The answer to this question depends on what you're actually asking. If you want to become a writer, that's free to do and you can do it anywhere. But I think we all know: this question should really read "should I get an MFA if...(I want to make money off it and) I live in New York City?"
Over the years, I've chosen NYC time and time again over an MFA. I took classes from literary institutions across the city. If I chose well, the content of the classes were not much different than what was offered at MFAs—the teaching artists were the same and their classes just as useful or interesting, with one key difference: there were no office hours, and the classes usually were 4-6 weeks vs. the 12 weeks of the university system. There was also little continuity between those who I was taking class with, both between instructors and other students. That famous writer you're rubbing shoulders with on the street doesn't have a reason to pay attention to you outside of the hours you're spending in class.
Economically speaking, I took maybe 8 classes for around $400 each, totaling $3200 compared to the average cost of, say, a program like Columbia, which was about $65k this year in tuition alone (https://arts.columbia.edu/tuition/first-second-year-mfa-students). (This point doesn't matter, though, because you've already taken my advice to never take on debt or pay for a program! ) It only took one class to pay off—one writing master class turned into a small group of friends with whom I navigated and questioned Submittable, cover letters, and workshops together for years.
Access, I think, is the real difference. Access is a class issue and not only on the student side. A writer who's not sure where their next paycheck is coming from doesn't have the luxury of extra time to get coffee with you or write your next recommendation, let alone everyone in the class. It's not personal—it's simply the (messed up) reality of class within the literary community. (If you've met an independent writer who's not working a second job or independently wealthy who's still willing to do work like this, recognize that and at think about compensating them fairly if you have the resources). At an MFA, your professors will, at least, give you some attention, even if it's just 10 minutes a semester. And it matters for recommendations, which plug into a prestige economy that I am honestly too tired to talk about right now (but maybe someone can pay me to, haha).
I felt this lack of access acutely as a teenager in the Midwest; I even felt it when I was working in tech in NYC, treating poetry as my serious "side thing." While I could go to as many poetry readings I wanted, if I went alone, I left events right as they ended to avoid awkwardly standing there while people closed ranks in their friend groups. This stopped only after years of publishing, reading, and curating events in New York myself, enabled by my day job, which enabled my getting mental health support and getting my basic needs met. There's also a class reason behind being able to show up day after day.
An MFA is a professional degree, but don't get one to become a "professional writer."
Here is the non-starter: do not, under any circumstances, go into debt or pay to get an MFA. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. If you're convincing yourself because you were raised to believe that a professional education is supposed to open doors, read my column 'Money Seems More Real Than My Art' (https://yanyi.substack.com/p/money-seems-more-real-than-my-art).
If your only concern is getting a tenure-track job in creative writing, the only doors it will open are maybe, *maybe,* a university mandating that you have a terminal degree in your field in order for you to teach there. More likely than that, though, you will be applying to adjunct with no guaranteed benefits. Jobs are scarce and you'll also be up against writers who have gone on to get creative writing PhDs, increasingly popular as the market continues to thin out. The professionalization of creative writing programs, too, is a very recent, 1950s-and-onward, development. There's a point when your resume can end up outshining the letters after your name, anyway, as a teaching artist.
To repeat it differently: do not get an MFA (and don't become an artist) to make money. My first publication paid me a respectful, and surprising, $20 for five poems, and that was the most money I made for at least the first couple of years. I was grateful and proud to buy a meal with my first poetry earnings. Fast-forward to now—even in my early successes as a writer, I usually am at a loss or net out year-over-year and mostly live off savings I earned while working in tech.
There's obviously more to say about this, but I'll leave it to this for now, unless someone wants me to commission me to write the essay, haha.
Hi Yanyi, thank you for creating small internet spaces like this. Is your goal to eventually sustain yourself through your writing? Is working in tech the plan B waiting in the eaves, just in case? I am in a similar position of having a tech-adjacent day job while pursuing woodworking as my serious "side thing" and am wondering how you decided when it was time to quit your day job and how you've plotted your financial course since.
Hi Ash, thanks for your question. I should write a whole post on this, honestly! Yes, working in tech is in the eaves, as is teaching and exploring other ways I can share my talents to sustain myself, including this Substack. But yes, I hope to sustain myself through primarily the various work I can do as a writer.
