The Global Program Era: Contemporary International Fiction in the American Creative Economy

TLDR: In the last two decades, a curious literary phenomenon has been taking shape in the American university system: a new writerly generation has routed itself through the American universities, primarily as students but also as visiting writers, lecturers, and professors as mentioned in this paper.

Abstract: Over the last two decades, a curious literary phenomenon has been taking shape in the American university system. The international writer has found a stable institutional home in the American creative writing program. While the postwar creative writing program consolidated itself as a national endeavor, the master of fine arts (MFA) program in the 2000s has nurtured cultural voices that supplement the standardized American MFA voice with a distinctly global perspective. A new writerly generation has routed itself through the American university, primarily as students but also as visiting writers, lecturers, and professors. Here is a brief catalog of some prominent international novelists who have passed through the winnowing process of the creative writing program in some influential way: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received an MFA from Johns Hopkins University; Bilal Tanweer received an MFA from Columbia University; Daniyal Mueenuddin received his writing degree from University of Arizona; Mohsin Hamid received an undergraduate degree from Princeton University, but he attended a crucial fiction writing workshop with Toni Morrison and Joyce Carol Oates, in which he drafted his first