To MFA or not to MFA

In this week’s issue of the BLP Publishing Tips Newsletter, we feature an interview with Mary Biddinger, poet and director of the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program. In the interview, Biddinger discusses the best ways to approach an MFA, the top reasons for getting an MFA, and instances when an MFA is not the answer. She also discusses finding a way to make a living  and even support two children as a poet and a teacher.

In addition to this great article, this week’s issue also includes information on The Missouri Review Editor’s Prize Contest, a profile of the literary journal Booth, advice on how to get the best prices on postcards to promote your own published books, and a profile of  Sheep Meadow Press.

To subscribe to the weekly BLP Publishing Tips Newsletter and receive this week’s newsletter, simply go to www.blacklawrence.com, order any book, and forward your Paypal receipt to [email protected] with the word “SUBSCRIBE”  in the subject line. (We mean any book, even a $9 chapbook).

Recent praise for the BLP Publishing Tips Newsletter:

Thanks for the time and effort you put into this newsletter.  The information is useful and the format very accessible.  Those of us whose primary gifts are teaching, writing and running programs are required by theindustry of writing to also do the work of publishing, when that may not be included in our natural or developed gifts.  Those of you who spend your time being that industry occasionally extend yourselves with what seems like an understanding of our plight.  It has been my experience that many editors enjoy their own power and mystique. I have not gotten that impression with you, and have had my aggrieved position altered by reading the interviews and features your newsletter offers.  You seem to want genuinely to help.

– Susan Davis, Department of English, University of California, Irvine