The insidious harm done in writing workshops

Julie Buntin is the author of Famous Men, out now from Random House. Below, she discusses what drew her to writing about power imbalances in academia. (photo credit: Sylvia Rosokoff)

In the early stages of writing this book, I accepted a teaching position at U-M. I was young and fresh enough to academia to relate more to MFA students than other faculty members, but I was on the other side of the table.

From that vantage, I could see with disarming clarity how the intensity and ambition I myself had felt as a graduate student was, in many cases, a front for something much more vulnerable, and how easy it would be for a teacher to channel those feelings in toxic ways.

A story is rarely just a story, especially for the writer. Real damage is done in workshops all the time, and we as teachers have an enormous responsibility to make them productive instead of violating. 

Famous Men became a vessel for exploring these complexities, and unpacking my own artistic education and early adulthood. Moments when, in my eagerness to be influenced, I let go of what interested me as a writer and tried simply to please, as well darker, more complicated experiences.

I wanted to trace the kinds of insidious harm that are hardest to measure, that undermine your sense of self, erode your boundaries, make you question reality. 

Tropes interest me. One way of describing the plot of Famous Men is to say it’s about a young woman whose relationship with an older man—a famous writer and professor—derails her life.

I’m attracted to these patterns in fiction because I think we’re attracted to these patterns in life. Do the stories make us seek them out, or does the fact that people keep falling into them bleed into the stories?

That question’s metatextual implications are also part of the fabric of this novel. How can we break free of these compelling, formidable patterns? And when we assume we already understand everything about how they work, what do we miss? Is it possible that looking again, interrogating every detail, is the way to find an escape hatch?