Behind the Scenes
To MFA or to not: Reflections on utility
Are you tired of hearing this tired debate? To MFA or to not MFA? I am, but I’m writing about it anyway. If you’re bored with it, don’t bother reading this post. It won’t hurt my feelings any.
I’ve been thinking more and more about how “useful” my MFA has been. I went to a decent grad school (Notre Dame) and got my MFA in 2006 in prose. I knew walking into the program that I would have a hard time getting a job, that by the time I got my degree, I would be underqualified for certain jobs (the ones I wanted, mainly, professor jobs) and overqualified for just about everything else. Even though I knew this, I was deluded enough to think I was different, special maybe.
Let me back up: I applied to MFA programs because I had nothing else to do. I got my BA in English. I was waiting tables, making good money, but I felt this strange lack of identity as a waiter. I wasn’t shielded under the label “student,” which was safe and pleasant. It was a nice conversational piece.
What do you do?
Oh, I’m a student.
Blah. Blah. Blah.
Then, suddenly, I wasn’t a student, and conversations suddently went like this:
What do you do?
Um, well, I was a student. I just graduated. Now, um, I’m a waiter. I’m thinking about grad school.
Grad school?! I thought you were applying to college!
Um, yeah, no, I’ve got a BA already.
Blah. Blah. Blah.
But the point is that I felt a lack of identity. I liked creative writing. I wouldn’t have called myself a writer. But I liked writing enough, so I applied. I knew MFA programs were competitive. I was told—because I went to a tier 2 satellite university—that most “good” programs would dismiss me unless I had a really spectacular sample. I was told that I wasn’t really competitive and I should apply to many programs, 15 or more. So I got my AWP big book of creative writing programs and picked my top 20. I asked my recommenders for letters of reference. I got my samples together. Then, out of laziness, I only ended up applying to six programs. (I was lazy. I didn’t want to fill out bubble forms required for public/state schools, so that eliminated ¾ of my options. In retrospect, that was a bad idea.) I didn’t expect to get in anywhere. But then I did. I got into five programs. (I still hold a grudge against that one school who rejected me, even though I know it’s not personal.)
Obviously, I ended up going to Notre Dame. They offered me the best package. Steve Tomasula was there. I liked his books. It seemed like a good match. Plus, my dad loves football, and my parents are Catholic.
Fast forward two years: I have an MFA. I’ve read a lot of books. I’ve been in workshops that were mostly useless. I took some interesting classes. I completed two manuscripts.
Now what?
With no definitive plan, I stayed where I was. I applied to adjunct at several universities in the South Bend area. I got “lucky.” I got classes. Five classes at four different universities. I made an average of 2 grand per class. Do the math folks. That’s $10,000 for a lot a lot a lot of work. Then, the spring semester rolled around. I didn’t get lucky. I was offered 2 classes at 2 schools and made a whopping $3,500 that spring. I made less money the first year out of my MFA as I did as a graduate student.
That first year out of grad school was actually fairly generous to me though. I won a first book competition and then my second book was picked up too. So: I had teaching experience and two books under contract. Time to “go on the market.”
The next fall rolled in and because I had experience working with these schools, I had a normal teaching schedule. I taught 4 classes per term at 2 schools.
I started applying for jobs. I applied for maybe 45 jobs. All things being equal, I did pretty well. I had 4 interviews, 2 campus interviews, but 0 job offers. Then, as if there were some magnanimous god somewhere, one of the schools I was teaching at offered me a Visiting Asst Prof position.
Year Three out of my MFA, I finally got a full time job. I taught 3/3. I had lovely colleagues. I was relatively happy, but my contract was only for a year. So I went on the market again. This time, I had one book in print and two forthcoming. I applied for maybe 40 schools and got 2 interviews, 0 campus interviews, 0 job offers.
The school I was teaching at offered me another year-long visiting position (of which I would only end up teaching a semester because I picked up and moved to Canada to be with my partner, who started a PhD program).
Because I was sick of applying for jobs and all the terror involved in it (which I haven’t even touched on: the anxiety, the insanity, the insecurity, the constant feelings of inadequacy), I didn’t apply for jobs last year. Instead, I applied for PhD programs. I had, at that point, 2 books in print, 1 small press prize, 1 national award, and 3 books forthcoming and an anthology that I was co-editing with Blake. I got into 1 of the 2 PhD programs I applied for. (Technically, I got into both, but one program didn’t have enough funding for me.)
Now, I’m in this PhD program. It’s ok. I like it fine, but I miss writing. I want to be a writer again. I miss reading fiction. I miss teaching. So my partner and I decided I’d apply for jobs again. I’ve applied for 11 jobs. I’ve had 2 interviews, 3 requests for more info, but ultimately 0 job offers. (Yes, the season is still going.) But when I do the math for it, my MFA has been worth what? A whole lot of financial disappointment, a lot of work for very little money, and some books with my name on it (I’m not disillusioned here. I know my contacts through the MFA helped get me published. If nothing else, they got me a “fair” read.)
So what is the MFA worth? Is it worth it? I’m not sure. Maybe I’m just being a whiny baby. Go ahead. Slap me. More reason for me to keep on crying.
Tags: job market, MFA
I love this post. It’s honest. As someone who is struggling with the MFA question, it helped me feel better about my overall reticence. Wishing you luck!
Great post. I went into the mfa with some career aspirations but i thunk it is better to go into it just for the sake of writing because the teaching job market blows! I am considering a Phd in rhetroic and composition..
I think one real point to be made of your situation is that the MFA proves time and again (for academic job seekers) to be only as good as the books you publish beyond graduation, and whether you have any teaching experience. Without books and teaching experience, without the understanding that one will NEED these to get a secure teaching gig with an MFA, it’s not worth much anymore in the academic market. I think the MFA ship sailed about 3 years ago, in terms of the thing being able to stand on its own and impress a committee. Nowadays, on the academic job market, the candidate must be BIGGER than the degree, dwarf it with successes in teaching and publishing. I still think it’s a great idea, but you have to know what you want out of it up front so you can manage your expectations. That said, with new programs come new opportunities. I’m a brand new professor in a brand new program, and I’m only one of two faculty members who hold an MFA in the department. I’m regularly consulted on matters related to the development of the program, a program that seems foreign and slightly unwieldy to some of the other faculty with PhDs.
my thought is that an mfa is not a career track type of degree. i had no illusions when i started mine that i would find a job post graduation. i was right, i was offered a comp teaching gig that would have required an hour of driving each way for three days a week for very little money.
i did an mfa program to write better, which happened, and to make some connections to help with a writing career, which happened. i surprised that so many people say they didn’t learn to write better in the mfa process. i have a hard time believing that it’s true. at the very least the mfa process forces people to write at a pace they may not do on their own.
Nick – perhaps some examples would help make your point, meaning can you provide an example of somebody with a job who hasn’t published? I think, perhaps, that the problem is equating the length of one’s CV with qualification for a teaching job. While publications matter, fit and teaching ability are also important. So somebody with a few publications who is a rock star teacher might, at least to some schools, look better to them than somebody with a ton of publications who isn’t a rock star teacher. Personality is also part of it. The job market has also changed in the last few years as the number of jobs steadily decreases and the number of people with MFAs steadily increases, so, somebody who looked like a rock star twenty years ago who hasn’t been steadily publishing may look less qualified than some of today’s applicants, but it was a different story twenty years ago. One of the best CW teachers I had had published one book in the 70s and never again. He had tenure and still taught college, but to most would seem like a ‘nobody.’
Lincoln – seriously? There are around 100 jobs this year for creative writers. Around 50 of those are in fiction. Do you think there are fewer than 50 writers with solid publication records looking for jobs? Yes, it probably depends on your definition of good publications, but I’ll bet you there are 50 MFAs with books from reputable small presses on up the publishing ladder on the job market this year.
(1) I don’t think it’s that either/or. Like any process involving human beings and money, there are political variables that often have an overriding influence over who gets a teaching job or not. But there comes a point where you are so well-qualified, because of the work you have done, that your candidacy must be taken seriously, at which point a job seems significantly more likely.
(2) The MFA isn’t just a professional vetting. If the program is any good, you are acquiring tools that might enable you to become a better writer. This obviously isn’t always the case, but it is often enough the case when it comes to our better writers that it must be happening at least some of the time.
I can’t speak to Lily’s experience in her MFA program or whether or not it served her development as a writer. But in general, it seems unlikely to me that two or three years devoted to the practice of reading and writing, among a community of writers, can’t be the worst choice a person can make if they want to make themselves into a writer worth a reader’s time and attention.
It used to be MFA + books published meant you were “qualified” to teach. I feel like the question isn’t so much MFA or no MFA, but MFA to PhD or just straight to PhD? One of the schools I teach at constantly tells me (off the record) I’d be a great candidate “if I had my PhD.” Everyone that does a PhD (even in Creative Writing) tells me they aren’t “writing” enough. I’m already not “writing enough,” so PhD and write less?
I hear the “not writing enough” feeling in a CW PhD program. I felt that way my first two years, but when I looked back and took stock, I realize I was getting as much if not more writing done than I had in my MFA program. It was just getting done in addition to all this other stuff that kept me really busy, so even though it felt like my writing time was diminished, actually it was about the same, just surrounded by tons of teaching, grading, reading and paper-writing. Plus, in some of my classes I was able to incorporate creative writing into seminar papers, which I was then able to revise and publish in lit journals. I think you can massage a CW PhD to get more writing time when necessary. I also think no one ever feels like they’re writing enough, no matter where they are or what they do, with a few exceptions. Take heart!
Eidaharris: Are you the Elizabeth Harris who translated Giulio Mozzi’s “Carlo Doesn’t Know How to Read” in the Best European Fiction 2010? If so, please email me. It would be interesting to do a little Q&A for HTMLGIANT about your work as a translator.
I don’t think we’ve reached that yet, thank god. I’m pretty sure the vast majority of creative writing teachers I know don’t have PhDs. I think it will be awful if that becomes the bar.
It’s not so much who doesn’t get the jobs as who does. An friend of mine from Drexel was kept on the frosh comp hamster wheel despite publishing several novels, while the fiction gig went to someone whose greatest success was a handwritten rejection letter from The New Yorker. I teach part-time at a low-res school and was passed over for a residency workshop gig in the genre (SF/Fantasy) I teach in for someone with literally zero publishing or teaching experience in that part of the fiction field.
That you haven’t gotten a job with the quality of your writing, publications, and teaching experience really only means that you haven’t kissed enough ass, sadly.
