The MFA Octopus: Four Questions About Creative Writing

lareviewofbooks: Mark McGurl Frank Conroy  © Bruce Davidson 1. Why do people hate creative writing programs so much? Well they don’t really, not everyone, or there wouldn’t be so many of them—hundreds. From modest beginnings in Iowa in the 1930’s, MFA programs have spread out across the land, coast to coast, sinking roots in the soil like an improbably invasive species of corn. Now, leaping the oceans, stalks have begun to sprout in countries all around the world, feeding the insatiable desire to be that mythical thing, a writer. Somebody must think they’re worth founding, funding, attending, teaching at. But partly in reaction to their very numerousness, which runs afoul of traditional ideas about the necessary exclusivity of literary...

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