Re: [*FSFFU*] SF and academia: was Re: Mythology book query -Reply

From: Geoffrey D. Sperl (gamgee@geocities.com)
Date: Thu Nov 20 1997 - 20:50:45 PST


Michael Marc Levy wrote:

> You addressed this to Vonda, but having run into the situation myself,
> I
> thought I'd respond as well.

Actually, I've been there as well...got the MA this past May, actually.
So now I've got a degree, 100 pages of a novel and no job... <sigh>

Listen closely to Mike, and become a member of the SFRA or the IAFA in
order to get to know those academics out there who work in SF-friendly
atmospheres...

> Correspondingly, most of the MFA programs in creative writing at top
> flight schools are equally snooty.

Very true. I was turned down by Irvine, Houston, and Michigan (and
Western Michigan, but that's nothing important), and I suspect it was
because I gleefully sent speculative pieces to them. I was accepted by
Columbia College in Chicago, and I would have gone if they weren't
private and expected your soul in payment for a credit. They may be
good ones to look at because they actually have a genre fiction program
there. I ended up getting my MA at my undergrad institution because 1)
I couldn't afford to move, and 2) I got to know the novelists there very
well. There was no resistance to my u/dystopian piece for my
thesis...not that I ever really gave anybody a chance to complain (I can
be *very* bullheaded).

> If you want to get an MFA or MA in creative writing while doing
> science
> fiction, I'd suggest you find out which schools have tenured
> English professors who are also working sf writers. John Kessel, for
> example, teaches at one of the University of North Carolina campuses.
>
> Jean Lorrah teaches at a university in Kentucky or Tennessee. etc.
>

Yep. Greg Benford is at Irvine (though he's in the physics dept.) and
Sam Delany is at Amherst (though he's in Michigan this semester).

- Geoffrey

--
"Time is an illusion.  Lunchtime doubly so." - Ford Prefect

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Zone/8499



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