I wonder if you might think a bit more about your interviewing style, letter of app., c.v., etc. With all of those books, you’ve got to be competitive. Or perhaps you’re trying only for the really top places? I’m an Associate Prof. now (I have two MFAs, one in fiction, the other in literary translation; one of my colleagues has a poetry PhD and says my two MFAs add up to a PhD, but whatever…), but I’m also at a school that’s off the map: the Univ. of North Dakota. The job’s great, 2/2, all lit. and cw with grad. students doing cw theses and PhDs, but of course, I was willing to live in North Dakota…and it’s below zero right now…
I’m lucky enough to have a job (but not a tenure-track job) and shouldn’t complain (but still I do). Watching the market over the last few years, I think it’s impossible to predict what convergence of specific factors will lead to any given hire. Committees are consortiums of competing interests, many of which have little to do with teaching or writing. That said, I notice it is to a writer-teacher’s advantage to have graduated from a program that regularly places a lot of their students in teaching jobs. Some of these programs include Iowa, Alabama, Syracuse, Cornell, and some of the NYC programs. There are others, and this is anecdotal talk, not statistically vetted talk.
What seems to help the most is to be a serious publishing badass. I doubt that there is any job in the United States for which Ben Percy would not be competitive, to give one example. Merit and accomplishment do matter, and they matter ever more greatly the better the position. That doesn’t mean head-scratching hires don’t happen all the time — they do — but it does mean that if you keep hitting it out of the park, you’re a lot more competitive for a job than if you don’t.
I’m graduating in a week and I know that I want to wait a few years before applying to grad programs. I wouldn’t say this post made me feel like getting an MFA was a bad idea, but I would say it’s making me think a lot harder about that decision.
Thanks for making me think.
I remain bamboozled by the whole affair, I’m afraid, from why I would want to, to what I would do if I did.
It is from this confuzzlement that I wish the whole lot of you luck and prosperity.
Kyle, it isn’t always about publishing, though. It depends on the school. For some places, teaching performance outweighs publishing. Also, the person needs to be a good match for the department. Department members want to get along with their colleagues; so sometimes superstars don’t get hired…
Agreed.
damn, lily–i’m following in your footsteps! i’m glad you wrote this…
i just graduated and part of the reason i’m applying to grad schools is the lack of identity thing. the question: what do you do? and parental pressure. but i’m only applying to 2 schools–brown and minnesota, which are both extremely competitive (brown has like 800 applicants for 11 spots, minnesota like 500 for 11 spots). not only will i not get in (have only taken 1 creative writing class in my life and my undergrad is in lib arts…i don’t even have anyone to proof or give me feedback on my portfolio), but i will be without identity for at least another year, haha. do you think i should apply to some whacky interdisciplinary MA degree in berlin? i was thinking about it… tuition is totally free there.
Interesting post, Lily. But what about writers who aren’t interested in teaching?
I wish I had read this before I gave up everything in my life – including a great job – to attend a fiction program in NYC. It was a huge mistake and now I am on the verge of homelessness and wondering what it was all for.
I’ll way in more later, because this is an interesting topic to me, but Lily, when you say this year you’ve gotten 0 job offers, and you acknowledge the season is still going, you realize that nobody has gotten job offers yet this season? Most schools haven’t even conducted interviews (barring the oddball phone interviews) – MLA’s not for a couple weeks, and AWP’s not until February, so job offers realistically won’t be made until much later in the season.
And by way, I mean weigh. Sheesh.
I don’t get the sense you regret your decision at all. You got books out of it, so I doubt the workshops were as useless as you claim. You were given time and people took you seriously.
You did it for yourself first, not to get any job. You invested in yourself. The adjunct route, so many of us have done it. It’s criminal to be so exploited, but if you want to teach, you kind of have to.
Unless you land a great job in a good program it won’t get easier. Your writing and reading time will come back in diminishing returns unless you really get lucky. But given your previous job searches, you know that.
You also know the odds of yourself and your partner both getting jobs in the same city are slim times two. Just keep living and writing and do good work and that’s all that matters.
I’m not even sure you WANT to teach. That’s important, because it will take up more time and it would be a shame if you resented it. Try to enjoy it even if you’d rather be writing. They are different kinds of good.
I think a lot of us just aren’t cut out to do much else. When I worked 40 hours I couldn’t write and I was miserable. Now that I teach, I work more than 40, but I don’t have to be in the classroom every weekday, and so I can write, and I’m much happier.
Frankly, as a grad student I was spoiled. I read more then. I didn’t always get to pick the books but there was a good chunk of time nearly every day to read. Very few adults who pay bills get that. TV takes over because people are tired. Hopefully, teaching energizes you.
hmmm i’m not counting on it… my life is a mess right now (huge family conflict, mom just had a suicide attempt) and i abruptly had to go to FL to take care of things… i’ve got like 1 day to finish the application and none of my stuff is ready…i’m lacking the will and mental clarity to pull it together but i will submit it anyway because i have an application waiver. i would like thalia field to be my mentor
There’s a tenacious d song that says you should try being an artist for two years of your life, then after that if you still suck, stop. I don’t know if that’s really good advice, but I know MFA programs only last two years. I liked mine. I spent the majority of the time doing other stuff than writing. Teaching / organizing / binding books / going to readings / organizing readings / running a journal / doing conference planning / going to readings / teaching / and more teaching. Then I wrote some stuff, and it was way better because I was getting feedback on everything I was writing. My life is better because I have a real sense of community by being given the opportunity to envelop myself within what sometimes can be an uninviting world (writers!). Books, the publishing world, and the market are degenerative forces that put pressure on writers to force publish shit they shouldn’t be publishing for C.V notches because they want to be competitive. The publishers who receive grant / foundation money to publish X many titles in a given year force publish crap that barely breaks mediocre. Journals force publish more mediocre crap because they have a legacy to uphold and the writers who send them their crap haven’t ever heard or read the journal. There are countless exceptions to these statements which keep me reading, people whose work I believe in, and some nice people who are “writers” who I like as people. I’m all pro democratization of the publishing industry, creative writing jobs (god give me one please), but think that it’s ludicrous that people who work in an industry that is based on arranged sounds set in typeface should complain about the economic depravity of their chosen vocation, which is completely voluntary. Bartenders make mad cash. It’s good for alcoholism, but bad for the writing, unless you are writing about alcoholism, or you think alcoholism helps the writing, or you just like the smell of dirty barmats. The best reason MFA programs exist is to find other people who like John Ashbery, Hart Crane, and Olena Kalytiak Davis’s Shattered Sonnets… enough to discuss and read out loud at the pizza joint with… in real life.
Hi, again. This isn’t so much a response to your post Lily, but a few thoughts on the whole problem.
Those considering MFAs need to think about why they want the degree. Having expectations, that the MFA will fill some void in one’s identity (as dangerous, I think, about building your identity around your job) or that an MFA will land you a job are misguided. I understand them, but go because you want to work on your writing, and feel it’s the best way to do so. The worst thing that can happen is you come out of it and start an entry-level job somewhere like anybody else with a liberal arts degree.
Anybody going to graduate school should do the research, regardless of the field. The basic math of the number of MFAs makes it obvious how ludicrous it is to think that an MFA will land you a job: look at the ‘top 20’ MFA programs. Multiply 20 by the number of students in each (let’s say 15) and you’ve got 300 ‘qualified’ applicants each year applying for about a hundred jobs (this year, anyway.) That’s not counting those with Ph.D.s, who don’t always out-qualify applicants, but often do. That’s not counting people who have MFAs who have been adjuncting, visiting writers, or MFAs from the OTHER shit ton of programs out there.
I am less qualified to talk about job getting because I am still in graduate school, but I wonder how many people on the job market actually know how to write a job letter and interview. I’m curious, those with MFAs, how many of your programs prepared you to put the work into getting an academic job?
My take on the job market is that while a big part of the job market is publishing, a big part is knowing how to present your accomplishments and ideas in the right way, and then convincing a committee that they will want to work for you for, possibly, years to come. A couple of books and an MFA gets your foot in the door, that’s all. Again, Lily, this isn’t about you – I haven’t interviewed you for a job – but a more general comment on my perception of the reality of getting a CW job.
sounds to me like you’ve had a great deal of luck post-mfa, regardless of teaching positions.
Replying only to the “try two years and then assess” suggestion… it takes longer than two years to develop skill and realize your talent… fiction writing is no easy venture and it takes years and years to master . . . so I’m with you, Jake: I disagree, too.
There is no reason to expect an MFA to land you a job. But an MFA and good publications/books should land you a job. Should in the sense of that’s how things should be. If we are moving to a land where all creative writing teachers have basically spent their entire lives in academia, moving straight from a BA to an MFA to a PhD to a teaching job, that would be a sad thing.
I know very few people who have moved straight form BA to MFA to a PhD to a teaching job. Some, but mostly not.
Why should an MFA and good publications land you a job? There are far more MFAs with good publications than there are teaching jobs. According to AWP, there are 184 MFA programs – how many jobs would there have to be each year to even employ 10% of those degrees? You could make a convincing argument that there should be more creative writing jobs, for sure, but the reality of right now is that an MFA and good publications aren’t enough. An MFA does not mean you are a good teacher. An MFA does not mean you will be a good fit for an English department. Publications do not mean that a search committee will be impressed by your work. MFA and publications are just a start.
There seems to be a lot of disdain (in general) for people with PhDs from the MFA folks, as if they’re poisoning the well for all the MFAs out there, but I don’t get it. An MFA and a PhD are different degrees – perhaps a PhD shows a certain level of commitment that a 2 year MFA doesn’t show, but they’re fundamentally different. One reason PhDs sometimes trump MFAs is simply because they’re further along – they’ve had another 4 or 5 years on top of their MFAs (almost all the PhDs in CW I know have MFAs) to work on their writing, plus a LOT more teaching experience, plus the rigorous lit side of a PhD. That doesn’t mean an MFA can’t compete, but it’s (typically) a very different approach to learning to teach college.
The existence of jobs for serious publishing bad-asses doesn’t explain the number of positions filled by people with no particular bibliography; if Percy is an example of a bad-ass, we can certainly fill all of the top jobs with people at his level or better, and the rest of the jobs with people who publishing records are far superior to those who already have jobs.
The question isn’t, “I’m so good, why didn’t I get the job?” it’s “Why do these people who have done virtually nothing fill so many of the jobs?”
I don’t disagree with this. But where does it leave you if you’re a person who is doing serious work and getting external validation for that work? There are plenty of variables you can’t control, and these are largely political variables. But there is one variable you can control, which is that no matter where you sit at this moment, you can put your head down and work your ass off and make something worth the reader’s time. If you’ve got the wheels, I believe that with time, the better job will become more likely a possibility for you.
Is this wishful thinking? I hope not. It’s where I’m living at this very moment. But whether it is or not, the life as a writer is primary and the life as a teacher is the secondary thing. So you don’t lose if you put your head down and do the work.
**Why should an MFA and good publications land you a job? There are far more MFAs with good publications than there are teaching jobs.**
True, but given the number of teaching positions held by people who do NOT have good publications, there is still a significant disconnect.
“There are far more MFAs with good publications than there are teaching jobs.”
I’m not sure I agree with this, but I suppose it would hinge a definition of good publications.
**But where does it leave you if you’re a person who is doing serious work and getting external validation for that work?**
In a fine place. Lily’s post seems to me to be primarily about teaching positions, not actual writing and publication, which certainly doesn’t require any formal education except perhaps up to tenth grade or so. Plenty of excellent writers do good work without an MFA and without even thinking about teaching. Some teach and write well and don’t have much higher education. (Samuel Delany at Temple comes to mind, but genius will out, of course.)
