Running an independent creative writing school for the last nine years has brought me back to my roots as a writer. Though I went through the traditional MFA route at UC Irvine, I found my most transformative early creative writing education in community college continuing education classes. This experience sparked my fascination with the alternatives to MFA programs that are flourishing across the country. It ultimately led me to found WritingWorkshops.com, an independent, artist-run creative writing school and an official education partner of Electric Literature.
When The Writer’s Chronicle asked me to moderate a discussion about these alternative pathways, I was eager to explore how organizations like ours are filling gaps left by the disappearance of accessible community-based writing education while offering alternatives to the high price tag of many MFA programs.
Our conversation brings together remarkable leaders who have built vibrant literary communities outside traditional academia:
- Rebecca Makkai, the New York Times bestselling author and artistic director of StoryStudio Chicago, has helped transform a small for-profit workshop into a major nonprofit serving over fifteen hundred writers annually.
- Julia Fierro, Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate and founder of Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop, created from her kitchen table what Time Out New York called “New York City’s best writing class,” which has served as a creative home to over ten thousand writers since 2002.
- G. E. Patterson, poet, attorney, and senior director of craft at Minneapolis’s Loft Literary Center, brings deep literary roots and a commitment to anti-racism and equity to one of the nation’s leading independent literary centers.
We met for almost three hours in early August to explore how these alternative programs complement—and sometimes compete directly with—traditional MFA education, serve writers at all career stages, and create supportive communities that keep writers writing for the long haul. You can read the conversation here.
