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| Creative Writing Mfa Handbook: A Guide for Prospective Graduate Students (Revised & Updated) | 
 enlarge | Author: Tom Kealey
Creators: Seth Abramson, Erika Dreifus, Adam Johnson, Ed Schwarzschild
Publisher: Continuum
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $12.77
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Avg. Customer Rating:  54 reviews
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2 Rev Upd
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 226
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Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 0.9
ISBN: 082642886X
Dewey Decimal Number: 808
EAN: 9780826428868
Publication Date: November 15, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
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Product Description
The Creative Writing MFA Handbook guides prospective graduate students through the difficult process of researching, applying to, and choosing graduate schools in creative writing. The handbook includes profiles of fifty creative writing programs, guidance through the application process, advice from current professors and students including George Saunders, Aimee Bender, Tracy K. Smith, and Geoffrey Wolff, and the most comprehensive listings of graduate writing programs in and outside the United States. The handbook also includes special sections about Low-Residency writing programs, Ph.D. programs, publishing in literary journals, and workshop and teaching advice. In a remarkably concise, user-friendly fashion, The Creative Writing MFA Handbook answers as many questions as possible, and is packed with information, advice, and experience. This second edition updates and builds upon the first edition, which was published in 2005 to great acclaim and contains a vastly expanded ranking of current creative writing programs.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 49 more reviews...
 Go-to-Guide for the freaked out M.F.A applicant September 9, 2008
Yes, it's true, even a well-written, thoughtful book will not take away the anxiety of applying to M.F.A programs, but this one is the closest you'll get to feeling in control of the process.
Kealey gives you an excellent reference of not only schools and how they stack up against each other but also a step-by-step outline of how the application needs to be approached. He offers excellent tips on what to spend the most time on, how to approach your reference letter writers, and much more.Also, not that this is essential to his credibility, but he holds an M.F.A and is also a Stegner Fellow at Stanford--he's been through this before and his words are well worth reading.
 Revised edition blows August 20, 2008
My review of the original edition is below after the asterisks.
My concenrs regard the revised edition of Kealey's solo effort from a few years back. Though about half of the book is the same, the former book is better in that the pseudo-scientific approach of Seth Abramson (signed on to evaluate the programs) can actually prove damaging to a potential applicant due to its inaccuracies and lack of substance. His analysis is, in a word, reckless and helpful only as a superficial starting point for people considering applying to MFA programs.
Abramson, an MFA candidate at Iowa, cruised program websites and regurgitated the information he found there to produce the first (and highly flawed) ranking of MFA programs by funding in existence. He admits this was his method arguing that any other research would be subject to the whims of the programs and that the internet should be the place for the official statement of a school's funding ability. Fine. Than at least do a good and exhaustive job of reading the websites.
Washington University at St. Louis has had their funding listed on their website for more than a year and probably well before that. Florida (Gainesville) did not, and still doesn't list their funding demonstratively. Florida is ranked number 4 on Abramson's list of the best funded programs when they offer about $3,000 less per year than Washington University, which is ranked 22nd. Gainesville is not so much cheaper a town than St. Louis to warrant this.
This is the tip of the iceberg on a very flawed list. LSU's (ranked 10th) funding is indeed better than all but four of the schools ranked ahead of it, and Baton Rouge is a relatively cheap town to live in to boot (so is St. Louis). There's so much more and this is only after my first pass through the list; if I keep going I'll surely find more. This is coming from somebody that held off applying until they got a copy of this book only to find that my own research on funding was much better and more reliable than Abramson's. Funding is all I'm really concerned with. Most of the program's I'm applying to are not in Abramson's top ten, yet they have better funding than most of the schools in his top ten. It's really that simple.
If operating under the assumption that programs that are not forthcoming with their funding info don't fund well, Penn State's funding is better than most of the school's he has in his top ten and it doesn't have it's funding online. But let's give Abramson the benefit of the doubt. He still comes off as laze or inept: Minnesota doesn't have any concrete info about their funding on their website, yet it finished just out of Abramson's top ten. Again, just one example among many. These inconsistencies destroy any argument Abramson can make to defend his list.