The thing I’m taking from Lily’s post is that there is a black box and in that black box are the political variables which tend to have a significant and occasionally even overriding influence over who gets a teaching job and who does not. If MFA programs in general are awarding the politically minded rather than the well-qualified then indeed it may well have been a mistake for Lily to get an MFA or to go on the job market.
Nick – perhaps some examples would help make your point, meaning can you provide an example of somebody with a job who hasn’t published? I think, perhaps, that the problem is equating the length of one’s CV with qualification for a teaching job. While publications matter, fit and teaching ability are also important. So somebody with a few publications who is a rock star teacher might, at least to some schools, look better to them than somebody with a ton of publications who isn’t a rock star teacher. Personality is also part of it. The job market has also changed in the last few years as the number of jobs steadily decreases and the number of people with MFAs steadily increases, so, somebody who looked like a rock star twenty years ago who hasn’t been steadily publishing may look less qualified than some of today’s applicants, but it was a different story twenty years ago. One of the best CW teachers I had had published one book in the 70s and never again. He had tenure and still taught college, but to most would seem like a ‘nobody.’
Lincoln – seriously? There are around 100 jobs this year for creative writers. Around 50 of those are in fiction. Do you think there are fewer than 50 writers with solid publication records looking for jobs? Yes, it probably depends on your definition of good publications, but I’ll bet you there are 50 MFAs with books from reputable small presses on up the publishing ladder on the job market this year.
(1) I don’t think it’s that either/or. Like any process involving human beings and money, there are political variables that often have an overriding influence over who gets a teaching job or not. But there comes a point where you are so well-qualified, because of the work you have done, that your candidacy must be taken seriously, at which point a job seems significantly more likely.
(2) The MFA isn’t just a professional vetting. If the program is any good, you are acquiring tools that might enable you to become a better writer. This obviously isn’t always the case, but it is often enough the case when it comes to our better writers that it must be happening at least some of the time.
I can’t speak to Lily’s experience in her MFA program or whether or not it served her development as a writer. But in general, it seems unlikely to me that two or three years devoted to the practice of reading and writing, among a community of writers, can’t be the worst choice a person can make if they want to make themselves into a writer worth a reader’s time and attention.
Also, I don’t think there is any disdain for people with PhDs from MFA holders (although the inverse is often true, like Batuman). I certainly would not begrudge anyone a PhD if it helped them. Really, on the personal level it wouldn’t remotely color my opinion of someone.
However, I do not like the idea that the PhD in creative writing is growing in popularity and changing the system so that the PhD becomes the terminal degree in creative writing. I don’t think that has happened yet, as said, but it certainly could.
Academia in this country is largely a scam anyway, and roping people into spending more and more time (and normally more and more money) in higher education is not necessarily a positive thing. Some people will benefit from that, some won’t. But it is a already a shame that undergrad has replaced a high school diploma across the board and how the university system keeps convincing more and more people to stay in school longer and longer. It also has caused a disastrous amount of debt for countless young people in this country.
I agree with you that people don’t currently all jump from BA to MFA to PhD, but if that become the standard path for people interested in teaching creative writing, it would become more common.
I do not buy that a PhD would trump an MFA and quality publication history based on spending more time on their writing. People who are working writers are working on their writing. Perhaps MFA programs should spend more time on pedagogy though.
As a point of data for both Nick and Lincoln, according to the CW Jobs Wiki, of the people who landed the precious 20 poetry jobs last year, all of them had at least one book and an MFA. Many had PhDs and/or more than 1 book. I know (from experience) these were not the only people on the job market to share these statistics (meaning people with MFAs and/or PhDs with more than 1 book that did not land jobs last year.)
Eidaharris: Are you the Elizabeth Harris who translated Giulio Mozzi’s “Carlo Doesn’t Know How to Read” in the Best European Fiction 2010? If so, please email me. It would be interesting to do a little Q&A for HTMLGIANT about your work as a translator.
I agree with much of what you’ve said here, and won’t get into the debate about the BA replacing the high school diploma – that’s a much larger issue. I will say that I’m not sure education is ever a bad thing, though I do agree that the amount of money spent on education is probably too high. Probably… I’m not sure.
A couple thoughts, though – I don’t think a PhD trumps MFAs in all cases. Like I said, they’re different degrees, and certainly there are cases where an MFA might be the perfect candidate versus a PhD, and certainly the statistics about who gets what jobs mirror that. People with MFAs do get jobs, although I think based on last year’s statistics, almost all of the MFAs that got jobs got their MFAs at Iowa.
I do think the advantage is that PhDs simply have more time and guidance (especially for me with regard to lit and theory.) I’m a better writer and teacher because of mine, for sure. A problem, I think, is the changing nature of jobs – that many asst. professor jobs aren’t purely CW – that because of budget cuts, the demand for professors who can teach CW, lit, and comp is much higher than pure CW teachers. This is especially true at school’s with small english departments.
If you had 200 applications to sift through (this is not an exaggerated number) – you have to look at quantifiable facts – you have a person with a 2 year MFA versus somebody who has a 2 year MFA plus a 4-5 year PhD and an equal number of publications, both sound interesting in their job letters, stellar publications, and you can interview one? Who wins out? I’m not saying it’ll always be the PhD in my straw-example, but I think more and more the person with extensive and broad teaching experience is going to win.
Just as a point of argument – I’m not sure I buy this – but, why *should* a 2 year degree in creative writing and publications qualify you to teach college? Why require a degree at all?
Too, I think it’s incorrect to equate quality of writing with quality of teaching — certainly, there are plenty of bad CW teachers out there, but I don’t think spending time writing – meaning, that an MFA who has spent years working on his or her writing versus a PhD who has done the same, in addition to gaining experience teaching – puts one on equal footing for getting a job.
As for the PhD replacing the MFA as a terminal degree – I’m certain that won’t happen any time soon, as MFA programs are invested in the myth that an MFA will get you a teaching job. Too, keep in mind that nobody should pay for either of these degrees, but especially a PhD.
Screw teaching. Write. Dodge your bills & write your ass off. File for bankruptcy, who cares, you’ll be dead in a few decades anyway. If your student loans come due, learn how to be a lawn mower mechanic (transactions under the table, in cash) and set your own shop & hours out of your trailer. Have your MFA for the experience, the contacts, and stop with academia, it blows. Unplug from the financial system. I love how people want the secure job with its secure income so you can post on facebook you’re in “Paris this summer,” or to buy a nice car, etc. What happened to writers. Develop a terrible drinking problem & write. Or drive a bus. Jesus.
*Like any process involving human beings and money, there are political variables that often have an overriding influence over who gets a teaching job or not.*
That’s my objection. Or rather, my objection is that MFA teaching positions are not only political in the sense that any human endeavor is political, but that it is qualitatively more political. Yes, the extremely well-qualified have an advantage, as well they should, but there is such a thing as overqualification as well, and as departmental jealousy, and and and… But sure, Zadie Smith can get a job wherever she likes, and she has, at NYU. But we don’t really need to be concerned about the Zadie Smiths of the world, where there are hundreds of Lilys competing for dozens of slots and many of those slots are going to people less well-qualified than Lily.
I agree that MFA programs aren’t the worst choice for someone who wants to be a writer, but so what? Are the programs selling themselves to students with banner ads reading NOT THE WORST?
I find this conversation interesting, and I am actively engaging with it. However, I find it discouraging that posts about literary professionalism and literary politics almost always find a more interested audience of commenters (and — I know this because I can see the stats — a much larger readership) than posts about stories, poems, essays, books, and writers. Is this diagnostic of what really interests us most? I hope not.
Hi, Kyle – I like to comment in these threads because it’s on my mind. For me, posts about stories, essays, and books, and writers are interesting, but often I have less to say there because either I haven’t read the story/essay/book/writer that is the subject of the post, so instead just take mental note of the name and, sometimes, add to my reading list. I suspect that might be true for lots of readers. These threads, though, I think tend to be more heated and perhaps of more general interest. That doesn’t mean it’s right, but unfortunately I think job getting and degree getting are on a lot of people’s minds.
What alternative do you propose? From where Lily is sitting, the question is: What do I do now? Which is a different question from: How do I now fix a system that has some virtues and significant problems?
What else does for the aspiring writer what the MFA can do? And why wouldn’t some writers aspire for a teaching position which would enable them to spend at least some of their working hours talking about that which makes their heart beat hardest, and, most importantly, buy some time to write?
There is a discussion that needs to be conducted about the system, especially among those who have the power to do something about it. But the way you’re talking about these things seems self-defeating to me. Sure, acknowledge the shitty things. But shouldn’t someone in a plausible position to be competitive for these things and who finds them desirable also be saying: What are the variables I can control? What are the variables I can’t control? How can I best spend my limited reservoir of mental and emotional and physical energy to move in the direction of the things I most want.
And, of course: What are the things I most want? Are they plausibly attainable? If they are not, what do I want second-most? Are those things plausibly attainable? What must I do to attain them?
One possible answer among this range of answers is to throw one’s hands up and say, It’s corrupt! It’s impossible! I want nothing to do with it! This is a response I see often here. If so, that’s an honorable choice. But if you want something to do with it, then you have to start asking yourself some hard questions about the distance from here to there, and then decide if what it costs and what you risk in trying to get from here to there is worth it. If it is, then you make an intelligent plan, and you pursue it.
You have choices, in other words, and one choice is to decide if you are going to be a person who believes things are possible and moves forward or if you are going to be a person who takes a fatalist view of things and forever complains.
It is well-documented, here and elsewhere, that it it increasingly difficult to make a career as a teacher. It has always been difficult to make a career as a writer. It is not impossible. It is possible. If you want it enough to move forward, then the first thing you have to do is start moving forward.
I suspect you are overly impressed with the idea of “a book.” (Since you’re accusing me of having a “fantasy”, I’ll return the favor and presume you haven’t published very much at all.) A book doesn’t necessarily mean much especially given book publication via poetry contests, and the new breed of micropresses.
Politics refers very simply to the influences on decision-making that go beyond qualifications and even the basics of collegiality—people hiring their pals, people burying the applications of their rivals, quid pro quo (you published me in Generic Quarterly, I’ll publish you in Blah Blah Review, and when one of us needs a job…), making selections based on maintaining a balance of terror in the department (who gets to be a “big dog”—not the new kid!) hiring decisions based on marriages, etc. “Good matches”, are of course, a black box. Why did someone with ten books and five years of teaching experience get passed over for someone with no book publications? Well, I suppose that first person just wasn’t a “good match”; after all, someone with ten books might make the existing faculty feel bad about their own output. You call that a fantasy, but what exactly are you going on here? The “data” you point to without actually citing only tells you who gets hired, not who was passed over for that slot to be filled.
