The Muse & the Marketplace 2017

I want to use this session to have a free flowing discussion on the ways our current racial landscape and historical moment shape the context for creative writing in 2017. On the surface, there’s the movement from Obama’s first election and a declaration by some of a post-racial America now followed by the election of the birther, alt.right darling, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-Black Lives Matter, pro-stop and frisk Trump. How does all this effect the teaching of creative writing or the charges of racially biased classrooms outlined in Junot Diaz’s “POC vs. MFA” or the critique of white writers in Morrison’s Playing in the Dark? Are there ways the current climate calls for a deeper and bolder assessment of the role of race both in our private and public lives and in our history? And again, how does that change our writing practices, both in terms of what we write about, our conceptions of craft, and how we shape our vision as writers? 

Readings will include from articles on the election, Junot Diaz’s “POC vs. MFA,” quotations from Toni Morrison’s "Playing in the Dark," and the Mura essay, “The Student of Color in the Typical MFA Program."