Wanted: A Literary Simon Cowell
So I met Kenyon Review blog editor Liz Lopatto for scotch the other night, and together we came up with an idea for the best new reality series that will never actually air: MFA Fiction Workshop. Now that would generate some major on-air bickering among the contestants, we agreed—”and we can dramatize the story submissions with actors to fill out the hour!” I enthused. The only problem: Who should we get to run the workshop? I admit I don’t know a lot about MFA programs, so I went to Tom Kealey, the author of The Creative Writing MFA Handbook, and he didn’t have an answer off the top of his head, either, but he’s fishing for suggestions on his blog.
In the meantime, someone reminded me about Mark Slouka, who described the Columbia MFA program last year (where he used to teach until he was somewhat surprisingly denied tenure last year) as “a self-perpetuating cycle of mediocrity,” which is exactly the sort of in-your-face attitude that would get us a ten-episode deal from Bravo. (And now that he’s teaching at the University of Chicago, we could even avoid the high costs of shooting in New York!) If Slouka’s name sounds familiar, you may have seen the guarded enthusiasm for his new novel, The Visible World, in the NYTBR a few weeks ago, or maybe you heard his All Things Considered interview earlier this weekend. Only thing is, he sounds way too friendly in that NPR segment to terrorize a bunch of aspiring writers. So I’m still taking suggestions.
And if this doesn’t pan out, I can always polish off my pitch for a PBS reality show called Two Years Before the Mast…
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