So when Kansas State hired Katherine Karlin (whom I don’t know at all; this is not a slam on her), who has published at a number of second-tier journals, how many applicants who have published books and stories of greater import and in greater number were passed over? I’m sure she’s a “good teacher”—but well, how is that operationalized? Ditto Charles McLeod at WIU—no books, but two forthcoming and in the UK only (a much smaller marketplace than the US market for books). Are we to presume that nobody who applied at WIU had a more impressive resume than his? Halina Duraj got a job at USD based partially on a few stories and coming in as a finalist for a contest for unpublished novels. Was her stuff really so much better than that of the other applicants (with “a book”, oh “a book”!) that she, who has yet to publish a book, will be working with students to create book-length theses? Lily already has a more impressive resume than these writers, who I am sure are fine writers and can run a workshop well, but…why not Lily, who has published more widely, and why them? Is it because she looks young? Because she made the mistake of appearing in commercial publications, which intimidated search committees, or of not exclusively writing about the Asian-American experience? Did someone decide that there is “enough color” in the department to satisfy AA/EEOC and the students already? That is the stuff of “bad matches” and that’s utterly political.
It’s also a little silly to limit the discussion to TT positions, as visiting positions are very handy in eventually landing TT positions.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with commenting in these threads. Obviously I am doing so. These discussions are important. I just note, with some dismay, the gap between the level of interest in one versus the other.
Lukewarmresolve: I didn’t say I didn’t learn to write better in the mfa process. I read a crazy amount of books, and that definitely improved my writing. That, and a really amazing mentor.
The alternative, Kyle, is to stop pretending that the system is somehow apolitical or that the best will always find a place. Specifically, pretending that impossible-to-operationalize stuff like “collegiality” explains all variance in why prime candidates such as Lily do not get jobs, while inferior candidates do.
Once that step is complete, subsequent steps will be more obvious.
Hmm, the person teaching fiction workshops at Marlboro has no fiction credits whatsoever (a few poems here and there, no collection). There’s at least one core faculty member at St. Mary’s MFA program with no listed books. At my alma mater, I was amused to see that the upcoming residency features
a. a workshop on science fiction and fantasy by someone with no experience in that field
b. a workshop on mystery fiction by someone with no experience in that field
c. a workshop on the habits of successful writers (itself a dubious course of study!) by someone’s who major relevant book was in fact vanity published via iUniverse.
Education is a general sense is never a bad thing, but education, I’m sure you’d agree, isn’t limited to academic institutions. And yes, i agree with most of what you wrote there. I’m merely saying I hope the PhD doesn’t become the new (de facto) terminal degree. I agree with you that the current situation isn’t at that point.
You make a very good point about universities that have to fill jobs for both lit classes and writing classes. I’m sure that is quite frequent.
I certainly would not say that quality of writing translates to quality of teaching (nor, of course, does quality of academic degrees or grades or anything like that), especially when it comes to the arts. I do, however, personally think that it is good for teachers in the art to have real “in the field” experience so to speak. That’s not a MFA vs. PhD comment, obviously people with both, one or neither can get that.
“Just as a point of argument – I’m not sure I buy this – but, why *should* a 2 year degree in creative writing and publications qualify you to teach college? Why require a degree at all?”
I’m not sure it should! Not for something like the arts. I would say that having been through an MFA means that you’ve at least had significant experience doing workshops and craft glasses. Certainly people can get that experience out of college or in undergrad, but it isn’t a given and a two year MFA helps narrow the field down in that sense.
Kyle & Nick: I stepped away from the internet for a while and look at this explosion! I really appreciate what you’ve said.
I started thinking about writing this post days ago, when I was feeling most dour about jobs, etc. I’m not every writer. My parents put a lot of weight in “careers” and I’ve internalized this. To them, being a writer isn’t very prestigious, so I’ve “softened the blow” of being a writer by also being a professor. So here comes the problem: if I’m not a professor and just a writer, well, I’m more or less useless. (Little to brag about.)
In the end, if I don’t get a job this year, no big deal. I’ll just finish up this PhD. It’s interesting. I like it fine. Then, either I’ll re-enter the market as a creative writer or a geographer. Who knows!
Nick, I am neck-deep in the academy, and I have yet to meet anyone who pretends that the system is apolitical or that the best always win out.
If I were on a hiring committee, Lily, I’d be very excited to see that a candidate like you wanted to work with me.
Eidaharris: I’m relatively young and I look very young. Also, my books are all small press. So. Small press in poetry is the norm, but I’m competing against big name folks. Also, I’ve been fairly selective (e.g. I won’t live in the South or the Plains). The fault is mine, but I think the question of the “value” of the MFA isn’t lost.
Ashley: I wouldn’t say getting an MFA is a bad idea either. I’ve benefitted greatly from it. The question is: what do YOU want out of an MFA?
I’m sure it happens – the only question I would ask in response would be how long have they been at those institutions, and do they have tenure. Perhaps they were connected enough to the faculty to get those jobs. It wouldn’t surprise me if a) the person teaching habits of successful writers was an adjunct, and b) that core faculty with no listed books have been there for a long time. I could be wrong – I know the system’s not perfect, but going on recent job-getting stats, it seems that the days of people getting jobs without publications are gone.
brown! brown! brown! you’re brilliant, jackie. they’d be fools not to take you.
that being said, i’ve seen brown reject some of the best writers i know. fools. (to brown, not my writer friends who were rejected.)
Hi Dawn: I see the MFA as a credential. If I wanted to be a writer (and only a writer), I probably wouldn’t have gone to get an MFA. But that’s just my opinion.
I hear what you’re saying – I wonder if interest can’t be accurately gauged by number of comments or even read-through. I read (and talk about with my in-real-life pals) a lot of books, but here, I’m less likely to read through an article about a book I haven’t read. I’m more likely to read a post about an author I haven’t heard of.
Hi John, Actually, I love teaching. My partner is ambivalent about the academy. I only write during the summers, but even with a heavy teaching load, I’ve always been able to read during the term. In this PhD program though, I haven’t been able to read fiction, and that’s what hurts. That is a big reason why I decided to apply for jobs this year: so I could read again.
Again, you’re moving the goalposts. Nobody said without any publications, but without good publications. On any level the question remains why the unqualified are teaching—the bare minimum for teaching drivers education is the ability to drive, and yet we have people who cannot drive teaching at driving school, while people who drive well are locked out.
So what if the person teaching “successful writing” is only an adjunct? She paid to publish—the exact opposite of “success.” There are plenty of people who have published more than that who would thus be a better choice for that workshop. That she’s only an adjunct suggests only that politics has too much influence over the selection process from top to bottom.
The fellow at St. Mary’s received his own MFA in 1997 and a BA in 1988—he’s likely not that old and hasn’t been kicking around in the academic world all that long.
Kyle: Comments don’t really reflect reader response. You should know that. But yeah, I agree. Certain post topics attract more attention than others. But I wouldn’t say all posts about stories, poems, essays, books, and writers yield less interest. Write about Tao or Josh and see what happens. Or lordy, write about Jonathan Safran Foer. That’ll get people buzzing.
Mike,
I don’t think people want to go to Paris as much as they want health insurance. They want to give back to young writers, be around other intellectuals, be able to go to the library at lunch, live in a college town. Jesus.
Am writing an article on this very topic so will be brief and try to piss all of you off in fewer than 400 words.
I’m annoyed by all of you. You’re [self-] imprisoned by
(1) the expectations from
(a) our self-sucking culture (going down the tubes) that values titles over substance (“”Rule, Britannia! rule the waves:/Britons never will be slaves.”) and
(b) an academic system now deeply based on consumerism (no one gives a fuck if you’ve published 2 or 10 books, or whether you’ve taught brilliantly for years; they want a degree because that means the degreed has already been indoctrinated into their consumerist protocol) and
(2) your expectations of intellectual standards, as if having an advanced degree somehow makes you more educated that the person who has chosen to educate her/himself based on curiosity and a desire to understand what it means/implies to be human before you die in a few decades — as shall all of us, you too, sweetmeat.
You have no courage. If you did you’d leave the fucking PhD/MFA/MA programs (as is your wont; secretly you know they’re anathema) and do menial or middle-brow work wherein you’ll find yourself abler to write far more than you would while teaching in an academic program that sucks you dry via committee meetings, course prep, grading* and pondering how to get Sean to *get it* even when Sean doesn’t *want* it. If you won’t/don’t step outside of the cultural imagination then ask yourself if your decision is based on ego (“The degree validates me as a human being.”) or rationality (“I want to teach because it pays sooooo well these days and is soooooo secure.”).
I want you all to look back to see what the great writers of the past centuries were “doing to earn” as they wrote their best writing. Having worked at a range of jobs, from secretary to college professor — I’d take the secretary any day because it gave me time and energy to write and read my best. By contrast, when I taught full-time at Kansas City Art Institute I wrote nothing of substance because I was overwhelmed with THE INSTITUTION.
If your ultimate goal is to be a professor, then have at it; you deserve what you get – endless meetings with dead wood who will envy every incremental success you reap.
But if you want to be a great writer, get the fuck out of the academy. Live in a foreign country where you don’t speak the language. Do something you find dangerous. Tackle the corporate world – but for only 8am-5pm. Or move to some godforsaken rural hellhole for a few years and eat breakfast at the local diner, listening over and over again to why Bobby thinks Rush Limbaugh is “the smarterst guy in the whorl”.
Finally, if you choose to continue your education, by god, you had better pay back your fucking school loans to the last penny so someone else has at least a choice to go hither or yon.
I think you can divide reader response into three categories:
1. Quantity of people who are reading a particular post.
2. Intensity of response.
3. Quality of the experience of the reader while parsing a post.
I do think that the first two are to some extent measurable. We have page-hit stats for the first, and the comments section might be a good gauge of the second. The third isn’t a function of “how many people” stuff, and I think that’s maybe what you mean by reader response.
Even the responses to Tao or Josh or Jonathan Safran Foer seem most often to have more to do with literary politics than they do with the actual work. With Tao, it’s usually talk about how he uses the Internet to generate publicity rather than how he appropriates the style of Ann Beattie to newish ends. With Josh, it’s bitching about his strident critical stance or about the attention he garnered for a thousand page book rather than an engagement with the book itself. With Jonathan Safran Foer, it’s usually some kind of high-powered jealousy — tonally, it’s: “Why is that guy so successful! I’m as good as him and my endings are better and my prose less precious! It must be because he was a student of Joyce Carol Oates and went to the Ukraine and wrote about the Holocaust!”
There have been some really beautiful posts here — by you, by Blake, by Justin Taylor and others — about books, about craft, about poems, but they never do garner the readership of the other thing.
And yet Kyle, our conversation featured on your part, the bland suggestion that one should just work harder if one wants an academic position—after all, if one is a candidate of sufficient quality, all the politics in the world won’t matter.
The problem with this position is that it smacks of what women and people of color were told in the days before Affirmative Action: “Yes, you have to work twice as hard to get half as much, so work four times as hard!” The solution, imperfect as it was, is Affirmative Action, and that came about because the complaints about race and gender prejudice became impossible to ignore.