I've been tracking MFA programs for a year now, so there haven't been any recent changes that throw off his stats. I've accounted for the cost of living in these programs based on common sense and an aggregate formed by three cost of living calculators. I've supplemented the info available online by calling programs and talking to students. I have clearly done more work on this than Abramson. Neither one of us has the right to claim expertise, but I didn't go writing a chapter in a book claiming to.
All the ways Abramson can rationalize his list cannot compensate for the shoddiness of it. It really just boils down to the fact that he has schools ranked lower than other school's without mathematical justification for doing so. His high ranking of the Purdue program is another example (their impressive $18,000 per anum funding goes to a hand full of students, everyone else gets about 13-grand, which is decent until you consider that their teaching load is ridiculous; this comes first hand from Purdue grads I've spoken to, something Abramson clearly didn't think to do because it would have involved work and research instead of getting a publishing credit for free, which is what he got thanks to Kealey and the people at Poet's and Writers who published Abramson's companion article). Indeed, there's no need to buy the revised edition for the flawed funding list because said list is available online at the P & R website. If you are interested in this book, buy the old one, or skip Abramson's part, or take it with a grain of salt.
Will Abramson's list start a new era of transparency in MFA programs--that is, spurn them to be more forthcoming. I hope so, because that would be the only good thing to come of it. It's applicable to current applicants only in that it gets the first three spots on the list right. Ten minutes online and you can figure it out yourself. While Abramson's hear is ostensibly in the write place, misinformation is never a good thing and producing a list so flawed can't be counted a good thing.
The bottom line is this, don't trust Abramson's list, it is flawed. Do your own research on funding. Not just because there's more information out there than is available online, but because Abramson did a crappy job distilling the source of his information: the internet. The hours you'll save by consulting Abramson's list will not measure up to the missing out on applying to a school you really liked because Abramson buried it in his ranking through neglect or just didn't include it (some of his honorable mentions are better than his ranked schools). It's a mess. Beware.
***
You get the feeling a lot of the reviews are from MFA's and faculty members defending theirs, and it figures given the cousin kissing that makes MFA land spin.
And it's tempting to defend Mr. Kealey's book more than I want to, because it's a mixed bag and wins by default (Holman's book is practically useless and there's really nothing else that provides more than an overview).
I think the thing the author wants to shout but can't without ruining his own career and reputation is: "it's a total rip-off--beware." If you are a trust fund with unlimited resources, go to Columbia, you don't need this book. The rest of us need to figure out how to find time to write without going bankrupt or into suicide debt. An MFA is not a PhD, you have to publish a couple books before it opens doors a crack, it's not money in the bank and for most it's not an investment, it's a vacation from the desk job they'll end up in. There are two kinds of MFA's, those screwing over students with one of the handful of teaching gigs, and those working as temps--among the two groups, a few that used the buddy system to get their boring, amateur-hour novel published.
If the author has an agenda, it's not a malicious one; he knows his audience is naive and insecure and bound to make awful decisions, like become an indentured servant (through TA-ships) to a school because they "accepted" me and my writing--not to mention go into huge debt, which is what I've found talking shop with budding MFA's. What's more, that crap is passed on; overworked, under-skilled MFA candidates teach the undergrads that need the most help in comp courses. The budding MFA isforced to choose between her needy students and her writing and usually both parish as they try to keep all the plates in the air--that is, slapped together lesson plan, slapped together chapter. Everyone loses except the program that gets slave labor and more sections of highly subscribed low-level courses to keep packing in America's sad future (the kids are their for the "college experience" and don't care about classm so there's no quality control; the parents don't care becuase the kid gets the piece of paper--that used to be a ticket into the middle class--while growing up).
There are maybe ten programs in the whole country that aren't complete rip-offs, and an easy way to find them is based on how they fund their students. If anything, Kealey's book stops short of being really useful because the programs like to play games and get vague about funding, which is why Kealey must be vague in turn. The book is vague. As for those that attack Kealey on his funding bias, money, teaching requirement, and location ARE the only subjective things to consider given that:
Your favorite faculty member with all the credits WILL be gone after a semester (the stars don't stay in one place).
