SocialKonstruct

Good luck. I didn't apply to Vanderbilt but then I already have a BA in English/creative writing from Vandy. They probably don't want to see me again :D.

My table above shows the Fall 2023 entry cycle. So not this round. But Yale hardly changes and honestly is probably much harder now to enter in as we are under the Trump regime.

I got rejected from two Yale MFA programs... then again I wasn't surprised. I already have a MPH degree from Yale back in 2001 so they probably didn't want me again LOL

Just finished up editing three books of short story collections, of which two of them are going to competition. Working on my long novel editing atm... Lots of writing. And reading. I read like 31 books last month which is a lot for me. I hardly think about what's going on with the PhD/MFA stuff.

https://www.art.ucla.edu/areas-of-study/interdisciplinary-studio/ (part of the School of Art at UCLA).

Don't be discouraged folks. I applied to many visual art programs and got rejected from all but two. I ended up going to my backup school and haven't regretted it since. Here is my spreadsheet from 2023. MFA PROGRAM Fall 2023 CONCENTRATION STATUS Yale University Sculpture Rejected Yale University Painting and Printmaking Rejected UCLA New Genres Rejected Columbia University Printmaking Rejected School of the Art Institute of Chicago Painting/Drawing Rejected School of the Art Institute of Chicago Photography Accepted School of the Art Institute of Chicago Sculpture Rejected Calarts (California Institute of the Arts) Art (Integrated Media) Rejected Calarts (California Institute of the Arts) Art + Technology (Integrated Media) Rejected Calarts (California Institute of the Arts) Photography and Media (Integrated Media) Rejected ArtCenter College of Design Art Accepted and will commit

My interview for the ArtCenter MFA program took me around 10 minutes. So quick. And I got in that school easily.

Wow, that is a pretty young cohort by far. I am going to be 50 years old this year and it's odd to think that I will be attempting to tackle a Ph.D. program at this point. But I'm stoked! Reflecting on this masterly article and reflecting on what I can do to foster the "novels of ideas" deemed unfashionable today. https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-iowa-flattened-literature/

They will usually prefer to select folks who have a decent amount of life experience unless you are the next Percival Everett at the ripe young age of 22. Age isn't important but young folks tend to be dismissive of the older ones.

I aslo applied to the U of U Creative Writing Ph.D. track in Prose. It's a killer program and one of my friends who is in that program is publishing in literary journals left and right and winning all types of awards. Even Lindsey Drager just killed it with the recent round of the 2025 O. Henry Awards. I love the program and man do I really hate the state and culture there. My mom lives there. https://coloradoreview.colostate.edu/features/blackbirds/

A lot of variety. To give you some examples, this month I have work being published by New Delta Review and The Adroit Journal if that gives you any indication of the type of journals I have been submitting to recently.

I just wrapped up another novel I have been working on for a few years. Doing some research for my next novel and working on my huge poetry book in progress. Also editing the literary magazine in NYC of which I am a literary editor-in-chief and getting ready to be published in two forthcoming literary journals. So sort of busy lately

Interestingly enough I am working hard on completing one of my manuscripts for a new novel (ugh, got 3 novels completed already during the past 20 years but unpublished) and then I have like maybe 3-4 books else in progress atm.

Hmmm... so much invaluable information there... I dislike Zuckerberg with a passion but I had to use my dummy FB account to join and lots of advice and spreadsheets which show who got in where and rejections/acceptances etc. etc. Definitely if you join, please keep things there private but you can learn the scoop about programs for sure. Mental health... maybe not the best but then I'm too busy writing my novel now to fret.

Interestingly enough, I also live in Los Angeles too. Curious whether you applied to ArtCenter too? it's close by

Not surprisingly as much as I dislike Facebook, I forced myself to make a new account to find out what the hoopla is all about. I found the '25 group but the '26 group I'm still pending on. Today as I was visiting the Getty Villa I met a dude who is a Ph.D. in English literature at U of Nevada in Reno who was rejected twice from the Ph.D. creative writing program at USC :o... Is that ominous for me then? Fates beckon me with the Furies.

Since I applied to only one MFA program, I suspect that I will hear back from UCI first before my Ph.D. programs at USC and U of Utah.