So if you are interested in knowing What Is To Be Done, here’s the minimalist program: in a discussion about the politics of faculty hiring, don’t diminish or minimize the influence of politics with phrases such as, “There are plenty of variables you can’t control, and these are largely political variables. But there is one variable you can control…” or that “[MFA programs] can’t be the worst choice a person can make if they want to make themselves into a writer…”
The question Lily asks is “Is it [an MFA] worth it?” and the answer is, for those seeking jobs after getting substantial publications is, “Depends. How are you at making friends and influencing people? Forget about writing and publishing because you’ll have to do twice as much as your gladhanding competitors to get a job that pays more than Starbucks.”
Nick, what my response implied most was that you should work harder, period. That’s your job as a writer, to put your head down and do the work. It may or may not get you what you want on the teaching market, but it won’t hurt you there, and it might help. That’s not a head-in-the-sand position.
Your position seems to be that politics is the only thing that matters. That’s as naive as the position that politics doesn’t matter at all. Both are factors in the awarding of teaching jobs.
The reason the PhD is replacing the MFA has less to do with the number of MFAs and more to do with writers being housed in English departments and who is doing the hiring.
If you look at the ways some ads are written, they’ll ask for fiction writing and Rennassance lit, or some combo that just doesn’t make sense. It’s what they think they need, or who just left. Many of the lit phd’s who are hired in without pubs when they are young, the dean and dept chair – they may not really understand the writing program universe.
At my U if you have an MFA the pay is low and you would always be looking to leave. A lot of places you’d teach one or two cw and two or three lit or composition. You’ll see ads that say PhD preferred for this reason.
The other thing going on is the growth of nontenure full-time jobs. The interview process is less rigorous, you can make a living and get lots of teaching exp. So new MFAs are competing with folks who have been writing and teaching a lot longer.
Lily, I was pleased to publish your work earlier this year and frankly, just on your work alone it is nuts that your applications haven’t been taken more seriously. You’re not every writer and your particular personal response is informed by your family situation, of course, but your predicament is an issue for every quality writer seeking employment in creative writing programs.
No, I agree with you.
I appreciate comments most when they show that the commenter actually read the whole post. This is true for the comments on this post. Everyone is riled up and engaged. Whew!
How is that working out for you, Debra? Because I’ve never heard of you or your work.
Here is a partial list of American writers who have done their time in the academy: Denis Johnson, Katherine Anne Porter, Marilynne Robinson, Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, Jhumpa Lahiri. Are you slugging it out like them?
I don’t think your theory is helping you as much as you think it is. I think you’re frustrated because no one is paying attention to you, so soon you will write a screed and get a lot of attention for five minutes on the Internet. Will anyone read your stories or poems after that? I doubt it. Your tone is as annoying as what you are accusing others of. I don’t comment here much, but you really pissed me off.
I don’t comment here much but I commented on this post a number of times because
1. I had a Gchat discussion with Lily about the post before it went up.
2. The post ends with an explicit appeal for comments in the form of the questions Lily asks of the reader.
I bet 2 is a very important factor in the number of comments, or at least the number of commenters.
Need some attention this evening, do you?
Nick, I hadn’t thought about it that way, but that’s a very good point.
Is that what you tell your students? “Work harder” and that’s the beginning and end of it? I sure hope not, because that’s not very good advice.
As far as what my position “seems to be” I recommend reading my comments over once or twice and locating specific passages where I said or implied that politics are the ONLY thing that matters. You’ll see that your supposition is incorrect. All I’ve been pointing out is that politics are a major factor in selection choices and shouldn’t be. You say to don’t disagree, and yet for a number of posts now you’ve somehow managed to find all sorts of things to disagree with.
you give rural areas a raw deal. you don’t seem very open-minded for a person who is decrying the educational system as ultimately stifling.
hmmm i’m not counting on it… my life is a mess right now (huge family conflict, mom just had a suicide attempt) and i abruptly had to go to FL to take care of things… i’ve got like 1 day to finish the application and none of my stuff is ready…i’m lacking the will and mental clarity to pull it together but i will submit it anyway because i have an application waiver. i would like thalia field to be my mentor
Nick, can you define “good publications”?
I don’t think this is that black and white – you seem to think that getting a creative writing job is a matter of “politics” – what does that mean?
The reason I suggested that the “successful writing” teacher might be an adjunct is that those jobs are easier to get. They are sometimes competitive, but they are not that competitive. What school even teaches a class called “habits of successful writers”?
I’m not disagreeing that you’ve seen some teachers who are, in your opinion, unqualified, who may even be unqualified, however the majority of job openings that I’ve seen recently have been filled by people who I perceive to be at least minimally qualified, if by minimum qualifications we mean a book and a degree. Because you and I cannot personally evaluate every CW teacher, I think it’s fair to say that while your experience has been bad, it’s not necessarily true that *every* job goes to somebody for “political” reasons. I’m not even sure what you mean by that.
Perhaps I was overly reductive in characterizing your position. Certainly I feel like you were reductive in characterizing mine.
What do I tell my students? I tell them that the system is deeply flawed, that the best people don’t always get the jobs, that the disparity in available jobs and qualified candidates creates a desperate situation, that nothing is guaranteed you no matter what, and that the system needs an overhaul. Then some of them say the same thing I said, which is I’m going to try to do it anyway. Then I say, “Then put your head down, keep your eye on the writing, make your writing the best it can be, and don’t give up.”
I don’t see how that is such bad advice, as it engages directly with the situation that a person like my student, or Lily, or even me — any of us — find ourselves in. We don’t have sufficient power to change the system we want to join. We have the power to control one thing: The quality of our own work. And although the system is flawed, and although the best people don’t always get the jobs, sometimes people get hired because their work validates them, and a committee works in good faith and hires them on the basis of that.
I don’t see what’s wrong with that advice.
You write this: Or move to some godforsaken rural hellhole for a few years and eat breakfast at the local diner, listening over and over again to why Bobby thinks Rush Limbaugh is “the smarterst guy in the whorl”.
While being annoyed by people who seem to be valuing degrees over self-education? Clearly you’ve established your own hierarchy.
Anyway, who on here has suggested that a degree is the ‘only way’ or placed value on a degree versus real world experience?
I worked a ‘9-5’ job for many years, and while I valued the experience, I prefer grad school. So what if that makes me institutionalized – no more so than any other institution, for sure, and I certainly have a lot more time to read and write than I did when I was working in the ‘real world.’ Just because it didn’t work for you doesn’t mean you have to shit on those who choose that path.
no, if you see “fiction writing + ren. lit.” the general assumption would be there is an inside candidate with those exact qualifications.
it’s because this is the shit that puts food on our tables is why we’re all amped up
I understand. I’m in the same boat.
“Work harder” isn’t necessarily the method by which one makes one’s writing the best it can be of course. What does “harder” even mean in the context of artistic production? More revisions? Less? Writing more and throwing a lot of it out? Stopping writing entirely for five years to retire to the local library and read everything in it?
“Work harder” isn’t good advice because it’s null advice, along the lines of “believe in yourself.”
Also, what makes you think we don’t have the power to change the system?
All right, Nick, you tell me: How will all the people who don’t make the budgets, serve on the hiring committees, fund the colleges from statehouses or philanthropic purses, make legislation, or serve on Boards of Trustees of universities change the system? If the answer is some kind of mass political mobilization, (1) I don’t think there’s really the political will for that, (2) if I was going to give my life to that, I’d probably focus on more important issues such as environmental sustainability, poverty in our inner cities, the plight of the Third World, or nuclear disarmament, and (3) what I’ve chosen to give my life to, for better or worse, is writing prose, not political action.
If I find myself in a position of power sufficient to bring change, certainly I will do so. For now, I simply find myself trying to hold onto a teaching position that allows me to feed my family and buys me some time to write. The most likely way out, for me, short of winning the lottery or unexpectedly finding one of my books has become a bestseller, is to continue to work on the books I am writing and make them the best books I can. Toward that end, I will continue to work harder, revise more intentionally, read with attention to what other writers are doing that might inform what I am doing, and put the necessary hours in the seat to get all that work done. That’s not “believe in yourself.” That’s: “Work.”
I’m really scratching my head at the intensity of your response to this idea.
Are you really asking what “politics” means? Because if you really are asking that because you don’t know, then my obligation is just to stop responding to your comments entirely. Are you a human being? Do you live in a social environment of any sort, or is there WiFi on the Moon now?
Also, what a good publication is only a little less obvious—is the publication or publisher competitive? Does the publication actually have some sort of audience other than would-be submitters (in the case of journals) or some actual presence in the marketplace, or does it exist only as a “tenure farm”? Are the publications based on quid pro quo, mentor-student relationships, or on some conjunction of quality, cultural importance, and profitability?
As far as what school might teach something about successful writers, given that Columbia recently handed over its MFA students to be fleeced by James Frey’s dubious book-packaging business, one useful answer is “Not nearly enough of them,” though the more accurate answer is that such workshops are occasionally found in low-residency MFA programs, which tend to be more practically minded than their traditional counterparts.
And of course, nobody ever said that *every* job goes to someone for political reasons. You’re the second person to try that tactic, and it’s a little embarrassing that people supposedly so well-educated go for such obvious rhetorical chicanery. Are YOU saying that the selection process for MFA faculty is *absolutely perfect*? Of course not; I’m just treating this conversation seriously enough for now not to hint that you are.
There’s a pretty large excluded middle between “do nothing, for you are powerless” and “mass political mobilization”, though of course there ARE political mobilizations over curriculum and faculty hiring issues in colleges all the time, if not quite comprised of people filling the streets.
One thing to do is what you happen to be soaking in right this very minute: talk about these issues in a popular public forum and when talking about them don’t play defense for the politicized hiring system.
As far as “work harder”, it is just meaningless. You’re revising more intentionally, reading closely, and writing a lot. And then let’s say that indeed your books fail utterly, critically and financially. Did you not “work hard” enough? Would nine hours of seat-in-chair would have been better than seven? Did you not read closely enough? Was there some book you skipped? Was your last submission sent in one draft short?
yuck
“an academic system now deeply based on consumerism (no one gives a fuck if you’ve published 2 or 10 books, or whether you’ve taught brilliantly for years; they want a degree because that means the degreed has already been indoctrinated into their consumerist protocol)”–Debra Di Blasi
________________
Um, you obviously enjoy making things up. In CW, publication is still the most important part of a candidate’s package.
No one is getting hired for grad-level, tenure track jobs in fiction or poetry without book publications.
I would argue, correctly, that the *majority* of people you’re talking about — folks without strong pubs (“no particular bibliography,” whatever the hell that means) — entered those positions at a time when the CW job market was a *vastly* different organism. What you’re talking about — insinuating, really — is something that doesn’t exist: i.e. “people who have done virtually nothing” not only fill “so many of the jobs” but are continuing to fill so many of the jobs. You have no evidence to back this up and have fun looking. Nowadays it is the exception to the rule when someone with “no particular bibliography” snatches up one of the few available jobs; discussion boards and rumor mills go crazy when this happens. If someone without at least one book, one book under contract at a major national press, or at least a couple-few books with smaller presses (not to mention an MFA, usually from a top 50, if not a top 10, program) lands a TT job at an MFA-granting school, it is fairly shocking, and the general assumption is either a) internal candidate / spousal affiliation; or b) total fucking fluke. Of course politics are involved in every hire, but when you’ve got 200 “qualified” applicants for most every available job, it is clearly a buyer’s market.
