Much Ado about MFAs

MFAs don't have nearly as much influence--malign or beneficial--as people think

A typical MFA program writing exercise

When I attended my MFA program in 2006, everyone was debating the influence of MFAs. The previous fall had seen Mark McGurl publish his essay on “The Program Era” as well as Ben Marcus’s Harper’s rebuttal to Jonathan Franzen’s “Mr. Difficult.” While the latter debate wasn’t explicitly about MFA programs, Ben Marcus …