Writer’s Corner: The Unbearable Whiteness of Creative Writing Programs

There has been a lot of talk over the past few yearsabout the worth of creative writing programs. They’ve been long derided as factories for bloodless mediocrity, churning out legions of well-schooled kids told to write what they know, when often they just don’t know that much of anything yet.

In Chad Harback’s 2010 essay,“MFA vs. NYC“,he points out that much of the hand-wringing about the churning out of “cringing, cautious, post-Carverite automatons” is besides the point:

…even if the writer...