Whether or not that happens is still up in the air. Money is uneven and unpredictable, as you probably know. I decided to leave tech when I was at a crossroads—that two-year itch one gets at a company. My first book had come out and there was a lot of excitement. I had also just gotten into NYU, an important institutional tether that has since served as a kind of transitional space for me (that includes, as ever important for my trans life, health insurance).
So it seemed like the right time. I looked at my savings, moved out of a costly apartment, and planned my finances for a year and a half, from May 2019 to December 2020, to figure it out. A book deal in April and the Substack Fellowship that came in August were the windfalls I needed to keep figuring it out. I gave myself time to actually focus at the right time in my career and it actually worked. Also my accountant has been amazing.
I'm not at all idealistic about it though—money like this is not easy to come by. So there's still more that I'm working on with this newsletter which I'm excited to share later this winter. :)
Apologies if you have already covered this as I am fairly new here, but did you get your MFA? If so, from where, and can you talk a little about that experience (how your was funded, whether you found it beneficial and in what ways, whether you got in the first time you applied)? Thank you for this, it is always supremely helpful.
I came to NYC for my MFA in game design & development. While here & working in another industry, I found a writing community through places like AAWW, Kundiman's weekend intensives, and Catapult. Taking workshops through places that are welcoming helped me move past negative workshop experiences I had as an undergraduate that put me off from pursuing the MFA in creative writing to begin with. I believe I've become a better writer through community & writing fellowships that are accessible in the city. I think being in a creative writing MFA would have consumed me (personally) in unhealthy ways (much like the PhD path I was headed in literary studies).
This is so key. Having workshops in welcoming spaces is so key to positive growth in our own writing and the motivations behind it. Thanks for sharing, Emperatriz!
Hi Yanyi, first off, thanks so much for starting this Q&A and discussion! I am also interested in writing and currently working in tech since I really needed the independence and freedom afforded by high-paying software jobs. I'm lucky enough to live in NYC, but since I majored in computer science in a very STEM-heavy school, I barely have any pals IRL who are into writing prose or poetry. Your free online advice is super valuable to people like me who aren't part of any writing communities and don't know what's out there or what are things to do if you're interested in writing professionally.
I would love to hear your and anyone else's thoughts on how to join or build a writing community after college, if you didn't pursue such a community while in college or other academic tracks. Further complicating the issue is the pandemic, since open mics aren't happening every night across each borough. Finally, if anyone else reading this is also hungry to be part of a writing community, I would love to hear from you!
Hi zyz, thanks for writing and asking about how to do this. My simplest answer here, when things are in-person, is showing up repeatedly to events around the city and volunteering for readings and other events that you really support and enjoy. If you can, also apply for fellowships across the city, which will introduce you to people at a given organization as well as the people who love going to their events.
Classes are also a great way to meet people, especially more introverted people (like writers!) who find it harder to talk to strangers at one-time events. The word I've heard recently is that there's been an uptick for these since the pandemic started and people are more interested in making friends virtually. I've made quite a few friends just from 6-week workshops I took over those years I was engineering.
I'm most excited for those who *aren't* in cities to take advantage of these opportunities. If you can't afford workshops, a lot of the time there are scholarships that you can get just by emailing the organization.
I live in the UK (am from America originally) and the creative writing post-grad landscape is a little different (both cost and duration) but at the user-end this logic applies completely.
I was riveted by the Nation article you linked to a few newsletters ago about the CIA's backing of certain lit magazines. Fascinating on its own, but deep in that interview was this quote, attributed to a nameless Japanese dancer, "All culture is subculture." In context, it's talking about how expensive it is to create culture, so these systems got created to do so, and now that we live in the future, it's time to re-examine how we look at publishing, and self-publishing... and I think this can be applied to your thoughts on education, this idea that an institution can anoint you with oil and doors will open. Not saying that doesn't happen, or that this isn't a valid strategy, but for us out here operating without an education (or at least one with any brand equity), there's something empowering about just fully embracing the DIY nature of one's own creative practice.
A lockdown silver-lining, for me, is having access to American writers going to the web and teaching classes or giving lectures, usually writers from America who would, I'm sure, love to tour the UK, but find their book tours staying regional or at least US-based only. Ditto for courses from all over that are, by default, in-person, but who have gone online to cast a wider net after, I'm sure, having to cancel months of bookings over safety issues. I hope this remains the case after in-person becomes safer. I've lived in London for 12 years before moving to the south coast of England and the challenges for people not living in major cities in accessing education or art or job opportunities are as pronounced over here as they are in America.
