I’m also proud to present the work of three writers who come out of the creative writing program at California State University, Fresno.  This is a fine opportunity for me to debunk the canard that MFA programs produce “cookie cutter” writers whose work is bland, polite, meaningless, and predictable.  These three pieces are engaging, daring, meaningful, and surprising.

 

Critics often contend that MFA students are just too young to possess the life experience necessary for accomplished writing.  These churls need to read “Flight Lessons” by Laura Musselman.  She’s a young writer who has no trouble transforming deeply felt moments of her life into creative nonfiction that is as emotionally moving as it is technically and structurally astonishing.

 

Kristofer Whited’s “Drinks with a Killer American” defies MFA stereotypes by dramatizing what it’s like, well, to have drinks with a killer American.  As in, an American who has killed.  Reading this killer piece made me really nervous, which purportedly isn’t what MFA writing is supposed to do.

 

Gavin McCall’s “Going to See His Holiness” is about a very different kind of human being, one who doesn’t hang out in bars talking about the people he’s killed:  the Dalai Lama.  According to MFA skeptics, the same creative writing program shouldn’t be able to produce a person who writes masterfully about meeting a “killer American” AND a person who writes masterfully about meeting the Dalai Lama.

 

There’s a reason for all of this:  People who criticize writing programs don’t really know what they’re talking about.  Read these excellent pieces and see for yourself.