Olivia Muenz

Established in 1985, the three-year program at Louisiana State University offers degrees in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. It provides full funding in the form of assistantships that include full tuition waivers. Incoming class size: 6 to 8. Application deadline: January 15, 2022. Application fee: $50 (but applicants with financial hardships can apply for an application fee waiver with the LSU Graduate School). Core faculty includes poets Ariel Francisco and Lara Glenum, fiction writers Jennifer S. Davis and Maurice Ruffin, and nonfiction writer Joshua Wheeler.

lsu.edu/hss/english/graduate_program/welcome.php

I applied twice. During my first round, I got a job promotion and decided to stay at my company another year. I applied to about ten programs each time. If so, did you do anything differently the second time around? I applied to about five programs twice. I significantly revised both my personal statement and writing sample for the second As a disabled student, good funding and access to adequate health insurance were nonnegotiable. In terms of the program itself, I wanted a hybrid program with curriculum flexibility and minimal literature requirements. Faculty was also important. I wanted creative writing professors whose work I admired and, if possible, English professors who studied critical disability theory. Four. Probably $2,000 to $3,000 all included. I was working full-time, so I didn’t qualify for any waivers. LSU has everything I was looking for. I like the writing of the faculty. There are disabled professors and courses that include critical disability theory. Working outside your genre is required. They require only three literature classes plus one in pedagogy. They only require a 1-1 teaching load. Most writers are hybrid and experimental. I really wanted to study screenwriting and multimedia work, and LSU offers courses in both. It’s a three-year program, which was preferable but not necessary at the time; I now realize I definitely needed those three years. Yes, $17,800 yearly, not including fees and health insurance. As a disabled student my cost of living is pretty high, and I couldn’t, for example, get a cheaper health insurance plan like most of my cohort did. Having another job wasn’t something that would make sense with my health needs while leaving time to write—plus we’re technically not allowed to have outside employment. So I took out loans every year. Community building falls more to the students. If you put in the effort, there are lots of people who are also looking for community. I’ve heard about competitiveness at other programs and am very glad that I did not share that experience. As a disabled student who writes primarily about gendered disability, I always felt supported and respected by my peers both in workshop and personally. I did not expect how much I would change as a person. I didn’t enter the program straight from undergrad. I had been working for a number of years, was a fully grown adult, and had what I considered to be a solid sense of self. I figured coming to an MFA program would be more like changing jobs, that the work I was doing would change but that my own person wouldn’t change significantly. Writing is so tethered to the self that when you radically change your writing and artistic interests, you radically change yourself. And living in a literary bubble where you talk to people constantly about writing and craft and art and ideas makes you forget that that’s not exactly the norm. The hybridity and openness to experimentation. Having writers that work in different genres in every workshop helped my writing so much. Each genre uses different tools, and learning how to use those tools and think in different modes influenced all of my writing. I had no interest in fiction before I came to LSU, and now I’m writing a short story. I never wrote prose before coming to LSU, and I wrote a lyric memoir for my thesis. So many students start in one genre and end up in another. That prioritization of flexibility and experimentation is the only artistic process that makes sense to me, that’s faithful to the possibility inherent in creation. And all of that is because of the structure of the program, the willingness of professors to teach hybridity, and the openness of its students. Taking lots of different styles of workshop changed the way I read in general and also the way I read my peers’ work. It’s helped me become a better teacher, one more interested in possibility than criticism. We have one program for both PhD and MFA students on job searches, which was very helpful since I knew next to nothing about academia. But most of what I’ve learned about creative writing in particular—from understanding publishing to knowing about fellowship opportunities—has been from the generosity of creative writing professors meeting with me or sometimes integrating professionalization and publishing into workshops. Being involved with the program has also helped me a lot. I worked on our literary journal, , all three years, which helped me both as an editor and as a writer trying to publish work. I helped with our literary festival Delta Mouth, though the pandemic interfered. And I read at Underpass, our monthly reading series. Something I didn’t pay much attention to before I came but am now extremely grateful for is the Post-MFA Instructorship. This year I will teach a 4-4 load of English composition and am extremely grateful to have the opportunity to continue teaching and stay in this literary environment. Working on my thesis in my third year didn’t leave a ton of time for job applications, and I’m extremely grateful to have a sense of security and a buffer year to properly work on fellowship and job applications, and hopefully revise my manuscript. I don’t think so. I accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish. I developed my voice. I became much more experimental. I learned to write prose. I made multimedia work. I wrote two books in different genres. I studied critical disability theory. I have tons of unfinished projects to work on. I discovered an interest in translation. I published work. I made lifelong friends with other writers and faculty. I worked for a literary journal. I taught English courses and will continue teaching at LSU this year. I received the kind of artistic foundation I was looking for and feel confident that I can continue on my own no matter what job I have. When I was applying to colleges as an undergrad, I was sure where I went to school determined everything. But once I was there I realized it didn’t really matter much. I was certain MFA programs would be different, that they actually mattered much more, and it was important to find the right fit. But now I’m not so sure. I’m sure I would be a different writer and have a different life and ultimately be a different person if I went to another program, but I think any program is valuable as long as your basic needs are met—like in my case, having good health insurance—and there is a very general aesthetic fit. Spend less time trying to make your application look like whatever you think programs want and make it look like yourself. Whatever programs accept you are more likely going to be a good fit. Once you’re in, have no expectations, and prioritize your writing time over everything else. Don’t be too hard on yourself during the process—it can feel messy and pointless at times, but it all comes together in the end.