wisconsin. But it is worth pointing out
that one of the programs, the University of
Arizona in Tucson, was attractive to the ap-
plicant precisely because it is located near the
U.S.-Mexico border. In any case, these are not
the usual New York or California schools we
tend to hea r so muc h ab out. T he ex p er ience s of
those who went to NYU, Columbia, UC Irvine,
and even Iowa have been shared far and wide. I
was more interested in what it’s like to at tend a
program in a town of fewer than 10,000 people
(Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier)
or a low-residency program that emphasizes
“the importance of Native writers offering
voice to the Native experience” (Institute of
American Indian Arts in Santa Fe).
While the experiences of these writers are by
no means universal, certain themes do emerge
that offer a portrait of what is important to
today’s MFA students: funding, diverse faculty
and peer groups, professional development op-
portunities, and, of course, time to write. By
hearing directly from writers who recently went
through the process, from applying to matricu-
lating to graduating, it’s possible to learn about
not only the challenges and drawbacks—so that
applicants might avoid them—but also a few of
the intangible benefits of attending an MFA
program. As one of these writers said, “Nothing
could have prepared me to be loved like this.”Ten Recent
Graduates on
the Realities
of Applying to,
Choosing, and
Attending
a Writing
Program
BY KEVIN LARIMERspecial section MFA PROGRAMS