There's no way to know what kind of classmates you'll have until it's too late, and the class sizes are to small to really on prestige to filter out people you don't want to workshop with.
The program that's getting kids published today is old hat tomorrow
None of this matter if you don't have time to write
Kealey, in his own way, is trying to bring the subtle wake up call he can. Bravo. Still, writing a rebuttal review for your own book--gee, Tom. You do know how to market my friend and you have a monopoly on this deal, for now.
The book is a lot of common sense and a certain amount of filler, and it requires you to read between the lines and break code. There's one really good essay at the back that might just wake up a few wanderers. I'd like to have seen him give a better understanding of what the programs do to get their students published (exposed, connected), but that's another thing that doesn't matter if you don't have time to write. Overall, it's a good place to start given that the MFA game can get overwhelming. If you are applying to an MFA program, it's worth it, but don't expect miracles.
I peg Kealey not as an insider, but as a consumer screwed. The sad part is you just know that Kealey could give up the goods, more so than he did, but he can't. He's one of them.
It's all about the funding and the time to write April 4, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Everyone considering an advanced degree in creative writing should read this book. The evaluations of individual programs aren't all that important -- what's more important is the way Kealey lays out the whole MFA process: what to look for in schools, what the application process is like, and how to make the most of your time once you finally get in. Kealey doesn't have an agenda, he has a point-of-view: he values programs with good funding that let you get a lot of writing done.
I read this book right after undergrad and realized that the MFA scene wasn't my cup of tea. I owe Tom a big thank you for the time and money he saved me.
 Great Resource, Has Its Drawbacks March 31, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
An informative, well-written guide to the MFA application process. I'm not sure why anyone would suggest this book has lured people away from UCI, JH, or Iowa... from what I've heard, their app numbers have actually gone up in recent years. (Pretty sure Iowa's fiction applications increased by around 100 this year alone). Which leads me to my next point...
The main drawback to this book stems from its popularity. Just about every prospective MFAer I've spoken to this past application season has read it. As a result, Kealey's loose ranking of the top fifty programs, combined with Seth Abramson's blog (with its multiple rankings, separated by genre), seem to have had a great impact on which programs people are applying to. It follows that one possible byproduct could be the consolidation of applications at top-tier programs, and the drawing away of attention from lesser-known (but still good) schools. (UNLV, for example got three times as many applications this year than the last. It's one of the schools featured in the book.) It's impossible to know for sure the extent of its influence (correlation, after all, doesn't equal causation)... maybe there are simply more people who want to get writing degrees all of a sudden?
This is not entirely the author's fault. He does advise prospective MFA students to apply to a broad range of programs, not just the ones at the top of the heap. That doesn't mean they'll take his advice. Rankings have a powerful way of tickling the human psyche.
That said, the information/guidance found in the book (concerning the application process itself) is priceless. I found myself referring back to it throughout. However, due to its overwhelming popularity, reading it will no longer give you an advantage. Rather, if you don't read it, you'll be at a distinct disadvantage. Tom has written the standard for the field.
What I would advise you to do, as the prospective writing student, is to hunt for programs he's missed. Diamonds in the rough, so to speak. Programs that fund, let you teach, give you good access to faculty, etc. They're out there, you just have to have patience enough to sift through the pile.
One final thought:
When it comes to finding a CW teaching job, post-MFA, every professor I've spoken to has told me basically the same thing, and here it is, in so many words: "Honestly, it doesn't really matter where you went to school. There are dozens of out-of-work Iowa grads right now. Program directors look at two things. They look at teaching experience, and they look at what you've published. Period."
Good, but research schools before applying December 25, 2007
I love this book, it really is very helpful, but please research any schools before applying, especially those listed outside the US. I found at least one "University" in here that does not have its accreditation. I emailed Mr. Kealey to let him know, but the email address listed was no longer valid.
Despite that, this is a great resource with lots of helpful information. Recommended for those who think they could use the help in finding a good MFA program.
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