And Kyle is right, a multiple home-run hitter like Percy will get interviews at many of the schools to which he applies, not because of “politics” but because of the home runs. But of course in CW parlance “politics” has come to mean, essentially, everything that isn’t the home run, everything other than the actual fact of the ball passing the fence. “Politics” may now refer to the flight of the ball, its trajectory, who caught it in the stands….
no i think not because of 2 but bc our kids need to eat. also bc we all believe that some sort of oath of secrecy obtains to academic job hunt misc. and so very few people ever get a chance to talk about it in a public forum and so covet the opport., not unlike rape victims meeting other rape victims for the first time.
Nick, I’m just curious about your definition of politics and good publications to get some sense of how you envision these not-qualified teacher/writers actually got their jobs, to come to some understanding of how, in your view, your “habits of successful writers” teacher landed her job, what she did, politically, to get her job. You seem to be making an argument that somehow politics is more of a force than qualifications, however we define them, and I’m countering that if we look at recent data about who has been hired in TT academic jobs, it looks like degrees and books are the norm; perhaps some political intrigue is behind all of these hires; all I’m asking for is quantifiable proof, or even quantifiable evidence, that that’s the case. In my experience, the people who have gotten jobs got them because they were dedicated writers and teachers and were good matches for the departments in which they were hired. So you’ve had some shitty teachers, that happens; all I’m asking you to do is back up your claims. I’m not so naive to think that politics isn’t a factor, but I’m not sure the fantasy that english departments are so full of political intrigue that qualified candidates don’t land jobs in favor of politically motivated hires. The reason I asked you to define politics is because, I’d like you to describe a scenario in which somebody was hired for “political reasons” who was obviously not qualified for the job. Did they sleep with somebody? Were they the dean’s daughter? Were they blackmailing the search committee chair? Did they ascribe to a politically favorable aesthetic?
I work for my (college town) municipality as a parking lot attendant & get great benefits for me & my family. I write profusely, run a small lit mag, I’m around “intellectuals”, I both give & receive benefits from the arts/writers community, and because I work evenings I’m able to spend hours & hours at the library if I want (I don’t). I guess I just don’t see why so many pursue a career in academia when, according to everyone I’ve ever heard, it’s a pretty terrible place with terrible pay & full of pompous assholes. Well, maybe that’s the problem, birds of a feather? It just seems easy to me: get away from what you hate. And if you don’t hate it, embrace it like a unicorn that really exists, really.
I think part of it, Kyle is that not everyone has read the books, etc. we post about so there’s not much they can say until they read those books, etc. themselves. Topics like literary politics or MFAs or submissions or editing or whatever are topics more readers have the immediate knowledge with which to participate in the conversation.
I suspect you are overly impressed with the idea of “a book.” (Since you’re accusing me of having a “fantasy”, I’ll return the favor and presume you haven’t published very much at all.) A book doesn’t necessarily mean much especially given book publication via poetry contests, and the new breed of micropresses.
Politics refers very simply to the influences on decision-making that go beyond qualifications and even the basics of collegiality—people hiring their pals, people burying the applications of their rivals, quid pro quo (you published me in Generic Quarterly, I’ll publish you in Blah Blah Review, and when one of us needs a job…), making selections based on maintaining a balance of terror in the department (who gets to be a “big dog”—not the new kid!) hiring decisions based on marriages, etc. “Good matches”, are of course, a black box. Why did someone with ten books and five years of teaching experience get passed over for someone with no book publications? Well, I suppose that first person just wasn’t a “good match”; after all, someone with ten books might make the existing faculty feel bad about their own output. You call that a fantasy, but what exactly are you going on here? The “data” you point to without actually citing only tells you who gets hired, not who was passed over for that slot to be filled.
So when Kansas State hired Katherine Karlin (whom I don’t know at all; this is not a slam on her), who has published at a number of second-tier journals, how many applicants who have published books and stories of greater import and in greater number were passed over? I’m sure she’s a “good teacher”—but well, how is that operationalized? Ditto Charles McLeod at WIU—no books, but two forthcoming and in the UK only (a much smaller marketplace than the US market for books). Are we to presume that nobody who applied at WIU had a more impressive resume than his? Halina Duraj got a job at USD based partially on a few stories and coming in as a finalist for a contest for unpublished novels. Was her stuff really so much better than that of the other applicants (with “a book”, oh “a book”!) that she, who has yet to publish a book, will be working with students to create book-length theses? Lily already has a more impressive resume than these writers, who I am sure are fine writers and can run a workshop well, but…why not Lily, who has published more widely, and why them? Is it because she looks young? Because she made the mistake of appearing in commercial publications, which intimidated search committees, or of not exclusively writing about the Asian-American experience? Did someone decide that there is “enough color” in the department to satisfy AA/EEOC and the students already? That is the stuff of “bad matches” and that’s utterly political.
It’s also a little silly to limit the discussion to TT positions, as visiting positions are very handy in eventually landing TT positions.
Keep beating down the door Lily. My colleague who came in with me at my university got her job in creative writing without a book. It really is a question of finding the right department (and, from what I’ve noticed, developing a secondary specialty).
Dude, why are you so pissy?
If you haven’t read anything by Cheryl Mittens, I can’t help you. I’m not sure why poetry presses and micropresses make having a book published not mean much. Yes, some POD presses publish a lot of books which certainly might suggest they aren’t good books, but then, some of the shittiest books I’ve read have been published by big presses and sold many of copies. I try to judge the book by the book, not by the press or the number of copies it has sold. I do not begrudge the success of the Twilight series, but I do not think those are good books.
Nick, have you actually read any of the work of the people you list (Charles McLeod, Halina Duraj, Katharine Karlin) or seen them teach? Are you suggesting that having lots of books should always win (as long as they are from presses that are “good”)? Have you interviewed them for a job?
I mentioned way up above there in this thread that my sources were informal – statistics from AWP, from the CW Jobs Wiki, personal experience. If you can provide even dubiously verifiable sources, rather than picking on three people you don’t know, I’m down. I don’t think we’re even really arguing about anything at this point – all I was saying was that I think the idea that most CW hires are politically motivated is untrue, that, in fact, the people who have gotten jobs in the last few years deserve them, and that the real problem is a lack of jobs and too many qualified applicants. It is a buyers (or hirers) market. I agree with you that politics play a role sometimes, but only because I’m told that it does – I’ve never actually observed it, and I’ve been close enough to a lot of hires in recent years to know this. Not discounting there aren’t politically motivated hires, but I think it happens less than you think.
Didn’t read the follow ups so I don’t know if anyone has said this — it is likely because this (and the literary community at large) is almost up to the neck in this whole MFA thing. Even if no one has the MFA or MA, they’re still a bunch around them that do and there is the towering of the MFAs and such over literature. So there are people upset about it, people that love it, and in general the literature itself gets lost in the hustle. I think it is a good example of the state of literature to a lot of people — either how frustrated they are that these degrees mean so much, or whether they have this degree and if it means something or whether they did it for the contacts, what is the point, there is a point, i didn’t waste my time — I mean damn, all this shit. And then a really good poem/story/nonfiction gets lost in the pages or never published or in the internet because it is regulated to a small circle of people who read only designated materials that have to do with MFA or non-MFA or whatever (not on purpose, but because they tend to run in particular circles) and… I don’t get it all really. But who am I? Just some random dude on the internet who has opinions, really.
Further – did Lily actually apply for those jobs that she so wrongfully didn’t get over McCleod/Duraj/Karlin? Have you seen her teach? Did you interview her for those jobs? I’m sorry to get all internet snarky on you, but I think you’re just making stuff up. I’m sure Lily will be fine – by her own admission, she’s being selective with the jobs she applies to. With so many nebulous factors (such as the hiring committee actually liking a candidates writing) it’s a matter of finding the right fit, and with 200+ applicants applying for most jobs, it takes time.
“You make a very good point about universities that have to fill jobs for both lit classes and writing classes. I’m sure that is quite frequent.”
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But really, that is the main point: a PhD just covers more bases. There are more of these kinds of jobs than jobs at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.
And the jobs at Iowa will always depend on publications first, degree second, so what’s the big deal?
Also, the idea that writers who make it in academia (i.e. land tenure-track gigs) are hiding from the “real world” is pretty ridiculous and doesn’t even make sense. The average person in academia has to work her ass off to make it and no one is going to work that hard unless she really wants to be in academia. I don’t know any academics–and I know quite a few–who aren’t completely devoted to their fields, who haven’t made all sorts of sacrifices to pursue their careers. Who the hell does all that in order to “hide” out?
Most of the writers I know in academia enjoy teaching; they view teaching as their day job.
I’ve lived in rural areas, as an adult. I drank beer with those guys who love Rush Limbaugh. I’ve had menial jobs. They produced their own kind of exhaustion that made it hard for me to write because I had to work two of them at a time. Not to buy fancy TVs but to pay rent. I’ve also worked cushy 8-5 office jobs and found myself exhausted in a whole other way by those. Mileage will vary. Not everyone who is in academia has always been here or lands here without knowing (through experience) what else is out there.
Debra Di Blasi is a great fiction writer. If you haven’t heard of her, you may try using Google. She’s written books, one of which I’ve read and taught (The Chronicles of Jiri Czech, published by Fiction Collective 2). She is also a publisher (of Jaded Ibis, publishing folks such as your truly, Davis Schneiderman, etc) and an artist.
Never “hearing” of someone is part of the problem.
I will never be “heard” of in comparison to Denis Johnson, Katherine Anne Porter, Marilynne Robinson, Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, Jhumpa Lahiri, etc. This does not make me bitter. It’s just the simple truth. My writing doesn’t have that kind of appeal. That also means that when I’m up for a job against any of these folks, I’m practically invisible, which is just the way life goes.
apologizes if it appeared i said you did. it’s a complaint i hear in the mfa discussion but on the internets and from folks in my program.
Thank, Kyle & Nick for nice words, but really, honestly, I know my post was whiny and I’m a big baby, but I also know that TT jobs are very competitive and there has to be a “fit” within the department. I’m a good teacher. I always get excellent evaluations, and I love teaching, but I’m no more qualified than almost every other candidate out there. I just have this super slick venue to vent.
This topic always makes the good people of HTMLGIANT go crazy, he says, as he reads the comments over his morning tea.
Glad you bring that up, Dawn. I have no great interest in teaching, but I’ve been toying with the idea of an MFA as a legitimate space and time to work on my novel and try to actually publish something. (I probably won’t, though–since in this economy, quitting your job is crazy-crazy and plus I’ve been told it would be suicide on my resume.) But I still think that if you’re young and can do it, why not even if you don’t plan on teaching? I’d look at it more as a learning experience than a track-type thing.
keep going guys, i want to see how short these lines will get. it is slowly turning from prose to poetry…. look at the end of the last part…
submission sent
in one draft
short?
that’s like some kind of new haiku type thing and i like it.