Hi Ryan, great to hear from someone with another national perspective. I too hope that the virtual experiences temporarily afforded in the pandemic era will be expanded and kept even after the pandemic. I'm moving away from NYC for the foreseeable future and have been very much reminded of the difference in access to education, art, and job opportunities as well as access to racial and social diversity. Access to literary know-how and mentorship is something I'm hoping to remedy, at least on my part, even more in the near future. :)
Even while I was here, I often turned to online lectures and events to "travel" across the world (let's just say it's been lots of Youtube, haha). Where have you been turning to recently?
Good luck with your move away. There are benefits, too, of course, although I have never felt this 'American' until I moved out of London, which is very much it's own country, this beautiful mix of people from all over, but especially where Britain was especially meddlesome over the last 600 years. History on this timescale is a little wild.
Here's some links to stuff I've been taking part in:
The Shipman Agency produce some very interesting classes. I was able to get on a Zoom with both Garth Greenwell and Alexander Chee, respectively, and it basically made my entire month: https://www.theshipmanagency.com/theworkroom
Toby Brothers runs phenomenal reading salons. I read Ulysses with her and group of very smart, very kind fellow readers who were very gentle with me. Toby is one of the best teachers I've ever had. It almost hurts to think what it would have been like had my own high school teachers were like her. She runs virtual salons now. Someone from NYC joined our Ulysses group: https://www.litsalon.co.uk/
Also Corporeal Writing out in Portland are doing great stuff online. I've just finished a called on Queer Forms by Cooper Lee Bombardier and it was thrilling: http://www.corporealwriting.com/
Hey Yanyi, I am considering a MFA in art and I feel like the conversation around this is quite similar as the question of MFA in creative writing.
I am interested in the space and time a MFA offers to really hone in on the craft. I know residencies and fellowships exist for this reason, but it's not easy to balance this with trying to make a living. Can you talk about how residencies and fellowships be can as effective for cultivating that thinking space?
Hi Jenna! Thanks for asking. Time is money in this case—even if you get into a studio program with a full ride and even a stipend, there are "invisible" costs of having to pay for living expenses that the stipend may not fully cover. Quite a few of the people I know in MFAs had to get jobs while they were in their programs for that reason. At the very least, I do agree that residencies/fellowships that include studio time and space have similar issues in that regard.
Fellowships without studios/studio time have been helpful for me in creating supportive communities. However, I will assume your question is more about residencies that afford space and time. The best of these actually provide stipends that include living expenses or both meals and lodging. Of course, these may not include the cost to actually get to the residency or the opportunity cost of *not* working while you're at them.
I have some friends who have made it work by basically living itinerantly from fellowship to fellowship, or doing a fellowship a year (where they sublet their apartments)—something easier to do as writers without having to bring along artist materials like paint, clay, etc.
However, if you're holding down a job right now that is not easy to replace, it's kind of obvious that fellowships are for those who have flexible employment schedules, no jobs at all, or have some huge chunks of the year to themselves (academia). It might be easier now more than ever if you're able to stay a remote worker after the pandemic. Some residencies even have 1-week or 2-week slots, which work better for work schedules. If it were me, I would be very selective in the residencies I agree to do because of the aforementioned factors. Check your math on what they'll actually cost: they should pay for themselves.
Studio time in residencies are different than MFAs, where you still have to take care of your basic needs while also going to class. At a residency, you are not obligated to anyone, not even a workshop instructor. My first residency included room and board, a studio, and cooked dinners for all the fellows. It helped me understand what I was actually capable of if I wasn't spending time thinking about work or what I needed to do to make dinner that night. My mind was clearer than it had ever been. I started chasing after replicating that structure and feeling for myself ever since. An MFA can't teach you that. A residency can't either, honestly—it's something you have to learn about yourself.
If you have the means and find making structure for yourself easy (this is my bias), I recommend cultivating some sort of studio space in your own home or sustainably with other people. I used to pre-cook my meals for the week and had set times that I worked. The work doesn't necessarily have to be MAKING the thing. I had a period where I just read in bed on weekends, early in the morning until noon, after which I'd get a nice brunch at the corner diner. The notes I took from those times turned into drafts which turned into pieces, etc.
this is so helpful as i've been considering a low residency mfa just to get consistent eyes on my work through the years. the writing group i'm a part of does help with that but i wonder if i need an established writer to at least help me get to where i want with my work -- publishing a memoir.
