MUST READ: SHOW OR TELL

You will want to check out Louis Menand's fine New Yorker essay on the explosive growth of the MFA and its ramifications:

Creative-writing programs are designed on the theory that students who have never published a poem can teach other students who have never published a poem how to write a publishable poem. The fruit of the theory is the writing workshop, a combination of ritual scarring and twelve-on-one group therapy where aspiring writers offer their views of the efforts of other aspiring wr