A lot of people lately get to this blog searching for information about the UNCG Creative Writing MFA, and I realized that my last word about it here was uncertain. Well, let’s clear it up. In three weeks I’ll be moving to Greensboro, to a lovely and inexpensive 1920 Craftsman-style apartment house in the little neighborhood alongside campus where most of the MFA students, many alumni, and some of the faculty live. Writers are awkward and often cagey individuals, but I’m here to tell you that everyone in this program has been welcoming, gracious and generous with their thorough, thoughtful answers to all of my questions. I’m in touch with all of my incoming cohort, and have met a couple of them, as well as most of the rising second year students and many of the 2011 graduates, some of whom are going on to third year lectureships in the fall. I’ve also met many of the faculty. All of them seem super-smart and unpretentious, eager to welcome all us incoming candidates into their community.
As for funding — I got a tuition waiver and a first-year research assistantship (part-time office work) that pays $14,000 (minus taxes) across the nine months I’m in class. I’ll have to get a summer job of some sort. My health insurance will be paid by the college, but I will have to pay something like $1800 in student fees; that will come automatically out of my assistantship paycheck. Next year — budget permitting (gulp) — I’ll compete for a teaching assistantship or a job editing the Greensboro Review; otherwise I will keep my research assistantship.
I registered for four classes: Fiction Workshop, Structure of Fiction, Greensboro Review Tutorial, and a graduate-level literature course in 19th Century American Romanticism. I’m a little nervous I’m in over my head here; I’m 34, out of school for a decade, and was not an English major to begin with. But I also decided at the beginning of this whole process that fear wouldn’t be a factor in any of my decisions. It’s all or nothing, pal. And besides, if the MFA admissions committee have enough faith in me to let me into this prestigious program, I gotta give myself the same benefit of the doubt.
Republicans in Raleigh, with the complicity of some Dems, came within a few budget-cut percentage points of utterly wiping out this important, storied program, just as Republicans in D.C. right now (with the complicity of Dems, including the president) are monomaniacally intent on wiping out social and cultural programs all over the country. It’ll be interesting, and harrowing, to watch what happens over the next year — to MFA programs, and to all of us.
Meanwhile, if you get to this blog trying to learn about the Greensboro MFA, I’ll be happy to answer any questions you have — about the application process, and, once I’ve been in awhile, about my experience in the program. If you’re applying this year, I can also direct you to some good online communities who will support you through that singularly hellish process.