Hi Julie! Yes, consistency is really, really helpful. There *are* mentorship programs out there outside of MFA programs. The ones I know are based around NYC (and these are just from the top of my head), but I'd love to know if anyone knows about others!
Hi Yanyi, There is a program in Pittsburgh, PA at Carlow University called Madwomen in the Attic. They offer small seminars or workshops (12 max in workshops, 20 in seminars) which this fall are $175 each and all are virtual. They also offer a free mentorship program in which you get paired with someone in your genre to work outside the seminar or workshop for the same semester. That is first come, first serve, but if you don't get paired in one semester you are top of the list next time. You must be taking a class to do the mentorship.
I am starting my first class Thursday, so I can't speak to how they are except to say that 9 of the participants are returnees, so they must have liked it.
On a separate note, I read your book - thank you. So many things came up as I read it, and I will write separately about that, but wanted to let you know. It moved me.
And for AAPI writers in NYC, there's also the Kundiman Mentorship Lab (which I also didn't get, lol, but I do think both of these programs look great, so I want to encourage others to try, too!). http://www.kundiman.org/mentorship-lab
Oh, one more: The NYFA Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program (for people in NY who were not born in the US -- a few friends have done this one). https://www.nyfa.org/Content/Show/Mentorship
Hey Yanyi, no question but just wanted to say, as someone also living off savings made from working in tech and considering moving away from NY after my mfa is done next year to try to stretch that money, I feel you and will read the crap out of any column you write on the topic! Here’s to figuring out life.
The answer to this question depends on what you're actually asking. If you want to become a writer, that's free to do and you can do it anywhere. But I think we all know: this question should really read "should I get an MFA if...(I want to make money off it and) I live in New York City?"
This Leslie Jamison essay already breaks down how ironic this binary is (https://newrepublic.com/article/116778/mfa-vs-nyc-most-useful-explanation-how-writers-get-paid). In short, she writes that the MFA with its academic machinery and the publishing industry in New York City usually comprise a portfolio of a successful writer's portfolio. I agree with her.
Over the years, I've chosen NYC time and time again over an MFA. I took classes from literary institutions across the city. If I chose well, the content of the classes were not much different than what was offered at MFAs—the teaching artists were the same and their classes just as useful or interesting, with one key difference: there were no office hours, and the classes usually were 4-6 weeks vs. the 12 weeks of the university system. There was also little continuity between those who I was taking class with, both between instructors and other students. That famous writer you're rubbing shoulders with on the street doesn't have a reason to pay attention to you outside of the hours you're spending in class.
Economically speaking, I took maybe 8 classes for around $400 each, totaling $3200 compared to the average cost of, say, a program like Columbia, which was about $65k this year in tuition alone (https://arts.columbia.edu/tuition/first-second-year-mfa-students). (This point doesn't matter, though, because you've already taken my advice to never take on debt or pay for a program! ) It only took one class to pay off—one writing master class turned into a small group of friends with whom I navigated and questioned Submittable, cover letters, and workshops together for years.
Access, I think, is the real difference. Access is a class issue and not only on the student side. A writer who's not sure where their next paycheck is coming from doesn't have the luxury of extra time to get coffee with you or write your next recommendation, let alone everyone in the class. It's not personal—it's simply the (messed up) reality of class within the literary community. (If you've met an independent writer who's not working a second job or independently wealthy who's still willing to do work like this, recognize that and at think about compensating them fairly if you have the resources). At an MFA, your professors will, at least, give you some attention, even if it's just 10 minutes a semester. And it matters for recommendations, which plug into a prestige economy that I am honestly too tired to talk about right now (but maybe someone can pay me to, haha).
I felt this lack of access acutely as a teenager in the Midwest; I even felt it when I was working in tech in NYC, treating poetry as my serious "side thing." While I could go to as many poetry readings I wanted, if I went alone, I left events right as they ended to avoid awkwardly standing there while people closed ranks in their friend groups. This stopped only after years of publishing, reading, and curating events in New York myself, enabled by my day job, which enabled my getting mental health support and getting my basic needs met. There's also a class reason behind being able to show up day after day.
