Lionel Shriver Exposes “Something Unwholesome” About Creative Writing MFA Programs

Novelist and MFA-graduate Lionel Shriver gave her candid opinion about higher level writing courses in an interview with Big Think last week. Watch the video embedded above to find out what she thought.

The author of So Much for That expressed some reservations about writing programs, despite the fact she has studied and taught writing. What do you think?

Here’s an excerpt from the interview: “it does have a kind of indulgence, middle-class gestalt. The grim truth is that most people who get MFAs will not go on to be professional writers … My husband is a jazz drummer and he has the same sense of queasiness about teaching jazz drumming. There’s more of a career in teaching jazz than there is in playing it right now and so at the very best, most of the students are going to go on to become jazz instructors. So there’s something a little corrupt in that, something unwholesome. And I share his discomfort in participating in it.”

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