Louis Menand: “The workshop is a process, an unscripted performance space, a regime for forcing people to do two things that are fundamentally contrary to human nature: actually write stuff (as opposed to planning to write stuff very, very soon), and then sit there while strangers tear it apart. […] Kay Boyle once published a piece arguing that ‘all creative-writing programs ought to be abolished by law.’ She taught creative writing for sixteen years at San Francisco State.”