I appreciate your feedback. For further commentary let's look at various writings from 2000-2025 1) Thomas Pynchon's Shadow Ticket (no MFA, technical writing background)- 1 When trouble comes to town, it usually takes the North Shore Line. What with tough times down the Lake in Chicago, changes in the wind, Prohibition repeal just around the corner, Big Al in the federal pokey in Atlanta, Outfit affairs grown jumpy and unpredictable, anybody needing an excuse to get out of town in a hurry comes breezing up here to Milwaukee, where it seldom gets more serious than somebody stole somebody's fish. Hicks McTaggart has been ankling around the Third Ward all day keeping an eye on a couple of tourists in Borsalinos and black camel hair overcoats up from the home office at 22nd and Wabash down the Lake, the Chicago Outfit handling whatever needs to be taken care of in Milwaukee since Vito Guardalabene cashed in his chips ten years ago, though Vito's successor Pete Guardalabene is still considered head man in the Ward, gets his picture in the social pages smiling at weddings and so forth. Loitering in the alleyway in back of Pasquale's Bella Palermo, Hicks can hear sounds of noodle-flexing sociability, smell spaghetti sauce and garlic frying and sfinciuni bagherese baking over an olive-branch fire, and it's making him hungry, though this close to payday his lunch menu is a thermos of coffee and a buttermilk cruller stashed in a pocket someplace. The explosion when it comes seems to be from somewhere across the river and nearer the Lake. Forks and glassware pause between tabletop and mouth, as if everybody's observing a moment of stillness, and nobody seems surprised. It's still the topic of conversation a little later when everybody comes piling out into the street. "Come up lookin for a little peace and quiet, next thing you know . . ." "Startin to sound like Chicago around here." 2) Mark Z. Danielewski's (no MFA at all) Tom's Crossing Earlier that afternoon, when for some reason Allison’s thoughts had angrily returned to the curse she’d laid upon Kalin before he’d left, warnin him from guns, makin it clear by insubstantial decree that even handlin a gun might cost him the horses he loved, and for the rest of his life, she and Sondra had returned to the Isatch Canyon parkin lot, where they’d promptly learned about the great rockfall. 3) Jayne Anne Phillips' (MFA from University of Iowa) Night Watch ConaLee A JOURNEY APRIL 1874 I got up in the wagon and Papa set me beside Mama, all of us on the buckboard seat. Hold her hand there, he said to me, like she likes. Sit tight in. Keep her still. I saw him lean down and rope her ankle to his. I was warm because he made me wear my bonnet, to keep my skin fine and my eyes from crinkling at the corners. In case someday I turned out after all. Talk to her, he said. Tell her she’ll like it where she’s going. A fine great place, like a castle with a tower clock. Tell her. You’ll like it, Mama, I said. A fine place like a castle, built from stone. Tell her about them palms. Palm trees in pots, Mama, and velvet sofas, like in a city hotel. And don’t call her Mama, he said. Don’t you see how she’s dressed? 4) Paul Harding's Tinkers (MFA from University of Iowa) He had built the house himself -- poured the foundation, raised the frame, joined the pipes, run the wires, plastered the walls, and painted the rooms. Lightning struck once when he was in the open foundation, soldering the last joint of the hot-water tank. It threw him to the opposite wall. He got up and finished the joint. Cracks in his plaster did not stay cracks; clogged pipes got routed; peeling clapboard got scraped and slathered with a new coat of paint. Get some plaster, he said, propped up in the bed, which looked odd and institutional among the Persian rugs and Colonial furniture and dozens of antique clocks. Get some plaster. Jesus, some plaster and some wires and a couple of hooks. You'd be all set for about five bucks. Yes, Gramp, they said. Yes, Dad. A breeze blew through the open window behind him and cleared exhausted heads. Bocce balls clicked out on the lawn. and 5) Tao Lin's Taipei (no MFA) 1. It began raining a little from a hazy, cloudless-seeming sky as Paul, 26, and Michelle, 21, walked toward Chelsea to attend a magazine-release party in an art gallery. Paul had resigned to not speaking and was beginning to feel more like he was “moving through the universe” than “walking on a sidewalk.” He stared ahead with a masklike expression, weakly trying to remember where he was one year ago, last November, more for something to do than because he wanted to know, though he was not incurious. Michelle, to his left, drifted in and out of his peripheral vision—far enough away for pedestrians to pass unknowingly between them—like a slow, amorphous flickering. Paul was thinking the word “somewhere,” meditatively as both placeholder and ends, when Michelle asked if he was okay. “Yes,” said Paul automatically. As they entered a building, a few minutes later, he sort of glanced at Michelle and was surprised to see her grinning, then couldn’t stop himself from grinning. Sometimes, during an argument, feeling like he’d been acting in a movie and the scene had ended, Paul would suddenly grin, causing Michelle to grin, and they’d be able to enjoy doing things together again, for one to forty hours, but that hadn’t happened this time, partly because Michelle had grinned first. Paul looked away, slightly confused, and suppressed his grin. “What,” he said in an unintentionally loud monotone, unsure what he felt exactly, and they entered a large, mundane elevator, whose door closed slowly. “What,” said Paul at a normal volume. “Nothing,” said Michelle still grinning a little. “Why are you grinning?” “No reason,” said Michelle. “What caused you to grin?” “Nothing. Just life. The situation.” ------------------------------------------------------------- Okay, five different writers... two of which are U of Iowa MFA graduates... which ones do you think have the most unique styles and voices? Honestly you can see how much Phillips' voice has impacted Harding's approach... Just a thought.

