<p>What universities offer a good graduate program in creative writing?
I'm interested in finding out about programs in California and also the east coast.</p>
<p>The University of Iowa is supposed to be the best. I don't know why or how, it just is.</p>
<p>Other than Iowa, other top programs include Columbia, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Michigan, NYU, University of Houston and UVA.</p>
<p>Anyway, here is a link you may find usefull.</p>
<p>I would die for Iowa. I know some obscure writers who went there and they're insanely talented, but there are also more well-known alumni like T.C. Boyle, Michael Cunningham, and Julie Orringer to name a few. As for why/how Iowa is the best--they were the first institution in the United States to offer a creative writing degree, and they've served as a model for most other programs out there.</p>
<p>Anyway, Michael Chabon, Alice Sebold and Richard Ford went to UCI for their grad (I know Chabon went to Pitt as an undergrad), and Jeffrey Eugenides went to Brown and Stanford (I forget which one he went to for which). Joyce Carol Oates got her MFA at University of Wisconsin-Madison and David Foster Wallace earned his at the University of Arizona... So there's a wide range of possibilities--you will become the writer you will be because of you, not because of your program.</p>
<p>Also, be aware that there isn't really a job at the end of the MFA rainbow. It's a program to give you time to focus on your writing as an entity unto itself, and literary agents aren't going to care whether or not you have an MFA, they're going to care whether or not the world wants to read whatever you have to write.</p>
<p>A story that may be of interest to you.</p>
<p>Thank you. I'm helping out my gf witht his stuff. It's really preliminary research. She's a freshman at UCSC but she is really starting to get into this stuff and wants to do some really quality studies for grad</p>
<p>Aleph in my language is the first letter of the alphabet.</p>
<p>Good luck with your girlfriend! I'm starting to think of grad school (still have a few years ahead of me)--I really want to get my MFA, but I'm also trying to figure out how to squeeze in an MA/PhD in American Lit.</p>
<p>And in regards to the seven-figure advance given to Kostova... Those days are nearing an end and becoming a very extreme rarity (though they're already an anomaly). It depends on what you're writing and what the literary 'culture' is demanding at the time--something reminiscient of pop culture mania, but on a somewhat smaller, more self-selective scale. Even on Amazon they attribute part of the hype around The Historian to the historical fiction boom. Roll with the punches. Besides, I bet a hefty percent of that went to the agent ;)</p>
<p>Even the advances young, debut writers like Jonathan Safran Foer and Zoe Trope are going to fade--the books don't earn their advances, and when the sales don't match, the sales don't match. There was even an article of Foer calling up everyone he knew (and some he didn't) to buy copies of his new book in order to boost sales and up his rank on the New York Times Best Seller List. Although part of me thinks this was more of a publicity grub than pressure from a publisher, it still speaks volumes. There's some debate on whether or not this is 'fair,' especially when there aren't any sales to back up these huge advances that some writers are given while others aren't, but that's a whole other argument.</p>
<p>I hate to demean the process of writing to 'business,' but I just had to comment on that UMich article (though the majority of it focused on a donation to the expansion of the CW program--which I think is wonderful and absolutely commendable--rather than book advances!). It can be incredibly misleading that writers can make that kind of money off their writing. While the possibility exists of getting lush stipends for grad school and profuse advances for first novels, it shouldn't be expected because for the vast majority (even some of the best and prolific writers out there), that stuff just doesn't happen.</p>
<p>Laurak, I agree with you 100%. I hope I did not mislead anybody. That was not my intent. I wanted to show that Michigan (and I am sure other top programs around the nation) is investing money into the writing program. I was not trying to imply that writers will make big money. Writing is like acting. Only a handful of actors (and writers) make it big. The rest do ok, but it is a tough career that is filled with uncertainty.</p>
<p>Oh, don't worry about it--you weren't being misleading or anything. Really I was just being nit-picky about a sentence or two in the article that talked about Kostova's advance; I actually think what Michigan is doing is great. I just know too many people who say they want to write who joke about the 'starving artist' stereotype and then look at cases like those and think that landing a contract and getting that million-dollar advance is a piece of cake. It's a good thing to be ambitious and to take risks, but you have to keep your feet on the ground while you're at it and know what you're getting yourself into.</p>
<p>"Writing is like acting. Only a handful of actors (and writers) make it big. The rest do ok, but it is a tough career that is filled with uncertainty."</p>
<p>Lol, I have bright career prospects.</p>
<p>Plan A: writing.</p>
<p>Plan B: art.</p>