There are creative writing programs that are friendly to genre, but figuring out which ones are ahead of time can be difficult.
Of course this is particularly pertinent right now as I'm about to embark on a creative writing course, which will have a Lit Fic slant, though as far as I know, genre is not pilloried and ridiculed.
Is this one you're teaching, or taking? I'm assuming the first, since you say you don't know the attitude toward genre. Good luck with your class and may it be everything you want and need.
When I was tutoring the introductory course, I always tried to be genre friendly, even to genres that I don't normally read myself, such as romance or historical. I tried to make sure the quality of the writing was what mattered, not the genre.
You have very lucky students. Back when I was living in El Paso, Texas, I was fortunate enough to have writing instructors who were genre writers, themselves. The assumption there was that the students wanted writing careers, rather than academic careers, and one of my instructors flat out said that if you wanted to make a living writing, genre was the way to go.
The MFA program, here in Tucson, Arizona, is not genre friendly. I did manage one writing class taught by adjunct faculty, with the help of a sympathetic adviser who let me know he was sympathetic to genre, but even then, I discovered that he was confused by my fantasy stories. I enjoyed the class and the wide range of abilities and interests of the student, and I wasn't the only student with genre interests that had been directed toward the class. Yet, it frustrated me that when I turned in a story with goblins, the instructor really wanted the goblins to be metaphors, or hallucinations. Anything, but goblins. And I can't deny that there was a metaphoric aspect to the goblins. But, dang it, they were also real in the context of the story and the POV character who saw them was sane.
no subject
Of course this is particularly pertinent right now as I'm about to embark on a creative writing course, which will have a Lit Fic slant, though as far as I know, genre is not pilloried and ridiculed.
Is this one you're teaching, or taking? I'm assuming the first, since you say you don't know the attitude toward genre. Good luck with your class and may it be everything you want and need.
When I was tutoring the introductory course, I always tried to be genre friendly, even to genres that I don't normally read myself, such as romance or historical. I tried to make sure the quality of the writing was what mattered, not the genre.
You have very lucky students. Back when I was living in El Paso, Texas, I was fortunate enough to have writing instructors who were genre writers, themselves. The assumption there was that the students wanted writing careers, rather than academic careers, and one of my instructors flat out said that if you wanted to make a living writing, genre was the way to go.
The MFA program, here in Tucson, Arizona, is not genre friendly. I did manage one writing class taught by adjunct faculty, with the help of a sympathetic adviser who let me know he was sympathetic to genre, but even then, I discovered that he was confused by my fantasy stories. I enjoyed the class and the wide range of abilities and interests of the student, and I wasn't the only student with genre interests that had been directed toward the class. Yet, it frustrated me that when I turned in a story with goblins, the instructor really wanted the goblins to be metaphors, or hallucinations. Anything, but goblins. And I can't deny that there was a metaphoric aspect to the goblins. But, dang it, they were also real in the context of the story and the POV character who saw them was sane.