“The Creative Writing M.F.A. is a meteor,” said Portland State fiction professor A.B. Paulson, motioning skyward. “We’re headed into deep space.”
Last weekend, however, Paulson and the rest of the creative writing contingent were relegated to planet Earth—more specifically, booth 614 at the 2011 Wordstock Festival, held at the Oregon Convention Center.
Roughly two dozen volunteers from the fiction, nonfiction and poetry strands of PSU’s Creative Writing Master of Fine Arts program spent the convention answering questions and promoting the burgeoning program, which marked its third year this fall.
“It made me an infinitely better writer,” said recent graduate and M.F.A. program assistant Cornelia Coleman. “And I wasn’t a bad writer to begin with.”
Coleman and her cohort were among the first to receive an M.F.A. from Portland State. The graduate writing program transitioned from an M.A. to an M.F.A. before the 2009–10 school year.
“The M.F.A. is a terminal degree in Creative Writing,” Coleman said to one prospective student at the booth, highlighting a key distinction: With a terminal degree, graduates are able to teach at the university level—an attractive aspect of the program.
“I was interested in teaching before I applied,” said Christina Cooke, a nonfiction student who recently defended her thesis. Cooke accrued valuable teaching experience during her studies through a graduate assistantship.
“When you have to teach someone else, you have to take it apart and really take a look at your own writing process,” said Cooke of her time teaching at Portland State. “It really enriched the experience of being in grad school.”
The other primary distinction between an M.A. and an M.F.A. is the latter’s intensive focus on craft, particularly the weekly workshops required of each Creative Writing graduate student.
“By shifting to the M.F.A., we’ve been able to have core workshops that are only students in the program,” said Michael McGregor, who has taught nonfiction writing at the university since 2000. “That has helped create more camaraderie with students in the program and creates a group that goes through the experience together.”
Chelsea Bieker, a fiction student in her second year of the program, has tried to foster this sense of community by spearheading a student reading series, held the last Sunday of every month from 5 to 7 p.m. at Backspace in Northwest Portland.
“It’s been a really great way to get everyone together and have the students practice at reading in front of people,” Bieker said.
Public events like the reading series and the presence at Wordstock have helped boost the program’s profile and increase interest: Coleman estimated that volunteers had handed out 75 pamphlets this year compared to roughly ten last year.
“We’re getting more applications now,” McGregor said. “Some of that has to do with getting faculty to come on who have a higher profile as writers.”
Portland State’s faculty was a key selling point for Bieker as she researched potential graduate schools.
“I was a fan of Charles D’Ambrosio and also Tom Bissell,” Bieker said, referencing two current M.F.A. professors. (Bissell is departing after this term, though he will remain an affiliated professor.) “It seemed like such a great faculty, and I think that attracted me to the program.”
The flexibility of the program and the emphasis on writing rather than test scores have made the program feasible for non-traditional students—many of whom navigated circuitous routes on their way to Portland State.
Mike Ritchey, 68, began his term as a graduate fiction student this fall after a life spent in journalism—as a columnist in Fort Worth, Texas, a writer at the Associated Press, a PBS employee and a newspaper owner in Western Colorado. After his daughter moved to the area, Ritchey began surreptitiously considering a second career as a graduate student.
“I didn’t tell anyone,” Ritchey said. “I didn’t tell my wife.”
Before applying, Ritchey placed a call to Michelle Glazer, the M.F.A. director. “I said to her, ‘I just want to know if I’m out of my mind,’” Ritchey said. “But she said, ‘No, we’re a non-traditional program here.’”
He added that his friends are all supportive and blown away that “I either lack the brains or have the fortitude to try it.”
“I just see it as continuing to live my life. This isn’t a retirement program for me,” Ritchey said. “I’m here to write.”