The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

According to this survey, the results of which were posted last week on this blog, the University of Minnesota's MFA program in creative writing is the 3rd-best in the nation. Go gophers! Far as I'm concerned, because Iowa's Writers' Workshop will probably never be knocked from its deserved pedestal, we've functionally got the 2nd-best position on the list. The ranking is a vast 11th seed last year, and 26th in 2007.

Michigan came in at 2nd, and Indiana is in a tie for 4th, giving the Big-10 the gold, silver, bronze, and poop-colored ribbons, which they hand out. Go...corn!

I'm a little skeptical of the criteria, though. The data wasn't based at all on strength of recent alumni, strength of faculty, nor what current or former students thought of their programs - not directly, at least. Rather, the results were gleaned from the opinions of MFA applicants, based on which schools prospective students planned to apply to, had already applied to, or hypothetically would apply to if applying at all. ("No nonagenarian haiku masters were asked for their opinion," we are assured.)

The reasoning is that applying for an MFA is ‘an immersive process,' and therefore applicants know more about creative writing programs than any other demographic, because presumably they're doing their research. Still, I wonder if factors aside from strength-of-program played a role. Like, if schools with better funding but less impressive staff got better slots; even though Columbia University has a phenomenal faculty list, I would never apply because it costs $40,716/year, which is hard to recoup for hack writers such as myself - and there are a lot of free programs out there. Did two-year programs have an edge over three-year programs? And so on.

While I absolutely agree with the premise that applicants know a lot about where they're applying, the question comes down to this: How can someone who's never been in an MFA program judge which one is best? At most, one may be able to judge which program is best for oneself, which takes us in to murky, subjective territory...How can there be an overall best if there are different bests for different people? Mom?

Nevertheless, it's not surprising that the U of M should be rising through the ranks. The faculty is top-notch, with David Treuer and Charles Baxter anchoring the fiction squad. (Baxter especially would make, I assume, an exquisite guide. He's got on of the best-regarded how-to books in the trade - Burning Down the House  - and even his fiction, if read closely, can unlock secrets to structure and style. I gush.) On the poetry side - though this poll was for creative writing, why not throw this in? - there are the very worthy Michael Dennis Browne and Patricia Hampl. Recent grads seem to be getting their work into the public sphere. And, of course, the Twin Cities are pretty friggin' sweet.

So yay. Now, whether MFA programs are worthwhile in the first place is another issue. The fear is that they churn out a certain, formulaic sort of author, whose books are all clockwork and no passion. One of my former profs has advised, "The best way to do an MFA program is to do it when you are ready to write a novel-- in fact, when you are hip-deep in one and want two or three years to work on it. Then you can come out and have a book contract and be set to go. Otherwise, you often come out of two years of MFA work with a pile of unpublishable stories...those don't pay the bills" - in other words, it can be a waste of time. (I can not-publish stories from home.) But if a student views the program as an opportunity to take a sabbatical from Real Life and write for a couple years without distractions, then I don't see the harm in it.

Though I don't have an MFA, I've looked into a lot of programs and have talked to a fair amount of writers about them, so if anyone has questions - or if anyone with an MFA cares to have some input - I encourage people to make use of the otherwise lonely comments section below for what could be a lovely little dialogue.