If a university wants to do more than pay lip service to supporting their student writers of color, they need to start hiring more full-time permanent faculty of color who can stay, contribute, and build. They also lack power to change or shift the department and pedagogy in meaningful ways. While this gives the appearance of "diversifying" the department, adjunct and visiting faculty are by their very nature transient. Often if there is a writer of color present, they are teaching as adjuncts or visiting writers. Core faculty at most programs is still not very diverse. Some writers of color show up as faculty at multiple institutions, primarily because they are teaching not just at their home institution, but also at one or more low residency programs.Ĭore vs Adjunct/Visiting. A number aren't listed here because they were hired to teach creative writing in undergraduate programs (and it would have been an even longer list if I had tried to list everyone teaching at the undergraduate level) Most of these were hired at the Assistant Professor level. I'll be honest, looking over Academic Wikia's listing of new hires for this past round of Creative Writing positions was a pleasant surprise - there were a lot of writers of color hired to fill full-time tenure track positions, and many at excellent, highly competitive programs. In some cases, this person is fully qualified to teach all genres - but sometimes it seems like a stretch and an opportunity for the department to invest in more faculty of color.Ģ017 hiring boom for faculty of color. I worry about some programs where that writer seems to be stuck teaching multiple genres (CNF+Poetry, CNF+Fiction, and sometimes all three), while their colleagues teach a single genre. While having a writer of color on faculty is a start, it's by no means the end. A number of universities only employ a single faculty writer of color, despite having a large department of creative writers. Likewise with those who are listed as teaching "popular fiction" or "speculative/fantasy fiction" - all fiction for the purposes of this list. Rather than split hairs, I've chosen to lump those who teach primarily YA or children's fiction together with those who teach adult fiction as both being "fiction." In terms of genres, I have focused on creative non-fiction, fiction, and poetry - but now in hindsight acknowledge that I should have included faculty of color who exclusively teach playwriting, graphic novels, or other less common genres. ![]() Additional posts (which I'm still working on) will cover faculty of color in programs located in the remainder of the states (Montana to Wyoming).įor the sake of this project, I've examined mostly MFA and PhD programs, but have also included MA programs where there is a creative writing option. ![]() This first post lists faculty of color in graduate creative writing programs in the first 25 states (Alabama to Missouri). Due to the amount of information, I've broken this post into two parts. ![]() I'd hoped to finish up sooner, but it's turned into a rather expansive project. In an effort to remedy this in some small way, I've spent the last few weeks researching graduate creative writing programs, trying to build a snapshot of who is teaching where, and what genres are being covered in different programs. ![]() Given the sheer number of possible programs, finding potential faculty mentors of color can be exhausting and discouraging. Often a young writer of color does not have easy access to information about programs or faculty who might be a good fit. I think a big challenge for many writers considering an MFA or a PhD is trying to figure out where to go and who to study with. In many respects, I felt I'd only scraped the surface - and I also felt that while I'd been quite fortunate in my experiences, that many other writers of color have not fared so well. A few weeks ago I wrote on the importance of mentorship, especially how finding a mentor of color can be a deeply rewarding and invigorating thing as a writer of color.
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