Community Quote by Alice Mattison

The effects of MFA programs, and the rise of creative writing instruction more generally, are far more diffuse than people think. Even if you're…

— Chad Harbach

My god, people are selling their work and people are reading it! The horror! That MFA programs have to advertise that they'll let you…

— Tod Goldberg

I have an MFA in writing. It is debatable if they are right for everyone, but I had a mentor who really changed my…

— Rob Roberge

I do find that people are incredibly naive about what it is to be a writer. Like you would pay an incredible amount of…

— Faith Adiele

Writers' communities are very helpful to writers because it gives them a way to try out their stuff short of publication.

— Robert Munsch

At risk of sounding foully pompous I think that writers' groups are probably very useful at the beginning of a writing career.

— Bernard Cornwell

I sold a book six years after I left an MFA program. In between, there was a lot of endurance of poverty and a…

— Chad Harbach

I never really had novel-writing instruction like people do in MFA programs.

— Jess Row

I think a lot of writers spend years just getting up the courage to write because it seems like such a fantasy of a…

— B. J. Novak

If you don't believe in yourself, and you don't have the fortitude to make that dream happen, why should the hotshots in the publishing…

— Jodi Picoult

Writing is probably the least glamorous profession there is. This doesn't change when you become an author.

— Rebecca Serle

Every once in a while someone says, 'You can't really learn anything, if you're really a writer then you wouldn't need to do it.'…

— Alice Mattison