March 1), at the annual AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) conference, anywhere from 1. America. There will be more than 4. A parallel conference of countless off- site events will occur simultaneously, so that anyone with any gumption will have an opportunity to read and promote themselves. Does that boggle the mind? Do the colossal numbers to which this professional guild has grown signify the health or sickness of writing?
Alas, discussion of the ultimate goals of literature will not be part of the official record at AWP, since out of the hundreds of panels none seem to be devoted to asking such worrisome questions. Instead, the panels repeat a few characteristic anxieties: how to convert autobiographical experience within particular identity niches into saleable memoir, how to get funding and recognition for one! Notice that the profession presents itself as so totally victorious over literature that it need not ask any questions beyond process and mechanics: every panel seems preoccupied with . Their rationales for the mind- boggling proliferation of MFA programs at American universities over the last three decades reveal a self- serving vocational bias, immune to criticisms with legitimate historical and philosophical grounding. As a result, critics like myself. Rarely is the substance of our criticisms addressed in the increasingly desperate apologias mounted on behalf of a bureaucracy that has exceeded all expectations since the AWP was founded with modest aims in the late 1. Today one goes to AWP not for criticism but for self- validation. A recent defensive screed, appearing in Inside Higher Ed on July 5, 2. A phenomenon cannot be justified as morally sound because of its prevalence. Just because hundreds of writing programs have recently cropped up in American universities, and just because they are financially successful for institutions, does not mean that they are good for writing. The false promise held out by a gathering of AWP. I would add that therapy in these programs functions within a narrow range of white middle- class norms, so it is not surprising that the typical MFA student also comes from a narrow background. Amazon.com: The Awp Official Guide to Writing Programs (9780913218105): D. Download the official AWP Conference & Bookfair app for your. The AWP official guide to writing. AWP guidelines for creative writing programs --AWP program directors council policy guidelines for adjunct faculty in. Guide to Writing Programs to find hundreds of writing programs in the US and throughout the world. For advice on how to choose your. Creative writing is any writing that goes. Sheer numbers cannot hide this fact. Certainly, minorities are increasingly found in writing programs, but any observer of the scene will note the tremendous pressure to conform. This is why there is so much interest in memoir as originating from the self. The idea that workshop pedagogy leads to conservative outcomes should not sound surprising to anyone with knowledge of literary theory, but the profession acts in shock when any such proposition is advanced. It. Without workshop, one starts allowing literary criticism and literary history. It is the apologists, in fact, who act as if workshop persists in an ideological vacuum, as though there can be no other method to train writers. Similarly, a vast literature exists to show the parallels between therapy and writing workshops, a body of work I explicitly recognize and assess, whereas this particular set of defenders of workshop makes no recognition of this internal critique from within the profession. The charge is often made simultaneously that my ideas are so well- known as to be unoriginal and that they are so radical as to be unsubstantiable; both cannot be true. Furthermore, being able to reach a broad audience does not make one a talk show host. The interest of the designated apologists is to silence dissenting voices at all costs. There is the larger question of the crisis in the humanities, of which scholarly skepticism toward the humanities. Does the atmosphere at AWP speak of the humanities as a live phenomenon, able to speak to issues of concern to the public at large, or does it speak of a radical diminishment of ideas liable to be dangerous if they get out? After all, who wants to undergo the rigors of studying history or philosophy when the very idea of liberal education under humanistic premises has been shown to be a sham? Art is served poorly when it is made a fetish outside time and space, outside the history which always makes it real and pertinent. The severance of literature and criticism is a reality with terrible consequences the defenders of workshop are at pains to ignore. All is not well in writing and publishing, the claims of the AWP hierarchy notwithstanding. I would pose the following questions as starters toward a productive conversation which looks beyond the knee- jerk defense of a system that has assumed all the airs of a sacred theology: -What is the ideological dimension of the MFA system when it comes to the class interests it protects and serves?- If the system is predicated on replication and uniformity? Are the boosters willing to recognize the new means of exclusion and delegitimation that have been put in place to counter those not inclined to follow the favored professional track?- At what point is anarchic breakdown within the hegemonic system actually a service rather than a disservice to writing? What would be the conditions inviting such a breakdown? In short, is it fair to see writing as a commodity, a business, or a credential? If the answer is no, then how can writing teachers. Almost the totality of young American writers are encouraged to approach their vocation now through the institutional system firmly in place. Debt and disappointment are often the results, except perhaps for those lucky enough to find spots in the most prestigious schools and thereafter find jobs teaching writing to others. Literary writing has become almost completely assimilated inside academia. Nearly all writers are professors first and writers second. Is this a healthy situation, especially if one narrow pedagogy? What effects does this have on the forward advancement of literature? This, it seems to me, is the question to answer, rather than carping at critics who point out the obvious. And it seems strange indeed that not a single panel out of hundreds at AWP is devoted to addressing this ultimate question. The bunker mentality of the defenders of creative writing prevents them from seeing that their profession has evolved as a result of the long- maturing crisis in the humanities. Creative writing is a curious apparition, having split off from the traditional humanities to permit self- expression without depth of knowledge; in effect, it is a pastiche of the humanities, the credential without the foundation. It happens to produce outsized financial rewards for universities because of the elastic supply of substitutable instructors, providing a model of low- stakes instruction that avoids the scrutiny of measurement otherwise obsessing academia only because it wears a fuzzy cloak of outcomes. The humanities have taken a body blow in recent decades because of accusations of lack of utilitarian value in a technocracy, and part of the response has been for creative writing to step into the breach to produce a culture that makes virtues out of the original flaws, doubling down on all that is perceived to be wrong with the humanities. The economic grievances of endless surplus academic labor in the new corporate university have become redirected toward harmless memoirist expression within identity niches, an arrangement quite satisfactory to those in control of the purse strings. Increasingly, the justifications offered for creative writing are the ones that used to be offered for liberal education in general, except in watered- down form and without any specific promises. For the defenders of workshop, there is no crisis in the humanities (because previously suppressed voices are supposedly finding self- expression), there is no crisis in writing, there is no crisis of any kind. But the truth is that serious fiction and poetry have hardly any audience outside academia today, a result that came about deliberately rather than coincidentally. One can imagine the degree of professional competitiveness. Each year, as this year. Deviation from these standards then becomes an impossibility, because the sheer weight of opposition grows too large to be countered by any individual. It has become an amazingly collectivist enterprise, which seems the whole point of the official conference as well as the parallel off- site networking that only confirms the formal tendencies. There was a big fuss among exhibitors this year when it looked like the bookfair wasn. The public (even if allowed into the bookfair for a look- see on a single day) is quite beside the point and is not why writers become writers these days; they do it so they can teach and get funded. One notices too that despite the hundreds of panels, the same limited number of individuals seems repetitively prominent, and that the count stays more or less stable from year to year. Growth is rampant and obscene, but in the end peripheral, since opportunity for any real literary success simply cannot be accommodated in such volume; this leads to the inevitable paradox of writing being deflected from its true goals and becoming obsessed with justifying the reach of existing practice. Serious writing has become like a magic art with secret practitioners and overlords with mystical powers: meanwhile, it is hard to convince scholars outside the creative writing vocation (not to mention the public) that the profession serves any humanistic function, when the writing is so class- bound, therapeutic, mediocre, and self- serving. To assert this is not to air dirty laundry, exposing the profession to an unnecessary hostile gaze; it is to ask the profession to look closely at the ways economic constraints and class biases blind us to the more utopian dimensions of writing. Or one can just go to AWP and get with the program. Robot Check. Enter the characters you see below. 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