Caroliena Cabada

Established in 2006, the three-year program at Iowa State University offers degrees in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. It provides full funding in the form of teaching assistantships, which include a stipend, full tuition waiver, and health insurance, and Pearl Hogrefe Fellowships in Creative Writing, which include a stipend, full tuition waiver, payment of fees, health insurance, and no teaching responsibilities during the recipient’s first year. Incoming class size: 10. Application deadline: January 5, 2022. Application fee: $60. Core faculty includes poets K. L. Cook, Debra Marquart, and Charissa Menefee and fiction writers Barbara Haas and Christiana Langenberg. engl.iastate.edu/creative-writing/mfa-program-in-creative-writing-and-environment

I applied to six programs: Iowa State University, University of Iowa, Cornell, Syracuse, University of Virginia, and Hunter College. Funding was the top priority. I primarily looked at programs that offered full funding: tuition remission, stipend, health insurance. I then really wanted a program that allowed or even required students to take classes Close to $400 for the fees alone, and probably closer to $500 when I include sending GRE scores, printing and mailing hard copies of my writing sample to schools that requested it, and sending official transcripts from my undergrad institution. Iowa State had all of the criteria I was looking for: fully funded, interdisciplinary, and, since I received a fellowship, no teaching load in the first year so I could ease into it. But more than that, I was really drawn to Iowa State’s emphasis on environmental writing. Before I applied to MFA programs I was working in social media communications for an environmental nonprofit, and environmentalism and climate change activism are really important to me. Iowa State’s program felt like the perfect mix of my environmental passion and my desire to write fiction that addresses these issues. From what I had heard from the faculty, current students, and recent alumni, Ames was a good place to live for three years. Cost of living was really low, the university had some great speakers come through in the lecture series, and the program was really supportive. Yes, in my first year I was offered the Pearl Hogrefe Fellowship in Creative Writing, which, at the time, offered an $18,000 stipend with health insurance and tuition remission. After the first year, I was a graduate teaching assistant and had a 2-2 teaching load with a stipend of about $19,000, health insurance, and tuition remission. I also received additional scholarships from the graduate college that were, I think, tied to recruitment efforts. Supportive. All of my interactions with the faculty have been really positive, and I had people I could turn to who could advocate for me when I might have needed it. And not only are the students at Iowa State a committed group of writers, but they incorporate elements of environmental thinking into their writing in new and inspiring ways. I felt like I could turn to the students in the program and talk about something I was struggling with, and they would understand and empathize with me. When the pandemic happened, it was definitely hard to go from seeing my classmates nearly every day to not seeing them at all. However, several students did take up the mantle of putting together writing accountability groups or small workshops and other virtual things to continue the community-building that we all did in-person during the academic year. So when the entire academic year, at least for me, was fully online, I still felt connected to my community. It was imperfect, of course, and I definitely needed to adjust after such a sudden switch, but the community was strong before the pandemic, so that made the virtual experience easier to handle. Probably more beneficial than having more time to write was the mentoring I received. I worked with K. L. Cook as my adviser and major professor, and he helped me think about my creative practice and what I wanted out of a writing career and then supported me in my journey to get it. And the faculty I’ve taken classes and worked closely with while at Iowa State were all instrumental in helping me grow as a writer. I was already making the time to write when I was working before grad school; what I really needed was guidance to help me get better and tell the stories I wanted to tell in the way I wanted to tell them. I think because there are so few faculty members, the program only offered the specific genre workshops—script/screenwriting, creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry—once per academic year rather than every semester. For the most part this is fine since the program encourages cross-genre or hybrid study, but it somewhat limits flexibility in course planning since you have to plan around when you can take the workshop in the genre you want the most. You also only have maybe one or two professors in your genre you can work with, and, from what I understand of the academic world, having a wider range of instructors and mentors who are coming from different intellectual traditions is really important. I think post-MFA preparation comes down, somewhat, to individual advising and mentoring. Cook and I talked during the summer before my last year about what I wanted to do after the degree. When I mentioned the possibility of PhDs, he was really supportive and talked with me about my goals and why a PhD might be a good fit. But I also know that not a lot of students want to continue down the academic track, and so those conversations between advisers and advisees are probably geared more toward the nonacademic job market or beginning the querying and publishing process. In my experience there’s some, but very little, formal discussion within a class about the professional aspects of creative writing: publishing in lit mags, finding an agent, what to expect from a book contract, etc. All of the professors have plenty of experience that they’re more than willing to share with students, but there isn’t a full course or a dedicated event that solely discusses publishing. Students and alumni have been able to find lots of publishing success regardless, and again the faculty are always happy to share what they know, but I think that’s one potential area of growth for the program. I’ve been thinking a lot about job applications lately, and I realized that for most full-time jobs I’ve had, I was asked to provide the same kinds of materials that a grad school application asks for: a personal statement of why I would be a good fit (a cover letter), a curriculum vitae, references from my work history, and a supplementary work sample. Though the personal statement and the sample are more creative in nature, the point still stands that you’re essentially applying for the job of graduate student at a certain program. So what would you highlight in a job application cover letter? How can you tailor your stock responses to the particular place you’re applying to? What’s the story you want to tell of yourself as a writer and member of the program community? I think it’s important to understand that being a full-time graduate student is not necessarily the same thing as just having free time to write. You’ll have that time to write, but often you’ll have additional responsibilities like teaching, taking classes, or trying to fit the standards of academic “rigor,” which is hard to measure in a creative field. Being a graduate student is a job, though that job helps you have the time and freedom to pursue creative work. Your statement, I think, should be able to address both.