For the record, I saw the interview as a fact-finding deal, a way of obtaining Ms. Hughes’ response to the charges raised elsewhere and putting them out there for other people to evaluate.

Aside from the one sentence in the introduction that generally expressed skepticism at the idea that all of the very best writers would end up being published at The Paris Review regardless of their connections or credentials, the interview does not serve as a representation of my own opinion, and I did not intend it to.

Maud, I agree; I read the interview as a reponse to the charges raised elsewhere. But I posted Lila’s comment because I think people should realize how hard it is, for Iowa MFA students, too, to get noticed or published. And though I can’t tell to what degree Choire’s being sarcastic, I can tell my readers that most of us are (and will probably be, for quite some time) very “undiscovered.”

Oh, of course! I understand that publishing out of any MFA program, including Iowa and Columbia, can be much more complicated — and a much longer road — than it’s often made to seem.

Maud, the bone I’m picking is not with you, per se, but with the charges raised by the ULA. Although I understand that your interview with Hughes was not a forum for expressing an opinion, I felt that your questions sometimes lent undue credibility to these charges. To my mind, the ULA’s argument about this issue is built on a false premise — that attending an MFA program (even a supposedly prestigious one like Iowa) automatically confers “literary insider” status. As I know you, Maud, understand, this is simply not the case. To the extent that Iowa students like Yiyun and Daniel Alarcon have achieved success through the Writers’ Workshop, it’s because being accepted at Iowa is itself a competetive process of selection. This is ABSOLUTELY not to say that all the best writers go to Iowa — patently, this is not the case — just that in the magazine slush piles of the world, there may be a higher concentration of good stories by Iowa students (and from MFA students generally) than from the population of aspiring writers at large. This seems perfectly logical, and I guess I don’t understand why the ULA finds fault. There are any number of grounds on which one might choose to disparage the Writers’ Workshop, but it’s certainly no golden ticket to literary stardom, or even to a publication in the Podunk Review.

I really enjoyed Maud’s interview, and I’m glad that Ms. Chica has provided an opportunity for people to discuss it. As far as the issue of whether or not an MFA makes it easier for new writers to get published, I think the only way to know that for sure is to undertake some sort of massive statistical analysis (like the kind done on the New Yorker recently that managed to piss so many people off). If it turns out that a significant portion of first-time writers have MFAs (from Iowa or elsewhere), it still wouldn’t necessarily prove anything — but it would be interesting.

As far as the ULA’s position is concerned, well, let’s just say that they serve a purpose, but I think they’re barking up the wrong tree. The inability for financially disadvantaged folks to spend their summers working in unpaid internships, leading to a preponderance of well-off individuals going into journalism, the occasional instances where writers wind up awarding literary prizes to their close personal friends, and the preferential treatment that graduates of certain universities recieve from editors and publishers who attended those same universities all seem to be slightly more insidious than the apparent “instant credibility” accorded to those with MFAs.

But an afternoon spent browsing through the Writer’s Market seems to indicate that editors very much prefer credentialed writers, which makes it appear more difficult to get published without them. Of course, that’s not to say that it’s easy for someone with an MFA to get published, just that it’s slightly easier.

The main thing I took away from the interview is that there seems to be a rather strong Darwinian streak among editors and publishers; and I think it’s wonderfully naive to have such blind faith in the idea that the talented will always find their way into print. No doubt that some very talented person is dying as we speak, unloved and unpublished.

This is a totally random non-sequitur comment— but that’s what I love about blogs— who cares. Great writing is great writing. And great writers will find their audience with or without MFAs. The cruelest student I ever experienced at BreadLoaf was an MFA from Iowa who, it seemed to me, had been criticized so savagely at Iowa that she had to pass on the experience. Why I love the blog environment is that it opens up voices to the world that might otherwise never be heard if they were dependent only on being picked from a slush pile. So for everyone in a huff about not being published and pointing fingers at all the reasons why, I want to say SHUT the FUCK UP and just write and quit your whinging already.

What’s particularly distresing to me about the trend of MFA grads getting published with much greater frequency than non MFA grads, is that it maintains the elite (mostly white, mostly middle to upper middle class) demographic of the literary world. Even with a full fellowship, many people can’t afford the opportunity cost of taking 2 or 3 years away from work to attend grad school. Or other circumstances (kids, having to take care of family members, disability, who knows…) prevent them from uprooting their lives to do so. And then the are the many talented writers out there who aren’t even aware of MFA programs, The Paris Review, and all the other trappings of Literary “insider-dom.”

In my (and Ms. Chicha’s) class of 34 fiction students who graduated from Iowa this year, more than half went to colleges like Brown, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Williams, and Swarthmore. (Myself included).

It’s a shame that MFA programs and lit. mags don’t do more outreach and recruiting toward writers from underrepresented demographics, both ethnically and economically speaking. Not because it’s PC or any of that crap, but because I’m guessing we’d have a much richer and vibrant body of literature and literary community (whatever that means…) as a result.

Isn’t this really just a question about credentialism? I have not taken graduate level writing courses/workshops, and y’all have. Why won’t any of you come out and simply ask “Does this graduate level certification process make me a better writer in any other way than forcing me to write, or does it introduce me to the processes of publishing and provide me with contacts in that world?”

Being familiar with undergraduate creative writing classes I can say that those classes did help me initially. But it just became motivation after a while. And it seems to this humble soul that almost any graduate level liberal arts experience will improve one’s writing, whether it be an MFA, history, philosophy, etc. So what do you credentialed types say? Did going to Iowa really improve your writing any more than practice and a circle of constructive critics would have? I make no accusations, and just plead ignorance.

Finally, it seems obvious to me that the best way to learn newspaper and op-ed journalism is just to start working at a newspaper after high school. But nowadays the local editor with the State school graduate degree won’t hire someone like that because it demonstrates that her degree might be bunk.

Anyone? Guess I was too late on this one. The blogosphere moves so fast!

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