Mfa Programs

A writer born or made? In 1936 the University of Iowa ignited this controversy with the first graduate course for writers. Seven decades after the MFA Creative Writing-the artistic response to the MBA Business School, have penetrated deep into American literature, have filled the coffers of universities and enabled successive generations of authors, both receive and teach on the elusive art of writing. For classrooms Writer's Workshop this public university, have spent as students or teachers, among others, John Irving, John Cheever, Kurt Vonnegut, Jane Smiley and Philip Roth. In 2009 it was estimated that there were more than 810 academic programs in the U.S. writing.

For Creative Writing courses passed Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize for Literature

To this list, Iowa this month officially joined an MFA for writers in Spanish. "This is an acknowledgment of another linguistic reality and the need to promote the creation in Spanish, " he says in a telephone conversation the poet Ana Merino, director of the new course, which invested two years in the program design.

All students, no more than 15, must attend two years along with workshops covering diverse genres as poetry, graphic novel, theater, detective novel, screenplay or children's literature and complete a thesis. "I decided to leave out the creative division between genders. Had wanted the students to metamorphose into another voice, " says Merino.

Another of the strengths of the program is its outreach to the community, with readings and workshops in schools. "The writer is not in an ivory tower but in the world, " says the poet.

The Spanish writers are beginning to take a new role in the U.S. academic environment. The University of El Paso was the first Spanish incorporated his MFA in Creative Writing in a bilingual program. In 2007, the New York University (NYU) also launched a graduate in English. "New York is historically a meeting point for writers in Spanish, " says Lila Zemborain, program director. The workshops are aimed specifically at NYU gender in student writing and there are more theoretical courses on the creative process. "It's about thinking about writing from practice, " said Zemborain. This poet Argentina panhispánico also highlights the nature of the MFA. "They have created links between people from different countries who writes in the same language; ties and crossings occur."