MFA Programs
Is a Master of Fine Arts Really Necessary?
For many writers, a Master of Fine Arts, or MFA, is the Holy Grail. Competition is fierce for this coveted prize that so many writers feel they need.
And if a teaching position at a high school or university level is desired, an MFA will most likely be required. Then comes the search for one of those coveted teaching positions.
However, one cannot live on creative writing alone, or at least very few writers can. And as creative beings, it is sometimes hard to keep believing when one has to work a full-time job. When writers are out there alone, writing, without an MFA, working full-time, they may wonder if it is worth it.
Plan B
David Hollander, in a Poets and Writers Magazine article entitled “Finding Community Outside of Academia,” discusses what he sees as the state of today’s MFA programs. Hollander, who holds an MFA himself and teaches at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, is the author of a novel, L.I.E. (Villard, 2000). And he admits that a couple of his students he felt were shoo-ins for MFA programs received stacks of rejections.
So he began thinking about MFA programs, their nature, and the purpose of writing.
“The goal is not to get a degree,” he says. “It is to excel at what you do. I believe that writers ought to find their own way, to articulate a personal vision in their work.”
MFA Programs Today
Hollander compares joining an MFA program with joining a band. He, by the way, is also a musician. He says bands are formed not by “soul-deadening” workshops praising craft over originality, but rather by the coming together of those with like influences who share the same mindset about their art.
“MFA programs are self-perpetuating and homogenous,” Hollander says, “and they exist in symbiosis with an American publishing industry that grows more conservative each year. The students’ … acceptance into an MFA program is based less on how talented they are than on how well they adhere to this standard model of fiction writing.”
MFA Alternatives
Hollander urges those writing on their own to take the initiative to find writers with whom they can connect and share an aesthetic about writing and creativity .
Hollander says writers who are “in the cold,” outside of comfortable academic circles, must find a way to keep going.
“Plan B — finding a community of like-minded writers outside of academia — might,” he says, “at the very least, help raise the temperature a few degrees.”
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