I am 49 years old while applying for Ph.D.'s and a MFA.

University of Utah is a very good fit for you and their MFA. Craig Dworkin, Lindsay Drager, and Paisley Rekdal (my fav) are all there. Rekdal is totally brilliant and sadly undervalued in the world of poetry

Wow, you and have similar tastes in fact! I am a hardcore fan of Anne Carson in fact... CNF programs at the MFA level. I definitely can recommend University of Utah very highly for their track (Maggie Day went there). Just write and write. And read and read. Don't just read literary stuff only. Read everything from fashion catalogs to art monographs to even that questionable romance novel you have pining away for... Without samples of your writing I can't comment on what to suggest otherwise. I haven't really workshopped so I can't advise in any capacity there... I suggest just keeping publishing and writing as a good habit and explore new venues...

I really do appreciate your inquiring into this topic and honestly, I could ramble on this endlessly. In short to answer you, I haven't read Richard Siken yet but definitely I will check him out for sure. I don't find that intellectually dense and autobiographical/confessional literature to be separate at all. Just look at St. Augustine's The Confessions or Cardinal Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua as prime examples. Me, experienced senior? Eh probably not. But I can definitely tell you that attending Vanderbilt as an Honors English student from 1994 to 1997 was the hardest thing ever. In fact, I am still very proud of my C+ I got from Professor Weatherby (R.I.P.) for the Victorian nonfiction course as an undergrad. Back then, English students had it brutal and we read an average of about 2000-3500 pages per course per semester! Since I graduated in 3 years I had to do my English/creative writing degree in 3 semesters which included introductory courses in the fourth semester I was there while taking some advanced courses and then rush through to graduate early! Sadly enough, that was a huge regret but of course, creative writing courses as an undergraduate did not really exist back then and I ended up just doing a creative writing final project under Professor Cook's direction to get my Honors degree. It wasn't even that good of an Honors thesis and I have lost it since then (no regrets). I don't know anything about the Brown MFA so I can't say whether I would be into it. My litmus test for applying to MFA/Ph.D. programs in creative writing was location either in SLC where my mom lives or LA where I live (or Irvine). (I didn't know that the MFA program for UCI needed a physical/Zoom interview?!? I thought that they didn't bother 🐵 Right now I am looking over the Brown faculty and already I see a few faculty that I like- Thalia Field (very solid experimental person), Jackie Wang, and Jacina Townsend... The fact that none of them seem to be graduates from the University of Iowa program and instead are very international and interdisplicinary is a good sign for me. In any case, my discursive ramblings are going to point to the fact that I ought VERY HIGHLY recommend for you all to read Anna Kornbluh's Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism (https://www.versobooks.com/products/3031-immediacy-or-the-style-of-too-late-capitalism?srsltid=AfmBOorxxL2ePOfOLY5bJGDUfIavmz4QPkEFrFbGoxOTMYzy5dvHavNt) that describes the product of writing as this very easily consumable and interstitial post-capitalist product of our times. Auto-fiction is definitely a genre which reflects this very trend. For example, let's look at some examples such as Ocean Vuong's work "Dear Ma— Let me begin again. I am writing because it’s late. Because it’s 9:52 p.m. on a Tuesday and you must be walking home after the closing shift. I’m not with you ’cause I’m at war. Which is one way of saying it’s already February and the president wants to deport my friends. It’s hard to explain. For the first time in a long time, I’m trying to believe in heaven, in a place we can be together after all this blows over up. They say every snowflake is different— but the blizzard, it covers us all the same. A friend in Norway told me a story about a painter who went out during a storm, searching for the right shade of green, and never returned. I’m writing you because I’m not the one leaving, but the one coming back, empty- handed. You once asked me what it means to be a writer. So here goes. Seven of my friends are dead. Four from overdoses. Five, if you count Xavier who flipped his Nissan doing ninety on a bad batch of fentanyl. I don’t celebrate my birthday anymore." versus someone like Helen Dewitt's brilliant first novel "My father's father was a Methodist minister. He was a tall, handsome, noble-looking man; he had a deep, beautiful voice. My father was an ardent atheist and admirer of Clarence Darrow. He skipped grades the way other boys skip class, he lectured my grandfather's flock on carbon 14 and the origin of species, and he won a full scholarship to Harvard at the age of 15. He took the letter from Harvard to his father. Something looked through my grandfather's beautiful eyes. Something spoke with his beautiful voice, and it said: It's only fair to give the other side a chance. My father said: What do you mean? What it meant was that my father should not reject God for secularism just because he won arguments with uneducated people. He should go to a theological college and give the other side a fair chance; if he was