“I'm not Pollyanna - I know that my personality and my opinions and how I approach the teaching of writing maybe isn't exactly how it's done traditionally in the academy...wherever that academy is...but, you know, the academy is broken as it relates to many creative writing programs.” KnowsWritingDoneOpinionCreativeTeachingBrokenPersonalityApproachProgramRelateCreative WritingAcademyPollyanna Author:Tod Goldberg
“My god, people are selling their work and people are reading it! The horror! That MFA programs have to advertise that they'll let you write YA or fantasy or what-have-you is just absurd, but we do, because the presumption is that they're closed to that sort of thing. You're offering an MFA in creative writing? Teach people how to write well, worry about that part, let the writers come up with the stories.” PeopleWritingWellsStoriesReadingTeachWorryFantasyCreativeHorrorProgramCome UpAbsurdSellingOfferingCreative WritingPresumption Author:Tod Goldberg
“The effects of MFA programs, and the rise of creative writing instruction more generally, are far more diffuse than people think. Even if you're a writer who has avoided institutions your whole life, you're still going to be reading a lot of writers who have MFAs, and are affiliated with universities.” PeopleIfsThinkingWritingStillsWholeReadingCreativeEffectsProgramInstitutionsUniversityWhole LifeInstructionCreative WritingAvoided Author:Chad Harbach
“When I taught at the University of Houston in the Creative Writing program we required the poets to take workshops in fiction writing and we required the fiction writers to take workshops in poetry. And the reason for that is because the fiction writers seemed to need to learn how to pay greater attention to language itself, to the way that language works.” WayNeedsWritingReasonLanguagePayAttentionFictionCreativeGreaterTaughtPoetProgramUniversityCreative WritingWorkshopsFiction WritingFiction WritersHouston Author:Edward Hirsch
“I've been writing short stories for twenty years now, on and off ever since I was in the creative writing program at San Francisco State University.” WritingYearsStatesStoriesCreativeProgramTwentiesUniversityShort StoryCreative WritingSan FranciscoAnd OffWriting ShortWriting Short Stories Author:Andrew Lam
“When I applied to Stanford, I applied for graduate work in the PhD program, not to the creative writing program, mostly because though I had some vague ambition of becoming a writer and I was trying to write poems and essays and stories, I didn't feel like I was far enough along to submit work to some place and have it judged.” FeelsWritingTryingEnoughStoriesCreativeBecomingAmbitionProgramJudgedGraduatesSubmitVagueEssaysCreative WritingStanfordPhds Author:Robert Hass
“The professionalization of poetry, or the balkanization, has come out of the fact that when you apply to most creative writing programs, you have to choose your genre.” WritingFactsCreativeProgramGenreCreative Writing Author:Robert Hass
“I have done literary translation because the University of Arkansas, where I did my MFA, was program of creative writing and translation, and it's a very different experience. You're trying to honor the writer. You shouldn't allow yourself, for example, to encounter a sentence that's three lines long and break it up into four smaller sentences.” WritingTryingLongDifferentDoneBreakCreativeHonorProgramCreative WritingTranslations Author:Miroslav Penkov
“I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.” IfsKnowsGivingWritingTwoHardDealsTeachCreativeHard WorkGiving UpProgramTelling The TruthPersonal LifeCreative WritingWhole TruthCreative Writers Author:Doris Lessing
“I don't think American poetry has gotten any better in the past 35 years. Oddly enough, creative writing programs seem to have been good for fiction, and I would not have predicted that.” ThinkingWritingYearsHas BeensEnoughSeemsPastFictionCreativeProgramCreative WritingAmerican Poetry Author:Robert Morgan