An MFA is a professional degree, but don't get one to become a "professional writer."
Here is the non-starter: do not, under any circumstances, go into debt or pay to get an MFA. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. If you're convincing yourself because you were raised to believe that a professional education is supposed to open doors, read my column 'Money Seems More Real Than My Art' (https://yanyi.substack.com/p/money-seems-more-real-than-my-art).
If your only concern is getting a tenure-track job in creative writing, the only doors it will open are maybe, *maybe,* a university mandating that you have a terminal degree in your field in order for you to teach there. More likely than that, though, you will be applying to adjunct with no guaranteed benefits. Jobs are scarce and you'll also be up against writers who have gone on to get creative writing PhDs, increasingly popular as the market continues to thin out. The professionalization of creative writing programs, too, is a very recent, 1950s-and-onward, development. There's a point when your resume can end up outshining the letters after your name, anyway, as a teaching artist.
To repeat it differently: do not get an MFA (and don't become an artist) to make money. My first publication paid me a respectful, and surprising, $20 for five poems, and that was the most money I made for at least the first couple of years. I was grateful and proud to buy a meal with my first poetry earnings. Fast-forward to now—even in my early successes as a writer, I usually am at a loss or net out year-over-year and mostly live off savings I earned while working in tech.
There's obviously more to say about this, but I'll leave it to this for now, unless someone wants me to commission me to write the essay, haha.
Hi Yanyi, thank you for creating small internet spaces like this. Is your goal to eventually sustain yourself through your writing? Is working in tech the plan B waiting in the eaves, just in case? I am in a similar position of having a tech-adjacent day job while pursuing woodworking as my serious "side thing" and am wondering how you decided when it was time to quit your day job and how you've plotted your financial course since.
Hi Ash, thanks for your question. I should write a whole post on this, honestly! Yes, working in tech is in the eaves, as is teaching and exploring other ways I can share my talents to sustain myself, including this Substack. But yes, I hope to sustain myself through primarily the various work I can do as a writer.
Whether or not that happens is still up in the air. Money is uneven and unpredictable, as you probably know. I decided to leave tech when I was at a crossroads—that two-year itch one gets at a company. My first book had come out and there was a lot of excitement. I had also just gotten into NYU, an important institutional tether that has since served as a kind of transitional space for me (that includes, as ever important for my trans life, health insurance).
So it seemed like the right time. I looked at my savings, moved out of a costly apartment, and planned my finances for a year and a half, from May 2019 to December 2020, to figure it out. A book deal in April and the Substack Fellowship that came in August were the windfalls I needed to keep figuring it out. I gave myself time to actually focus at the right time in my career and it actually worked. Also my accountant has been amazing.
I'm not at all idealistic about it though—money like this is not easy to come by. So there's still more that I'm working on with this newsletter which I'm excited to share later this winter. :)
Apologies if you have already covered this as I am fairly new here, but did you get your MFA? If so, from where, and can you talk a little about that experience (how your was funded, whether you found it beneficial and in what ways, whether you got in the first time you applied)? Thank you for this, it is always supremely helpful.
I came to NYC for my MFA in game design & development. While here & working in another industry, I found a writing community through places like AAWW, Kundiman's weekend intensives, and Catapult. Taking workshops through places that are welcoming helped me move past negative workshop experiences I had as an undergraduate that put me off from pursuing the MFA in creative writing to begin with. I believe I've become a better writer through community & writing fellowships that are accessible in the city. I think being in a creative writing MFA would have consumed me (personally) in unhealthy ways (much like the PhD path I was headed in literary studies).
This is so key. Having workshops in welcoming spaces is so key to positive growth in our own writing and the motivations behind it. Thanks for sharing, Emperatriz!
Hi Yanyi, first off, thanks so much for starting this Q&A and discussion! I am also interested in writing and currently working in tech since I really needed the independence and freedom afforded by high-paying software jobs. I'm lucky enough to live in NYC, but since I majored in computer science in a very STEM-heavy school, I barely have any pals IRL who are into writing prose or poetry. Your free online advice is super valuable to people like me who aren't part of any writing communities and don't know what's out there or what are things to do if you're interested in writing professionally.
