Writing About Writing Programs

I’ve been feeling pretty unwell this week (but my doctor says I do NOT have swine flu, and for that I am grateful). I nearly missed Louis Menand’s review-essay in The New Yorker, which centers on that old question: Should creative writing be taught?. But my ever-thoughtful mother, knowing that I haven’t been reading with my usual clarity, pointed it out to me. (Thanks, Mom!)

And online, there’s more.

I can’t help wishing Menand had said at least something about low-residency programs–I’ll have to see if the new book he writes about in this piece (Mark McGurl’s The Program Era) focuses on them at all.

In any case, it’ll be interesting to see the letters to the editors on this one….