UNLV takes one global step for its writing program, one local step for the literary community

Scott Dickensheets

Tuesday, May 20, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

In the beginning was the Word. And it was good. But then a mighty voice said unto the UNLV English department, "Hey, what good is the Word without a fancy schmancy creative-writing degree? Let there be an MFA program."

And lo, these many years later, it is about to come to pass. The university regents have said "Verily" unto the plan, and more importantly, have authorized money for it, and at last a sign has appeared: an unassembled computer, sitting as of this writing on the floor of novelist Doug Unger's sixth-story office at UNLV. As you know, in the '90s there is no more potent an omen than the appearance of a computer.

It will be used to keep track of the school's newest master of fine arts program, which will seat its first six students this fall, three studying fiction and three poetry. Eventually, there will be 36 students. (An MFA, unlike a standard masters, is considered a "terminal" degree, the highest you can get in the field; it allows the holder to teach at the university level.)

Unger will be one of the principal instructors in the program, along with fellow novelist-professors Richard Wiley and John Irsfeld and poets Claudia Keelan and James Hazen.

Creative-writing MFA programs have been proliferating lately. UNLV's proposal cites the Associated Writing Programs organization to the effect that there are more than 200 of them in the nation, most established in the last decade. What sets UNLV's apart?

"This is a different kind of program in the sense that it has an international emphasis," Unger says. By which he means: During the three-year program, students will study literature and writing from a worldwide, multicultural perspective, learning from a cast of visiting writers from other cultures. One degree requirement is to be a significant translation to English of a foreign language work. Students will even be dispatched for a semester to study in a non-English-speaking country.

"Writing takes place in a global context," Keelan says. "Our emphasis in sending students abroad is to highlight that."

It also helps distinguish UNLV's program from the many others, none of which, Unger says, have this commitment to a global focus.

"Our idea was, 'Let's not make just another writing program,'" Unger says.

The result, he says, will benefit not only the students, but literature itself. Too much current literature is introspective, consisting of tiny dramas set in bland suburbia.

"American writing gets very insular," Unger says. "Way too located in a domestic setting. I'd like to see young writers become aware of the wider world."

The international emphasis comes as little surprise to those who know Unger and Wiley's work. Unger has written several novels set in South America, while Wiley -- PEN-Faulkner Award winner for his debut book, "Soldiers in Hiding" -- has set books in Japan, Africa and Korea.

A second justification for bringing another writing program into the world, Unger says, is that they've become the place where young writers develop, particularly in the absence of, say, the literary cafe society of the '20s or the salons of the 19th century. "It replaces the whole idea of patronage," he says.

"My own personal philosophy is that without writing programs, writers are going to have a hard time surviving in our mass-market culture.

"Almost any good writer you can name has come up through an MFA somewhere."

There is certainly a demand for creative-writing instruction: For MFAs at Southwestern colleges, Unger says, there tend to be 25 applications for every empty seat. UNLV hasn't even announced the availability of its program, Unger says, and "already we've got more applications than spaces."

And where better than Las Vegas to locate an internationally focused program? "You can look at this place as an international city," Unger says. "On any given weekend, there are 200,000 people in town from places other than here."

"I think Las Vegas is really an important place for this kind of study," Keelan says. "It's the end of the world, the end of the capitalist dream. It embodies a lot of the problems in our culture."

She quotes Shelley to the effect that poets are the legislators of the people. "And what better place to study your legislation than a place that doesn't need you or even recognized you?"

"There's a lot to write about here," Unger says. "It's also a place where major writers want to visit."

The program's start-up costs are minimal, Unger says, about $2,000 in operating costs. Funding for a few graduate assistantships -- positions for grad students that pay them a stipend of about $12,000 a year -- is already in place. The money to bring in visiting writers will be raised through the UNLV Foundation and from other foundations and government agencies.

"We're starting slowly, conservatively," Unger says (the MFA at the University of Iowa, for instance, has about 60 students each studying fiction and poetry). "This is being looked at very much like a start-up year." The first visiting writers, whom they haven't lined up yet, should begin appearing next spring.

Such a program has been in the works for some time. A 1983 UNLV academic plan called for its implementation by the mid-1980s. Unger was brought here six years ago, and Wiley before that, with an eye toward developing the program. (Unger had recently helped Syracuse University convert from a master's program with a writing track to a full-fledged MFA.)

They had their proposal ready to lay on the table when it -- along with other new program ideas -- was delayed by the Jerry Tarkanian-Bob Maxson dispute and its fallout.

"I think I was the only one not crushingly disappointed. I pretty much anticipated that it would take five years. It took six years at Syracuse."

The proposal was reactivated in April of last year. "We pushed for it, all of us," Unger says. "We pushed in elevators, in hallways, in informal gatherings with colleagues, with legislators."

As of yet, no one has been tapped as the program's director.

"We disagree on whether there should be one," Unger says. "I prefer something like a designated driver. Pretty much let the writers and the group direct itself. The hope is we won't need a titular director. That's my hope. I don't like hierarchies."

If you need any evidence of the benefits to a student of an MFA program, says Keelan, who helped set one up at the University of Kentucky, just look at her.

"I was a shy, nonverbal young woman who didn't have any commitment to much of anything. But when I came to poetry (I discovered) this whole genre of writing I hadn't known existed before. Trying to find yourself through the written word is what an MFA program is all about."

She plans to teach an activist approach to poetry, in which it doesn't exist in a vacuum of pure art, but rather "poetic theory based on social theory."

"It's an active language," she says. "How can you make it useful in the world?"

She answers herself: by having students take poetry into places where it's not normally found -- senior homes, addiction groups, prisons, "opening a dialogue with all segments of society to get poetry to overlooked groups."

"To try to really build a literary community in Las Vegas is another goal," Unger says.

It will probably be years before the program's true success can be assessed.

"It'll be successful once we've established a community outreach basis," Keelan says. "If our students are writing fiction and poetry committed to the social contract. And if everybody's having fun. Because if you're not having fun, what's the point?"

Unger says the final grade will be delivered on bookstore shelves.

"That'll be the measure of success -- the art the writer produces after he's gotten his degree."