Was Stanford Firing 23 Lecturers in Creative Writing Really Necessary? A Conversation with Lecturers and Students

Speaking Out of Place

Recently, twenty-three lecturers in the highly successful Creative Writing program at Stanford were summoned to a Zoom meeting where they were first praised, and then summarily fired. One of the most surprising aspects of this purge is the fact that it was carried out not by top-tier university administrators, but by tenure-track faculty in the program. It was they who decided to brutally terminate their colleagues. On today’s show we speak with two of the lecturers who have been told they will leave Stanford in nine months, and one of their students, a published novelist. They explain the devastating nature of this act and share statistics and histories that show this was not at all necessary. Expediency for senior faculty trumped the survival of a carefully developed and nurtured community of creative writers.

Here is the link to a petition we urge our listeners to sign and share as widely as possible to support this program, and these talented and devoted teachers.
Sarah Frisch is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow and current Lecturer in Stanford's Creative Writing Program. Her work has been published in The Paris Review, the VQR, and The New England Review. She’s won a Pushcart Prize and an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant for fiction and has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award. She holds an MFA in Fiction from Washington University in St. Louis.

Malavika Kannan is a queer fiction writer who graduated from Stanford University in 2024 with a minor in Creative Writing, where she served as the Creative Writing peer advisor. Her work appears in Washington Post, Teen Vogue, and elsewhere and her YA novel was published by Little & Brown in 2023. From the Chappell-Lougee and Major Grants to the IDA fellowship and the Honors in the Arts program, Malavika feels thankful for the many opportunities at Stanford to nurture her craft and all the people who supported her. Malavika feels very grateful to her mentor Nina Schloesser Tarano, a Jones Lecturer, for all her support.

Nina Schloesser Tárano was born and grew up in Guatemala City. She received her MFA from Columbia University. Her work has appeared in Fence and The New Inquiry Magazine. She was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Fiction 2010-2012, and has been a lecturer in the Stanford Creative Writing Program since 2012