Mark McGurl is a Professor of English at Stanford University.

• * Preface * Introduction: Halls of Mirror * Part 1: "Write What You Know"/"Show Don't Tell" (1890--1960) *1. Autobardolatry: Modernist Fiction, Progressive Education, "Creative Writing" *2. Understanding Iowa: The Religion of Institutionalization * Part 2: "Find Your Voice" (1960--1975) *3. The Social Construction of Unreality: Creative Writing in the Open System *4. Our Phonocentrism: Finding the Voice of the (Minority) Storyteller * Part 3: Creative Writing at Large (1975--2008) *5. The Hidden Injuries of Craft: Mass Higher Education and Lower-Middle-Class Modernism *6. Art and Alma Mater: The Family, the Nation, and the Primal Scene of Instruction *7. Miniature America; or, The Program in Transplanetary Perspective * Afterword: Systematic Excellence * Notes * Index

McGurl’s book is not a history of creative-writing programs. It’s a history of twentieth-century fiction, in which the work of American writers from Thomas Wolfe to Bharati Mukherjee is read as reflections of, and reflections on, the educational system through which so many writers now pass… The Program Era is an impressive and imaginative book.

Mark McGurl is a Professor of English at Stanford University.

• * Preface * Introduction: Halls of Mirror * Part 1: "Write What You Know"/"Show Don't Tell" (1890--1960) *1. Autobardolatry: Modernist Fiction, Progressive Education, "Creative Writing" *2. Understanding Iowa: The Religion of Institutionalization * Part 2: "Find Your Voice" (1960--1975) *3. The Social Construction of Unreality: Creative Writing in the Open System *4. Our Phonocentrism: Finding the Voice of the (Minority) Storyteller * Part 3: Creative Writing at Large (1975--2008) *5. The Hidden Injuries of Craft: Mass Higher Education and Lower-Middle-Class Modernism *6. Art and Alma Mater: The Family, the Nation, and the Primal Scene of Instruction *7. Miniature America; or, The Program in Transplanetary Perspective * Afterword: Systematic Excellence * Notes * Index

McGurl’s book is not a history of creative-writing programs. It’s a history of twentieth-century fiction, in which the work of American writers from Thomas Wolfe to Bharati Mukherjee is read as reflections of, and reflections on, the educational system through which so many writers now pass… The Program Era is an impressive and imaginative book.

Mark McGurl is a Professor of English at Stanford University.

• * Preface * Introduction: Halls of Mirror * Part 1: "Write What You Know"/"Show Don't Tell" (1890--1960) *1. Autobardolatry: Modernist Fiction, Progressive Education, "Creative Writing" *2. Understanding Iowa: The Religion of Institutionalization * Part 2: "Find Your Voice" (1960--1975) *3. The Social Construction of Unreality: Creative Writing in the Open System *4. Our Phonocentrism: Finding the Voice of the (Minority) Storyteller * Part 3: Creative Writing at Large (1975--2008) *5. The Hidden Injuries of Craft: Mass Higher Education and Lower-Middle-Class Modernism *6. Art and Alma Mater: The Family, the Nation, and the Primal Scene of Instruction *7. Miniature America; or, The Program in Transplanetary Perspective * Afterword: Systematic Excellence * Notes * Index

McGurl’s book is not a history of creative-writing programs. It’s a history of twentieth-century fiction, in which the work of American writers from Thomas Wolfe to Bharati Mukherjee is read as reflections of, and reflections on, the educational system through which so many writers now pass… The Program Era is an impressive and imaginative book.