Don’t let it deter you from applying to MFA programs, Ashley, just don’t think of the MFA as something that will get you a job in the end–it’s time to read and write and befriend others who love reading and writing. Also, make sure somebody else pays for it.
If a fan caught it in the stands, wouldn’t that mean it was a home run? Er, unless it was a foul ball. (…)
I’d also like to see how bitchy it can get.
there are two commenters in this thread who are dissenters and both were ignored or dismissed. maybe they could have articulated their dissent more diplomatically or something, but their essential question remains–what does any of 95% of this have to do with art? yeah, it has to do with life, with jobs and food, the prereqs of art, but these aren’t art. the academy is one way of sacrificing for art. leaving it’s another.
Making the point that you can write best outside of academia is exactly as wrong as saying you can write best inside academia.
DuPont chemical worker. Mercedes plant worker. Landscaper. Registered Nurse. Professor. My last few jobs. I think I wrote about the same in all of them.
What kills me is that someone actually thinks a writer in academia has no life or experiences outside academia. Right. Again, the same logic could be argued a waitress has no life outside the restaurant, its “system,” etc.
bitchiness replying to bitchiness.
You really are funny—you describe a series of political decisions in your own life, (quick, operationalize “asshole”!) and then simply declare them to be apolitical. You insist that everyone hired these days has a book; I instantly find several who don’t, and you somehow blame me for using book publication as an essential criterion. That was your claim, not mine.
It’s also pretty funny that you think the “ass kissing” starts when one enters the job market. It starts long before that…well, for people who know how to work the system, anyway. Here’s a hint for job-seekers; make friends early, then it won’t be a matter of sending out your resumes to places you’ve never heard of.
At any rate, you’re right that this is a typical Internet discussion, as it involves one party (you) moving the goalposts of the argument and making appeals to ignorance. (If one can’t *know*…decisions *must* be apolitical?) and then ignoring the data you yourself insisted be examined.
At any rate, we can whip up tons of examples, whether it’s my pal who was told he wasn’t qualified to teach the courses he had actually been teaching for years at SUNY New Paltz, or the friend at Drexel with several books who was passed over for someone with a handwritten rejection from the New Yorker, or the full prof with several books who can’t even break into teaching at an MFA program and was passed over in favor of folks with no book publications…but clearly as you simply change the argument each time, Ms Mittens, there is no discussing anything with you.
You really are funny—you describe a series of political decisions in your own life, (quick, operationalize “asshole”!) and then simply declare them to be apolitical. You insist that everyone hired these days has a book; I instantly find several who don’t, and you somehow blame me for using book publication as an essential criterion. That was your claim, not mine.
It’s also pretty funny that you think the “ass kissing” starts when one enters the job market. It starts long before that…well, for people who know how to work the system, anyway. Here’s a hint for job-seekers; make friends early, then it won’t be a matter of sending out your resumes to places you’ve never heard of.
At any rate, you’re right that this is a typical Internet discussion, as it involves one party (you) moving the goalposts of the argument and making appeals to ignorance. (If one can’t *know*…decisions *must* be apolitical?) and then ignoring the data you yourself insisted be examined.
At any rate, we can whip up tons of examples, whether it’s my pal who was told he wasn’t qualified to teach the courses he had actually been teaching for years at SUNY New Paltz, or the friend at Drexel with several books who was passed over for someone with a handwritten rejection from the New Yorker, or the full prof with several books who can’t even break into teaching at an MFA program and was passed over in favor of folks with no book publications…but clearly as you simply change the argument each time, Ms Mittens, there is no discussing anything with you.
She might be a great fiction writer, but her argument is dumb and has all sorts of holes in it.
Also, it seems like your taking the above poster’s post out-of-context: the poster was responding to the idea that one would be more ambitious to write outside of academia.
Finally, unless you’re applying for a position at a top 20 MFA program, most of the folks you are up against for jobs are not this rockstar-ish. I just checked your profile and it says that you’re a visiting prof at a small liberal arts college in IN–these are the kinds of jobs you have to be willing to work until you get your chance.
plz define “art.” never encountered that term before.
Art are amphibians in the order Anura (meaning “tail-less”, from Greek an-, without + oura, tail), formerly referred to as Salientia (Latin salere (salio), “to jump”). Most art are characterized by a short body, webbed digits (fingers or toes), protruding eyes and the absence of a tail.
It seems like the only people who would make such an argument are the ones who don’t have any life experience of their own, the kinds who would actually advocate slumming, like a certain poster on this thread.
Feels weird reading this thread. I would like a teaching job someday though I might be happier in comp than CW, long-term (I see way more utility in it).
To me the idea that anybody gets to teach writing is sort of crazy and I can’t wrap my head around it enough to have any idea what “should” qualify one for a job in it. I spent most of my life believing I would work at the Wal Mart. Barely went to college. Glad I made that decision, but truth is I wrote most when I worked full-time at a day camp. When people are desperate to find time to write, unless they are parents I get sort of confused. (Which is why I won’t be a parent for a long time, if ever.)
This comment is not relevant. Like I said this subject makes me feels weird.
Yes, Nick – that’s why I asked for your definition of political. If you want to make the argument that the only factor in hiring a college professor should be the length of his or her CV, that’s fine, but in practice nobody makes decisions based solely on the perception of qualifications based on a CV or resume. If not hiring somebody because you don’t think he or she is a good fit for a department is political, then yes, personality/politics are a factor. Why even bother interviewing? You have convinced me. Longest CV wins!
*you’re
Soon the reply button will fall off the right side of the screen and the subthread will end!
*Dude, why are you so pissy?*
Lady, why are you so imperious, especially when you’re basically arguing…well, nothing. I looked at the same data you did—data that led you to conclude that it’s now nigh impossible to be hired for a tenure track position without a book, and found several significant counterexamples (of a small number of hires in the first place). Those names came right out of the CW wiki. Did you just skim over them?
If your “informal” data fall apart the second someone else looks at them, then it suggests something about confirmation bias on your part. I’m not picking on anyone; I am looking at the information you told me to look at and found it wanting. I’ve been close to several hires too and to a number of people who haven’t gotten jobs and my conclusion is that politics is a major factor in hiring. (See also the subthread between me and Kyle Minor; at least he isn’t insisting that politics is a near-irrelevancy, he just thinks there’s nothing one can do about it.)
Right. The third option is to not work at anything but your art. No job. This is the Cormac McCarthy approach, and why he lived many years in 40 dollar a month motel situations, etc. It’s up to the individual.
All this talk does not give me excitement for May 2012 when I have to re-enter the market. I guess I wonder what people do (those who have MFAs) that do not go on to teach? Besides PhDs.
Regardless of job market, I still think the MFA is for writing. No one who’s paying any attention at all believes they’ll get a job easily when they’re finished with the MFA. Too many people, sadly, do not write while in graduate programs. Perhaps this is only a skewed example of my own experience, but a lot of MFAers in my program write only to hand something in for class. Interactions might go something like this:
“Hey, want to get a beer?”
“Nah, man, I’m writing today.”
“Oh. Is it for a class?”
“No.”
“Then, what is it for?”
Silence….
I wonder with these folks what they actually believe they’re doing in the program. Is this kind of MFA student common at other programs? Or, does the endless November-April snow make people more lazy up here?
What am I making up, specifically? The names of the people who got hired without books? The fact that academic politics even exists? It’s rather ridiculous for you to claim that your “informal” data tells a story and when specific objections are lodged against what you’re saying, both with easily Googlable examples and then with specific names, to whine that I’m the one making things up. If you think “nebulous factors” don’t include politics, I have no idea what to tell you but to keep on dreamin’.
sorry, do not see how 5% of this pertains to art
That’s interesting that you say that, Lily. I think a good number of people who just want to be writers go to the MFA, don’t they? I mean, of course they end up teaching and doing other things they didn’t really mean to do when they set out, but they still want to be writers.
i agree. eating out of dumpsters really does not help one to write better stories, take it from me. lately i eat in the cafeteria with the other cw profs and my stories are much the better for it.
Wow! That shocks me. The people here (Alabama) write like crazy people. They don’t write for class, instead they turn in a sample of what they are working on for themselves. And when they aren’t writing fiction or poetry, their writing a blog…
Of course, they drink like fish too.
I grew up in *very* rural Missouri, visit it often, and know it well.
Shit, I do not even as much as I’d like to. But that’s because of teaching/writer’s block (if you consider that a real thing).
I imagine most people at major writing programs write like crazy and I suppose my experience is more a result of the school I am at than anything. There isn’t much of a “community” here, either. But I digress.
I stopped reading at Katherine Karlin… PhD/MFA… Secondary focus in theater criticism… Anthologized in the Pushcarts… A hand full of top tier journals publications…
She’s not a rock star by any means, but she’s not a dud either. A lot of places want the flexibility of a secondary discipline and a PhD. It’s not that hard to figure out.
The system is flawed, but all systems are. The politics are not nearly as hardwired as you make them out to be though. Knowing someone will not get you a job without other things on your CV. (Also -Add in the fact that creative writing is a weird fit in the accountability obsessed academy and you have a recipe for a shift in focus to PhDs.)
Not to mention Iowa will not hire someone in a TT job unless they already have tenure from a different institution.
I think and hope a lot of people are paying attention to Jaded Ibis.
I liked your post, Lily. It’s some of the same things I’ve been thinking about lately. I think you’re right in terms of maybe this also being a genre thing. It does appear to be more difficult (from my outside observation, I haven’t really been in the job market, since I don’t even have the one terminal degree) for fiction writers published on small presses to have to compete for the few full-time jobs that become available, because they’re competing against writers published by the trades and who sometimes write more market forms. It does *seem* at least that poets published on small presses with the MFA, or I don’t know, maybe even the Ph.D., have a better shot at the full-time tenure-track gigs, with publications.
you seem to be suggesting that the fact that those three without books got jobs is somehow telling about the state of the cw job market in general. you are pointing to the exceptions in order to posit a general rule. i agree that “politics” is a factor in most every search, if only because every search committee is composed of multiple human beings with competing interests. (for example, some programs simply do not want someone whose successes will threaten current faculty.) the thing that *generally tends* to get people tt jobs tho is a combination of 1) books with major houses, 2) mfa from top-tier school; and 3) good interview skillz.
oh, haha, I also grew up in a very rural area in Missouri. sorry, I was feeling confrontational last night, not so much today. should try to keep a tighter lid on my commenting habits at night.
Develop a terrible drinking problem & write.
classic
I love the classic internet argument – nobody can, but we keep on going, anyway… I’m not saying politics don’t exist. I just think you’re using them as a scapegoat, using examples of which you don’t have any real knowledge. All I’m arguing is that it’s a very tough job market — far more qualified applicants than positions, so it’s not easy for anybody right now.
