A few different paths with the MFA

Letter: ‘Is an MFA Worth It?’

My poetic education was largely (and still is, even after an MFA) that of an autodidact. I took three workshops in college and then kept on taking workshops in New York City, which led me to libraries, fellowships, and, most importantly, friends. Friends who would tell me how this whole journal process worked; friends who asked me if I was going to apply for such-and-such fellowship, the one I hadn’t yet heard of. By the time I got to NYU, I had already won the first book prize that would publish The Year of Blue Water.