still of the same mind at the end he would still be only 19, a perfectly good age to start college. My father, being an atheist and a Darwinist, had a very delicate sense of honor, and he could not resist this appeal. He applied to various theological seminaries, and all but three rejected him out of hand because he was too young. Three asked him to come for an interview. The first was a seminary with a fine reputation, and my father because of his youth was interviewed by the head. The man said: You're very young. Is it possible that you want to be a minister because of your father? My father said he did not want to be a minister, but he wanted to give the other side a fair chance, and he explained about carbon 14. The man said: The ministry is a vocation and the training we offer is designed for people who feel called to it. I doubt very much that you would benefit from it. He said: This offer from Harvard is a remarkable opportunity. Couldn't you give the other side a fair chance by taking a course in theology? I believe the college started out, after all, as a College of Divinity, and I imagine they must still teach the subject. The man smiled at my father kindly and he offered to give him a list of books to read if he would like to do any more in the way of giving the other side a fair chance. My father drove home (they were living in Sioux City at the time) and all the way he thought that this might give the other side a fair chance. He spoke to his father. The point was made that one course in theology in a strongly secular environment would probably not make a very considerable impact, but all the same my father must decide for himself." If you look at Vuong's writing it's pretty weak to me in terms of style and analysis relative to that of DeWitt's writing. Vuong's novel excerpt seems pretty like some awful Instagram post which is not even stream of consciousness a la Joyce but just a string of self-obsessive diary entries and observations which plays like a Netflix episode droning on and on. With DeWitt's selection, one can see a lot of challenging references that delineates the character of the first-person narrator's father with allusions to atheism and Darwinism and his contradictory stances etc. etc. I don't want to deliver a full sermon here but I think that you get the idea. Many MFA students tend to write market-friendly solipsistic exercises that do not interest me in the slightest. And as you can see Vuong is a graduate from the NYU program whereas DeWitt never got a MFA at all but a Ph.D. in ancient literary criticism. The depth of her writing and her ability to incorporate ideas from non-literary fields is incredible. Vuong's book is like looking at someone's private diary and honestly that interests me less than watching paint dry on my apartment wall (which is a great hobby for me methinks). In my experience my favorite writers tend to be the ones who didn't even have strong literary backgrounds. For example, both Thomas Pynchon and William Gaddis were technical writers for either the corporate or military fields... and look at their innovative ideas in motion with their masterworks. DeWitt, while penning her first novel, was a lower-class dictionary text tagger, copytaker, Dunkin' Donuts employee, legal secretary, and laundry service worker (Vuong did some non-literary job as a Boston Market employee as a side note before he got famous) and her ability to incorporate the mediated experience is incredible. Kornbluh says this rather well: "immediatism is a reaction to crisis that fails the bar of strategy, a reflex that is ultimately crisis-continuous… Amid crisis, alienation, and stratification, immediacy feels right: urgent, engaging, homogenizing. But this is pharmakon (term from Derrida- my note here): remedy and poison in one. Working through rather than working out would involve cognizing that it doesn’t have to be this way. It is too late at the same time as it is not too late." In other words, immediate writing like Vuong's is pretty bad. It acts trendy and satisfies our desire for the relevant touchy feely experiences without any analysis like drifting from point to point as a droning bee nonstop. And that makes such writing very homogeneous. Sadly enough, this trend I think started with the era of American minimalist writing approach that Raymond Carver and his ilk promoted since the 1970's (and you can't blame Carver completely because his editor at the time wrecked his style to make it more market friendly and less experimental) with that Iowa Writers' Workshop vibe (good word to describe all that shebang).

Wow. I actually got accepted to the SAIC photography program back in 2023 but ended up going to ArtCenter instead. I didn't realize that SAIC was that competitive :o. Thanks for the info!

It's pretty quiet this round based on kicking around the LA area. With the huge defunding of the arts and the collapse of the NEA and other organizations, I notice that fewer people are applying this year to visual arts MFA programs it seems. As a person who just graduated from ArtCenter, I literally applied to over 75 jobs in the contemporary art world and only got 1 interview but failed to get the final job. I just have given up becoming a visual artist and right now I'm retooling myself to try to get a Ph.D. in creative writing now.

That's the most unreliable sample and I never use that website to judge any merits of a professor. A popularity contest doesn't mean the instructor is any good.