I know several people personally who have been hired last year without books, but none of them were political hires. They are talented writers, they are talented teachers, they have secondary specialties. If you look at the ‘stats’, yes, people get hired without books, and maybe this is baffling to you – maybe rightly baffling – and the ONLY solution you can come up with is that they must have somehow been asskissers, or politically motivated hires. I’ll describe a scenario to you from my ‘real world’ experience. I used to regularly hire people (outside academia) who could, one might argue, be quantifiably assessed via a resume. You look at a skill set, a list of accomplishments, some degrees, and you should, in theory, be able to decide based on that who was ‘qualified’ for the job. When I started out, this seemed easy enough, but the more experience I had, the more people I interviewed, I realized that I had to actually work with these people and that despite what a resume said the best way to hire people was to assess their skills, yes, but also to make a call on whether or not they would be a good fit for the department, for the company, and that became as big a factor as a list of skills on a resume. I had to work with these people, after all, and found that the best employees couldn’t be judged by their resumes alone – it had more to do with who was going to do a good job, yes, but also who did I want to be around all day and who did the rest of team want to be around all day. I’ve worked with plenty of assholes and while it would have been easy to hire the first resume that came across my desk with a list of qualifications, it was much better to be patient and wait for somebody who could both do the job AND be somebody who was good to work with. Academia is not unique. I also witnessed time and time again people getting ruffled because they perceived a promotion or hire to be ‘poltical’ – oh, he must have fucked the boss, oh she must have kissed somebody’s ass – and being on both sides of it, it was rarely the case. People don’t know the whole story, and it’s easy to decide that it MUST be politics – in the same way that you don’t know the whole story about the people who were hired last year without books. You have even less data about those hires, and don’t even know if Lily was specifically passed over for any reason. And, why would would anybody want to spend years in an English dept where they weren’t a good fit? It’s easy to blame some nebulous bogeyman like ‘politics’ when the reality is depressing — that there are WAY too many people looking for jobs and far too few jobs for them. I don’t know Lily, but I suspect her problem is one of tenacity rather than one of ass-kissing.
As an aside, how would one go about kissing the asses (or other political maneuvering of your choice) of the hiring committees of the jobs for which you are applying? Let’s say I’m applying for 30 jobs (not unrealistic), many of which are at universities I have never heard of, or never visited. I get an interview, let’s say, at Small Private College University – do I write them ass-kissing letters? Do I call them up? Or is it just a matter of luck that I have personally greased the wheels of at least a few of the hiring committee members by tracking them down at last year’s AWP, before I knew the position existed, and bought them drinks (among the 7000 participants at the conference)? Or is it just a matter of hiring committees preferring lap dogs and easy allies in the interview? My experience has been that college professors are no better or worse than professionals in any field – you certainly see politically motivated hires, but my experience has been they’re the exception, rather than the rule.
So, to recap: yes, there are politics in English departments, but it’s an extremely competitive job market right now – it’s a matter of patience.
Why don’t you just write if you want to write. A degree will not make you a better writer it will only feed your own ego. Write (and read) to be a better writer.
Glad you bring that up, Dawn. I have no great interest in teaching, but I’ve been toying with the idea of an MFA as a legitimate space and time to work on my novel and try to actually publish something. (I probably won’t, though–since in this economy, quitting your job is crazy-crazy and plus I’ve been told it would be suicide on my resume.) But I still think that if you’re young and can do it, why not even if you don’t plan on teaching? I’d look at it more as a learning experience than a track-type thing.
Yes. When I was a full-time server, I was not, like, revved up to go home and write after a double, sometimes triple shift. What I did was sit at the bar with the kitchen staff and other servers and get blotto. That’s how I dealt with my feelings about that job at the time. I didn’t feel ennobled and artsitic. I felt tired and hungover and always always broke. The financial anxiety was paralyzing.
I quit.
I don’t seem to be suggesting that at all. I was told repeatedly to look at some data, I did, and found a significant number of recent counterexamples.
You’ve also made a pretty basic error, confusing satisficing with optimizing—it’s not that there are tons of people without books getting jobs (though there are plenty) it is that people with lesser records are getting jobs and people with more significant records are not. Your parenthetical remark about threatening current faculty is one of the many many common issues with MFA faculty searches.
I’d also take specific objection to the accuracy of point 1—unless you consider university presses and minor poetry houses as “major houses.”
The point is that MFA program searches are more likely to be politicized than other job searches, even within the academy.
Though I can understand wanting to teach, and enjoying teaching, I kind of love this post, as this is the route I would rather go–minus the drinking. It just seems like a good idea to step away from the entanglements of academia if you want to be a writer and if those entanglements are distracting you from writing. There are many things I love about academia, but most of them came from being a student. I have no interest in getting a real teaching job and being chained to one place by tenure. I guess I value freedom more than steadiness of work. The MFA was great, but I would rather not get a job related to teaching writing.
If you think the shift in focus to PhDs is anything other than politics in action, I have no idea how you define the word “politics.”
And again, the point isn’t that there are many grotesquely unqualified people running around with TT jobs, it is that the more qualified are often passed over in favor of the less qualified. In any other field of endeavor, sticking with people whose qualifications meet some minimum rather than approaching some maximum, is a recipe for disaster.
You really are funny—you describe a series of political decisions in your own life, (quick, operationalize “asshole”!) and then simply declare them to be apolitical. You insist that everyone hired these days has a book; I instantly find several who don’t, and you somehow blame me for using book publication as an essential criterion. That was your claim, not mine.
It’s also pretty funny that you think the “ass kissing” starts when one enters the job market. It starts long before that…well, for people who know how to work the system, anyway. Here’s a hint for job-seekers; make friends early, then it won’t be a matter of sending out your resumes to places you’ve never heard of.
At any rate, you’re right that this is a typical Internet discussion, as it involves one party (you) moving the goalposts of the argument and making appeals to ignorance. (If one can’t *know*…decisions *must* be apolitical?) and then ignoring the data you yourself insisted be examined.
At any rate, we can whip up tons of examples, whether it’s my pal who was told he wasn’t qualified to teach the courses he had actually been teaching for years at SUNY New Paltz, or the friend at Drexel with several books who was passed over for someone with a handwritten rejection from the New Yorker, or the full prof with several books who can’t even break into teaching at an MFA program and was passed over in favor of folks with no book publications…but clearly as you simply change the argument each time, Ms Mittens, there is no discussing anything with you.
Yes, Nick – that’s why I asked for your definition of political. If you want to make the argument that the only factor in hiring a college professor should be the length of his or her CV, that’s fine, but in practice nobody makes decisions based solely on the perception of qualifications based on a CV or resume. If not hiring somebody because you don’t think he or she is a good fit for a department is political, then yes, personality/politics are a factor. Why even bother interviewing? You have convinced me. Longest CV wins!
Nick, I love this thread. “More qualified” and “less qualified” are not quantifiable. You seem to want to equate publishing with “more qualified” – that’s just one part of it. And, ‘sticking with people whose qualifications meet some minimum rather than approaching some maximum’ is not a recipe for disaster – I don’t know what you do for a living, maybe you don’t work with people, and that’s okay, I’m not trying to pick a fight, but “qualifications” assumes that there is some assignable metric that can judge creativity, personality, ability to communicate, and drive that can determine a person’s success in whatever endeavor they choose. If that’s politics, then fine, but no successful company (or department) has ever hired solely based on degrees or a resume – that’s part of it, for sure, but accomplishments don’t tell you everything. I would rather work with somebody who is qualified, yes, but who is a good teacher, able to communicate, etc. If writing was the only thing a professor got paid to do, then yes, things like teaching/communication/affability wouldn’t be factors, but these are teaching jobs.
Cheryl, if “more qualified” and “less qualified” were truly unquantifiable, then you’d have no problem attending a program where the faculty were chosen by lot.
Nor did I ever say that the longest CV should win—after all, we were talking about “good” publications yesterday. These days, any moron with a copy of HTML for Dummies can start a literary journal. But if you dream that in the great black box of “departmental fit” is devoid of politics, you’re just hopeless naive.
Gee, if only there was some method by which the best candidates can be hired! If only there was an entire field of endeavor that was concerned with these questions! Gosh, guess not. Ah well, soon we can all get back to wondering why there are so few people of color in this or that department, or why someone’s spouse always seems to get the last-minute job, or why successful writers with lots of experience are being passed over by exceedingly minor writers who won’t ever outshine the current departmental superstars…
Jackie – I agree with Lily. Brown would be fools not to take you. Have you considered School of the Art Institute as well? I know people who have good experiences there, and it’s very experimental/intellectual/interdisciplinary, from what I’ve heard.
I think and hope a lot of people are paying attention to Jaded Ibis.
I liked your post, Lily. It’s some of the same things I’ve been thinking about lately. I think you’re right in terms of maybe this also being a genre thing. It does appear to be more difficult (from my outside observation, I haven’t really been in the job market, since I don’t even have the one terminal degree) for fiction writers published on small presses to have to compete for the few full-time jobs that become available, because they’re competing against writers published by the trades and who sometimes write more market forms. It does *seem* at least that poets published on small presses with the MFA, or I don’t know, maybe even the Ph.D., have a better shot at the full-time tenure-track gigs, with publications.
What if it makes you a better writer because you get years to focus on your writing? What if your MFA provides a scholarship and a stipend? So, for years, you write and read. That’s all you do.
That wouldn’t help an artist?
What r you quitting?
my point exactly, sm, though you may not yet realize it. I’m over 50. Hindsight may not be 20-20 but it gives one a wealth from which to weigh.
how does one arrive at “eating out of dumpsters”?
It doesn’t really deter me, just makes me want to be very sure of my reasons for wanting to go. I should have been doing that anyway. Sometimes I get an idea in my head about what I want and it takes me a while to ask myself why I want it. Also, I could never pay for it myself so that won’t even be an issue. Thanks, Mary.
I’m still figuring that out. At the risk of sounding my age, I’d assumed that if I wanted to live my life as a writer, I’d have to get the MFA.
i might not get my app in…i dont even have my statement and i have to submit it tomorrow. SAI is expensive i think… i am only considering schools with generous financial packages… which is why i’m only applying to 2 schools, ha. but i’m obviously not even really serious about going now. i just realized renee gladman is at brown…. maybe i can try again next year or something
Makes sense to me. And worked out just fine, personally. I can’t imagine a worse place for a writer to be–if they really want to write, and have it mean something to people at large–than in a university.
Makes sense to me. And worked out just fine, personally. I can’t imagine a worse place for a writer to be–if they really want to write, and have it mean something to people at large–than in a university.
Kyle, I am Giulio Mozzi’s translator. Should I be able to find your e-mail from this site? I’m not very computer-wise…
–Liz
Lily,
Of course you’re right. The MFA has become increasingly less valued. Maybe that’s appropriate (some MFAs aren’t very rigorous, that’s for sure), although I find it depressing to think that schools require PhDs in creative writing in order to hire: the idea of being a “doctor of creative writing”…
Well. Good luck to you. I’m not persuaded that my own choice to teach on “the plains” was such a good idea; pretty damned far from, well, everything…
–Liz