Much Ado about MFAs
MFAs don't have nearly as much influence--malign or beneficial--as people think
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 …