I would love to hear your and anyone else's thoughts on how to join or build a writing community after college, if you didn't pursue such a community while in college or other academic tracks. Further complicating the issue is the pandemic, since open mics aren't happening every night across each borough. Finally, if anyone else reading this is also hungry to be part of a writing community, I would love to hear from you!
Hi zyz, thanks for writing and asking about how to do this. My simplest answer here, when things are in-person, is showing up repeatedly to events around the city and volunteering for readings and other events that you really support and enjoy. If you can, also apply for fellowships across the city, which will introduce you to people at a given organization as well as the people who love going to their events.
Classes are also a great way to meet people, especially more introverted people (like writers!) who find it harder to talk to strangers at one-time events. The word I've heard recently is that there's been an uptick for these since the pandemic started and people are more interested in making friends virtually. I've made quite a few friends just from 6-week workshops I took over those years I was engineering.
I'm most excited for those who *aren't* in cities to take advantage of these opportunities. If you can't afford workshops, a lot of the time there are scholarships that you can get just by emailing the organization.
This makes a lot of sense.
I live in the UK (am from America originally) and the creative writing post-grad landscape is a little different (both cost and duration) but at the user-end this logic applies completely.
I was riveted by the Nation article you linked to a few newsletters ago about the CIA's backing of certain lit magazines. Fascinating on its own, but deep in that interview was this quote, attributed to a nameless Japanese dancer, "All culture is subculture." In context, it's talking about how expensive it is to create culture, so these systems got created to do so, and now that we live in the future, it's time to re-examine how we look at publishing, and self-publishing... and I think this can be applied to your thoughts on education, this idea that an institution can anoint you with oil and doors will open. Not saying that doesn't happen, or that this isn't a valid strategy, but for us out here operating without an education (or at least one with any brand equity), there's something empowering about just fully embracing the DIY nature of one's own creative practice.
A lockdown silver-lining, for me, is having access to American writers going to the web and teaching classes or giving lectures, usually writers from America who would, I'm sure, love to tour the UK, but find their book tours staying regional or at least US-based only. Ditto for courses from all over that are, by default, in-person, but who have gone online to cast a wider net after, I'm sure, having to cancel months of bookings over safety issues. I hope this remains the case after in-person becomes safer. I've lived in London for 12 years before moving to the south coast of England and the challenges for people not living in major cities in accessing education or art or job opportunities are as pronounced over here as they are in America.
Hi Ryan, great to hear from someone with another national perspective. I too hope that the virtual experiences temporarily afforded in the pandemic era will be expanded and kept even after the pandemic. I'm moving away from NYC for the foreseeable future and have been very much reminded of the difference in access to education, art, and job opportunities as well as access to racial and social diversity. Access to literary know-how and mentorship is something I'm hoping to remedy, at least on my part, even more in the near future. :)
Even while I was here, I often turned to online lectures and events to "travel" across the world (let's just say it's been lots of Youtube, haha). Where have you been turning to recently?
Good luck with your move away. There are benefits, too, of course, although I have never felt this 'American' until I moved out of London, which is very much it's own country, this beautiful mix of people from all over, but especially where Britain was especially meddlesome over the last 600 years. History on this timescale is a little wild.
Here's some links to stuff I've been taking part in:
The Shipman Agency produce some very interesting classes. I was able to get on a Zoom with both Garth Greenwell and Alexander Chee, respectively, and it basically made my entire month: https://www.theshipmanagency.com/theworkroom
Toby Brothers runs phenomenal reading salons. I read Ulysses with her and group of very smart, very kind fellow readers who were very gentle with me. Toby is one of the best teachers I've ever had. It almost hurts to think what it would have been like had my own high school teachers were like her. She runs virtual salons now. Someone from NYC joined our Ulysses group: https://www.litsalon.co.uk/
Also Corporeal Writing out in Portland are doing great stuff online. I've just finished a called on Queer Forms by Cooper Lee Bombardier and it was thrilling: http://www.corporealwriting.com/
Hey Yanyi, I am considering a MFA in art and I feel like the conversation around this is quite similar as the question of MFA in creative writing.
I am interested in the space and time a MFA offers to really hone in on the craft. I know residencies and fellowships exist for this reason, but it's not easy to balance this with trying to make a living. Can you talk about how residencies and fellowships be can as effective for cultivating that thinking space?
