Cool news from the MFA Thesis Novel front: this month Vine Leaves Press and I released the MFA Thesis Novel Book Club Guide, which includes an author interview with yours truly and discussion questions for the novel. It’s free for download from the link above, and starting this month, it’s included with the eBook version of the novel as a bonus.
Here’s a quick snippet:
Q: What inspired you to write MFA Thesis Novel?
A: As the novel itself hints, MFA Thesis Novel sprang from my experience in graduate school at the University of Nebraska, though my program was technically an MA. I was workshopping a novel based on my time working in Japan, but the subject matter and the style I was writing in were so foreign that people around me couldn’t relate to the book. At the same time, the program seemed to be pushing us to build up longer and more impressive CVs rather than improve our writing, which I found disconcerting. Like Flip, it took me a long time to realize which parts of the program were helpful and which parts weren’t conducive to the career path I was looking for.
