A Critique of Postgraduate Workshops and a Case for Low-Residency MFAs

Abstract

The original model for teaching Creative Writing was started in 1936 by Paul Engle at the University of Iowa where I am currently the Director of the Nonfiction Writing Program. Iowa is also my alma mater. I graduated from the Writers Workshop in 1982 in Fiction Writing, at a time when nonfiction was not considered creative in the same way as poetry and fiction. If Engle were starting the Writers workshop today, I am sure he would have included nonfiction in the mix. He was a visionary man, and after he founded the Workshop he went on to found the International Writing Program in which writers from around the world spend the Autumn semester at Iowa, and he facilitated the founding of the Translation Workshop at the University of Iowa.