Hi Jenna! Thanks for asking. Time is money in this case—even if you get into a studio program with a full ride and even a stipend, there are "invisible" costs of having to pay for living expenses that the stipend may not fully cover. Quite a few of the people I know in MFAs had to get jobs while they were in their programs for that reason. At the very least, I do agree that residencies/fellowships that include studio time and space have similar issues in that regard.
Fellowships without studios/studio time have been helpful for me in creating supportive communities. However, I will assume your question is more about residencies that afford space and time. The best of these actually provide stipends that include living expenses or both meals and lodging. Of course, these may not include the cost to actually get to the residency or the opportunity cost of *not* working while you're at them.
I have some friends who have made it work by basically living itinerantly from fellowship to fellowship, or doing a fellowship a year (where they sublet their apartments)—something easier to do as writers without having to bring along artist materials like paint, clay, etc.
However, if you're holding down a job right now that is not easy to replace, it's kind of obvious that fellowships are for those who have flexible employment schedules, no jobs at all, or have some huge chunks of the year to themselves (academia). It might be easier now more than ever if you're able to stay a remote worker after the pandemic. Some residencies even have 1-week or 2-week slots, which work better for work schedules. If it were me, I would be very selective in the residencies I agree to do because of the aforementioned factors. Check your math on what they'll actually cost: they should pay for themselves.
Studio time in residencies are different than MFAs, where you still have to take care of your basic needs while also going to class. At a residency, you are not obligated to anyone, not even a workshop instructor. My first residency included room and board, a studio, and cooked dinners for all the fellows. It helped me understand what I was actually capable of if I wasn't spending time thinking about work or what I needed to do to make dinner that night. My mind was clearer than it had ever been. I started chasing after replicating that structure and feeling for myself ever since. An MFA can't teach you that. A residency can't either, honestly—it's something you have to learn about yourself.
If you have the means and find making structure for yourself easy (this is my bias), I recommend cultivating some sort of studio space in your own home or sustainably with other people. I used to pre-cook my meals for the week and had set times that I worked. The work doesn't necessarily have to be MAKING the thing. I had a period where I just read in bed on weekends, early in the morning until noon, after which I'd get a nice brunch at the corner diner. The notes I took from those times turned into drafts which turned into pieces, etc.
wow, this was way longer than I thought it'd be. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
this is so helpful as i've been considering a low residency mfa just to get consistent eyes on my work through the years. the writing group i'm a part of does help with that but i wonder if i need an established writer to at least help me get to where i want with my work -- publishing a memoir.
Hi Julie! Yes, consistency is really, really helpful. There *are* mentorship programs out there outside of MFA programs. The ones I know are based around NYC (and these are just from the top of my head), but I'd love to know if anyone knows about others!
https://www.queer-art.org/mentorship
https://www.poetryproject.org/about/programs/fellowships/emerge-surface-be
https://aaww.org/fellowships/margins/
Hi Yanyi, There is a program in Pittsburgh, PA at Carlow University called Madwomen in the Attic. They offer small seminars or workshops (12 max in workshops, 20 in seminars) which this fall are $175 each and all are virtual. They also offer a free mentorship program in which you get paired with someone in your genre to work outside the seminar or workshop for the same semester. That is first come, first serve, but if you don't get paired in one semester you are top of the list next time. You must be taking a class to do the mentorship.
I am starting my first class Thursday, so I can't speak to how they are except to say that 9 of the participants are returnees, so they must have liked it.
On a separate note, I read your book - thank you. So many things came up as I read it, and I will write separately about that, but wanted to let you know. It moved me.
AWP also has a mentoring program for members. (I applied and didn't get it.) https://www.awpwriter.org/community_calendar/mentorship_program_overview
And for AAPI writers in NYC, there's also the Kundiman Mentorship Lab (which I also didn't get, lol, but I do think both of these programs look great, so I want to encourage others to try, too!). http://www.kundiman.org/mentorship-lab
Oh, one more: The NYFA Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program (for people in NY who were not born in the US -- a few friends have done this one). https://www.nyfa.org/Content/Show/Mentorship
Hey Yanyi, no question but just wanted to say, as someone also living off savings made from working in tech and considering moving away from NY after my mfa is done next year to try to stretch that money, I feel you and will read the crap out of any column you write on the topic! Here’s to figuring out life.