Are great writers born or made? How about a bit of both. In any event, MFA programs have long existed to, in the ideal, provide students with necessary time and opportunity to read, write, and learn from experienced authors. Naturally, the notion of paying to refine a craft is time-tested, but ever controversial. MFA programs have ceaselessly been a topic of debate, and even graduates from the more lauded schools (some with significant loans to pay off) are the most vocal critics. The reality is these programs would not exist if there was not a demand, and there’s no debate that many writers have had wonderful and productive experiences. For too long, the literary industry was ruled by gatekeepers, and having an MFA next to your name was considered an obligatory price of admission. That’s no longer the case, and with the advent of technology (including the viable opportunities of virtual learning) a formal MFA program is no longer the only or even necessarily preferred path. 1455 asked four writers and teachers to opine on the state of affairs from the front lines, and we are grateful to provide their insights via this discussion.
Karen E. Bender
Karen E. Bender is the author of two collections; Refund, which was a Finalist for the National Book Award, shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Story Prize, and Longlisted for the Story prize, and The New Order, which was Longlisted for the Story prize. A new collection is forthcoming. Her novels are Like Normal People and A Town of Empty Rooms. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Ploughshares, Zoetrope, The Yale Review, The Harvard Review, Story, Guernica, and others, have been reprinted in Best American Short Stories and Best American Mystery stories and won three Pushcart prizes.
Website: karenebender.com
Twitter: @Karen_E_Bender
Facebook: facebook.com/KarenEBenderBooks
Robert Anthony Siegel
Robert Anthony Siegel is the author of a memoir, Criminals (Counterpoint,) and two novels. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian Magazine, The Paris Review, The Drift, The Oxford American, and Ploughshares, and has been anthologized in Best American Essays 2023, O. Henry Stories 2014, and Pushcart Prize XXXVI. He has been a Fulbright Scholar in Taiwan, a Mombukagakusho Fellow in Japan, a Writing Fellow at FAWC in Provincetown, and a Paul Engle Fellow at the Iowa Writers Workshop. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop, and a BA from Harvard.
Website: robertanthonysiegel.com
Twitter: @robert_a_siegel
Facebook: facebook.com/robertanthony.siegel
Leslie Contreras Schwartz
Leslie Contreras Schwartz is a multi-genre writer, a 2021 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, and the 2019-2021 Houston Poet Laureate. She is the winner of the 2022 C&R Press Nonfiction Prize for From the Womb of Sky and Earth, a lyrical memoir (Fall, 2023). She is the author of five collections of poetry, including The Body Cosmos (Mouthfeel Press, 2024) and Black Dove / Paloma Negra (FlowerSong Press, 2020). Her work has appeared on Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day and in AGNI, Missouri Review, Iowa Review, Pleiades, Gulf Coast, and 2019 Best Small Fiction. She has collaborated or been commissioned for community poetry projects with the Academy of American Poets, the City of Houston, the Houston Grand Opera, and The Moody Center of the Arts at Rice University. Contreras Schwartz is currently a poetry and nonfiction faculty member at Alma College’s MFA low-residency program in creative writing.
Website: lesliecschwartz.com
Twitter: @slippingplace
Instagram: @lesliecontrerasschwartz
Facebook: facebook.com/lesliecontrerasschwartz
Sophfronia Scott
Sophfronia Scott is director of Alma College’s MFA in Creative Writing and holds degrees from Harvard and the Vermont College of Fine Arts. A novelist, essayist, and contemplative thinker, her books include the newly released novel Wild, Beautiful, and Free, and The Seeker and the Monk: Everyday Conversations with Thomas Merton, as well as All I Need to Get By, Unforgivable Love, Love’s Long Line, and This Child of Faith. Her work has appeared in Time, People and O, The Oprah Magazine.
Website: sophfronia.com
Twitter: @Sophfronia
Instagram: @sophfronia.scott
Facebook: facebook.com/SophfroniaAuthor
Susan Scarf Merrell
Susan Scarf Merrell is the author of Shirley: A Novel, now a major motion picture starring Elisabeth Moss and Michael Stuhlbarg. She is also the author of A Member of the Family, and The Accidental Bond: How Sibling Connections Influence Adult Relationships. She co-directs the Southampton Writers Conference, is program director (along with Meg Wolitzer) of the novel incubator program, BookEnds, and teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing & Literature at Stony Brook Southampton. She served as fiction editor of The Southampton Review. Essays, book reviews and short fiction appear most recently in The New York Times, Newsday, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Common Online, The Washington Post, and East Magazine.
Website: susanscarfmerrell.com
Twitter: @susan_merrell
Instagram: @susanmerrell
Facebook: facebook.com/susan.merrell
