Disappearing Act

I spent a portion of this past weekend at the huge AWP convention here in Chicago–that’s the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, which claims to be the largest annual gathering of writers and poets in the country. And it may well be; I’ve heard attendance figures in the 7,000 range, even though I haven’t seen anything official, and the program itself was huge, with hundreds of panels, seminars, and readings. It was in general a very impressive event, filled with very nice people obviously having a good time. The exhibit space was filled with more small presses and university presses than I’ve ever seen in one space, and it seemed as though just about every creative writing program in the country was represented as well.

What I’m curious about, though, is this: I’ve never attended a literary gathering this large in which fantastic or genre literature was so thoroughly invisible. I scoured the program both in print and online, and could find virtually no references to science fiction, fantasy, horror, or even anything that might refer to slipstreamy hybrids. Even young adult fiction only showed up in one or two places. In the book exhibit, I had a nice talk with Lawrence Schimel, and I heard that Small Beer had a booth, but it was generally as arid as the programming.

My question, naive as it may sound, is: what’s the deal with creative writing programs and fantastic or genre literature? Even the Modern Language Association, historically a bastion of scholarly austerity, has been paying at least some attention to science fiction and fantasy for many years now. And I’m aware that a number of distinguished writers in our field either direct or teach in MFA programs, but for the most part they weren’t at this convention at all.

Like many of you, I’ve heard numerous stories of aspiring writers who were told unequivocally that genre fiction would not be tolerated in their MFA work, but when I talk with MFA teachers, most deny this and many cheerfully admit to reading at least some marginally genre work. And, of course, there are workshops like Clarion and Odyssey, but these aren’t MFA programs as such.

This isn’t a question about which creative writing programs are “genre-friendly,” although I suspect there are more than a few young writers who’d appreciate such a list, but why, in the vast majority of such programs–at least as represented at this AWP conference–genres are simply invisible. I’d be glad to hear anyone’s explanations or theories.

12 thoughts on “Disappearing Act

  • February 16, 2009 at 5:29 pm
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    I’ve written and erased four attempts at a tactful, discreet, and accurate response. One more try. My wife has been teaching creative writing and monitoring the field for about twenty years, and I get to look over her shoulder. My impression is that CW culture in general is indeed scornful of genre work. I know three teachers (my wife not among them) who won’t read SF/F, though I’m not sure what they would make of a mystery.

    As for the cause, I would say that it’s a reflection of the reading tastes and professional ambitions of the instructors, who want to be in the The New Yorker or at least Ploughshares rather than Asimov’s. Not that there’s anything wrong with that–who wouldn’t want to be in The New Yorker, just on the basis of word rates? But CW is part of an academic culture that still tends to look down its nose at popular fiction that isn’t about middle-class domestic crises or rehab or the juicier bits of working-class life. Or maybe I’ve spent too many decades in the provinces and things are different elsewhere.

    This sounds like a version of the kvetching I’ve been hearing at con panels and parties for forty years–maybe my propellor beanie has grown right into my scalp. But there does seem to be an aesthetic class system in the academy, much diminished since the 1960s when I entered the culture, but not dead.

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  • February 17, 2009 at 5:00 am
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    Sorry for multiple posts; I’m still figuring out Blogger. I’d like to guess at some reasons why the fantastic might be invisible at the AWP.

    1. The fantastic is everywhere. Look at the top bestsellers and blockbusters, and most of them have some kind of skiffy element. Therefore, the fantastic as represented in pop culture is not “serious” enough for the young people in these programs who are trying to write like Raymond Carver or James Joyce. For someone who thinks that domestic realism is the best way to write about emotions and relationships, a weird setting might be seen as taking the focus away from a story’s emotional core.

    2. Despite the increasing profile of science fiction research in universities, there is still some bias against genre in academia. When I was in college I gave a presentation at a university research forum on an analysis of pulp science fiction magazines, using research methods from the Genre Evolution Project. After awarding first prize (and a check!), the judge asked when my group might use this neato research method to do some real research. She suggested gender roles as a good topic.

    3. There are two cultures. In one, writers publish in university magazines with a readership numbering in the hundreds, and the end game is, more or less, an academic job, tenure, maybe a book contract for a collection. In the other, the goal is to be read, make money, maybe win some awards, and maybe even be able to go full time at this writing thing. The two cultures are not incompatible by any means, but there’s a difference between the relatively insular market of university writing programs and the reality of a market dependent on consumers in which distribution and printing are getting steadily more expensive, the web has more markets than anyone can shake a pixel at, and rates of pay for short fiction — of any genre — can’t support a middle class lifestyle, and haven’t been able to for decades. People of both cultures write short fiction. But I’d guess that the literary magazines and the genre magazines probably don’t share a great number of readers, and that it may not even be a decision between Asimov’s and Ploughshares, but a world in which only one of those is worth noticing.

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  • February 17, 2009 at 4:57 pm
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    John Kessel and I discussed going to AWP this year but couldn’t fit it into our schedules. However both of our programs, the Stonecoast Creative Writing MFA and the North Carolina State Creative Writing MFA were represented by other, non-genre faculty. But yes, there aren’t many programs that are genre friendly and all too many that are actively hostile to what we do.

