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[The following article was originally written for the Fall 2004 issue of the Queens alumni magazine, Odyssey. We’re offering it here too to provide more background on the program.]
They appear on the Queens campus twice a year, at the beginning of January and the end of May. Women and men, some in their twenties, some in their sixties, and all ages in-between. They come from all over the country: New York, Florida, Colorado, Arkansas, New Hampshire, California, Ohio, Kentucky, Washington, Hawaii, Georgia, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Virginia, South Carolina, and, of course, North Carolina. They are — among other things — teachers, doctors, social workers, editors, journalists, consultants, hospital administrators, manufacturers, therapists, and computer technicians.
Most of all, though, they’re writers.
These twice-yearly additions to the campus community are participants in Queens’ low-residency Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing. Begun in May 2001, the program has rapidly grown into one of the most successful low-residency creative writing programs in the country, with over 70 students currently enrolled, four classes of graduates so far, and some of the most accomplished writers in America on its faculty.
MFA programs in creative writing began with The Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1936. The focus of most such programs — there are now over 100 — is the workshop itself, an intensive class in which students submit original work (fiction, poetry, or essays) to be discussed and critiqued by other students and an instructor who is a published writer. The master’s thesis in an MFA program is generally a collection, often much-revised, of the best work that the student has produced in his or her two years of coursework.
Of course, like most academic programs, traditional MFA programs require a student to relocate and live on campus for two or more years. But what do you do if you already have a career or a family or commitments that won’t let you relocate? In response to just such a dilemma, the first low-residency MFA program was created at Goddard College in Vermont in 1976. Low-residency MFA programs would allow students who couldn’t uproot their lives to gather on campus twice a year for an intensive week of seminars, workshops, and readings and then to submit their work by mail — and now by email — to their instructors during the remainder of the year.
The low-residency MFA program at Queens was originally envisioned by Cathy Anderson, the Billy O. Wireman Professor of Business Administration and then Queens’ Provost, in early 1999. After a friend had expressed concern to Anderson about the uneven support for literary work in Charlotte, Anderson began to consider what role Queens might take in bolstering the community’s literary life. As she explains, “I had been reading about low-residency programs, saw the need in Charlotte for higher education opportunities and for ways for the university to be more involved in the community, and saw this as a good fit with Queens’ mission.”
After some early discussions among a small group in the English department, work on the program intensified when Anderson suggested that Michael Kobre, a professor in the English department, contact Fred Leebron. Leebron, a renowned novelist who had taught at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte and had set his second novel, Six Figures, in Charlotte, had long experience teaching creative writing and designing writing curriculums, most notably at The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Leebron, in turn, was drawn to Queens by its reputation for teaching excellence and for close contact between faculty and students. “That philosophy provides the foundation for the program’s distinctive elements,” he says.
Accordingly, the Queens MFA program offers the lowest student to faculty ratio of any writing program in the country. Each faculty member is limited to a maximum of four and a minimum of three students. Moreover, as Leebron points out, where other low-residency programs only provide contact between the student and his or her instructor in the long periods between residencies, “Queens is the first program in the country to provide a workshop environment during the distance learning segment of each semester. Thus, while every student returns to his or her individual hometown, and begins the labor of writing in solitude, the program still provides the community essential to helping inspire and refresh its writers. The distance learning workshops, conducted via email by each faculty member in concert with the three or four students assigned to him or her, help provide this sense of community even during distance learning.”
That sense of community is felt strongly among the students. “The program has provided me with exactly what I needed,” one says, “a warm, supportive community with high critical standards, proving that those two things are not mutually exclusive. It hasn’t just affected my life; I’d say it’s made my life.” Indeed, MFA students repeatedly cite the transforming effects of the program. For some, it bestows a sense of validity: “It has given me the courage to call myself a writer,” a recent graduate explains. For many, also, the program has provided a vital sense of direction. “I know now what I want for my life,” a current student says.
Writing, of course, is difficult and uncertain work under any circumstances. The MFA program at Queens is expressly designed to help talented students begin to overcome those difficulties. As one current student notes, “the expression ‘writing is a lonely business’ has become a cliché because it’s pretty much true: most of the real work you’ve got to do on your own. Naturally, certain types of contact with other people — established and experienced writers and teachers and editors, an audience of receptive strangers, other novices struggling against similar impediments — are helpful if not invaluable in lessening various psychic burdens, and in the slow and lonely process of developing your craft. In my view, the program at Queens succeeds because it provides those sorts of contact with a bare minimum of extraneous nonsense: it’s about as close as a writing program can get to delivering the Pure Thing.”
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Students in the MFA program were asked how the program had affected their lives. Here are some of the things they said:
residency at Queens, I had a hard time adjusting to my ‘real’ life. I threw an intellectual fit and realized how much of my life I left behind when I left Queens. Writing, being challenged, reading and discussing writing were more real than what I do on a daily basis at work.”
has made me a master eavesdropper.”
medicine as my vocation and writing as my avocation. Since enrolling in the Queens MFA program, I see more clearly that medicine and writing are a synergistic blend of two noble professions. I believe that writing makes me a better doctor, and medicine gives me a reason to write.”
directed, because I have readers I can count on and I therefore wish to please — i.e., my fellow students. A nice thing. Writing is more directed, because I have to think in terms of a manuscript and not just isolated poems. A smart thing. Writing is more directed, because I have instructors who sincerely wish to guide me and not reshape me into their own image. A gratifying thing. Writing thus takes more time, because I have now lots of ‘moving parts’ (audience, form, content) to keep in balance and not just my own whims. A very good thing. But with the demand for more time for writing, I now must dedicate myself to learning my craft and allow other concerns to become secondary. I'm no longer the compulsively over-prepared English teacher. Stuff slides by. I get the job done, but I don't worry over it as much. An excellent thing.”
has messed with my recreational reading. Even if I think I'm reading for pleasure, I'm reading for technique and wishing I could figure out how to ‘do that’ in my own work.”
has allowed me to fulfill a lifelong dream to simply create, which satisfies a personal need far beyond money and career. When I look at my thesis, it's a collection of dreams that have finally found their way on paper.”
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