    I actually wrote about this in a recent column for Asimov’s and included a first attempt at that list, Gary. http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0807_8/Onthenet.shtml

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  • February 17, 2009 at 10:14 pm
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    Gary, I plan on going next year. I only get so much in travel funds from my university, and I’m using them this year to make it to ICFA! The MFA program I teach in was present at AWP, but I think I’m the only writer on faculty that is genre-oriented. Maybe those of us who work in academia and write fantasy and science fiction should attempt to get a reading/panel next year. I don’t know how difficult that barrier will be to break, but it could be worth a try.

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  • February 18, 2009 at 4:17 am
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    Thanks for all your comments, and especially thanks to Jim for directing me to that Asimov’s piece; I hope we can keep that list of friendly MFA programs up to date in some form.

    But the “overt hostility” you all mention might actually be easier to deal with than the sheer vacancy I experienced at this conference. Maybe people are being polite because they know of my interest in this stuff, but neither here nor in my other conversations with MFA professors have I encountered much of the hostility expressed by that Bryn Mawr undergrad quoted in Jim’s Asimov’s piece. It’s more like the two cultures that Amelia describes: not that I disapprove of this stuff, but what does it have to do with me as a serious writer?

    The problem this leads to isn’t just the familiar defense that Lessing, Atwood, et al have seen fit to play in this yard, but rather the suspicion that a whole boxful of writerly tools are being ignored, if not actively wittheld, from writing students. Even students who might never want to publish in genre venues deserve to know that these tools are out there, that something like, say, The Yiddish Policemen’ts Union makes use of techniques outside the usual box.

    Chris, I have no idea of whether taking this on at next year’s AWP is worth trying; I simply don’t know enough about the politics of the organization. But I’m glad you’re coming to ICFA; maybe we can all have a poolside chat about this stuff there.

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  • February 19, 2009 at 12:41 am
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    It’s not as invisible as it seems, but certainly core SF and high fantasy aren’t really represented, since there are so few MFA programs focused on commercial fiction.

    Actually, it was “nonrealism” that first brought me to AWP a few years ago when Omnidawn Press started their annual panel on the topic, which that year included, aside from myself, Kelly Link, Jeff VanderMeer, Brian Evenson, and Laird Hunt. (And was coordinated with a reading the night before by some of us along with Michael Moorcock.) Brian’s the head of the Brown University MFA program, has won an IHG award, has been in various genre anthologies. Lots of other writers who skirt the boundaries between traditional litfic and less traditional specfic attend and participate, and publishers such as McSweeney’s and Tin House are always there and visible. SF’s just not visible in the way it is at genre conventions … because AWP’s not a genre convention…

    There’s a hunger for a diversity at AWP. Last year, I was there with lots of copies of Weird Tales and Best American Fantasy, and had no trouble getting rid of them all, despite having just about the worst possible placement in the book fair. Inevitably, there will be people who will scoff, but that’s because inevitably when you bring thousands of people together certain sorts of people will scoff at other sorts of people. Compared to some of the tensions amongst the various schools of poets, the tensions amongst different types of fiction writers is mild, and I’ve found that people’s assumptions are more easily overcome at AWP than at many other gatherings I’ve been to.

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  • February 19, 2009 at 3:21 am
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    That’s somewhat encouraging, Matt, and I should mention that I did chat briefly with Brian Evenson, who’s quite sensible and who is clearly familiar with Locus. And I know other writers were around, like Dan Chaon, who are equally astute about genre. I didn’t directly experience any scoffing at all, which is why I emphasized the invisibility issue instead.

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  • February 19, 2009 at 8:11 am
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    That’s a really heartening post, Matt. My poet friends say there is generally more scoffing among poets about anything because there are fewer markets for poetry, and because of that, more competition to an extent. And not necessarily friendly competition. Some say they wish they were fiction writers.

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  • February 21, 2009 at 10:18 pm
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    I used to go to AWP every year, when I was teaching poetry writing at the U of PA. When I started writing and teaching CW courses in SF, I stopped going to AWP. I’m trying to reconstruct why, and what AWP ca. 1990 might have in common with the same group today. In 1990 a lot of the poets I used to hang out with there were openly hostile about what they perceived to be a betrayal of poetry on my part, a fall from grace. There was NO interest in my new work. There had to be other people teaching creative writing courses in SF back then, but I certainly knew of none. It seems there’s more tolerance nowadays for students writing spec. fic., but little encouragement. The last such course I taught, at the U of KY in 2003 (as an instructor with no travel money to attend convention), aroused zero interest among the other CW teachers, writers of poetry and fiction. While it does seem that things are a little bit better than they used to be, AWP is overwhelmingly dominated by mainstream (academically respectable) creative writing teachers–including language poets, if I can contribute my bit of spleen to the poetical scuffling. Since on the whole they don’t read SF or fantasy, and what they do read and like (Tolkien, Le Guin) is assumed to be exceptional, they don’t see why they should respect it. To quote Jim quoting Amelia again, It’s not that I disapprove of this stuff, the little I know about it, but what does it have to do with me as a serious writer?

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  • February 22, 2009 at 3:32 am
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    Judith, the notion of your work being viewed as a “betrayal of poetry” or a fall from grace recalls Amelia’s being asked if she might adapt her methodology for examining pulp fiction to “real research.” In a similar vein, many years ago when an academic colleague–himself an SF scholar–asked what I was working on and I mentioned that I’d begun reviewing for Locus, he responded, yes, but when are you going to do some more real work? We’re not exempt from a certain amount of this stuff even within our own community.

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