James Hynes

Dear President Mason,

My name is Jim Hynes, and I'm a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop ('89), as well as a former visiting professor at the Workshop (winter semester, 2005). I'm writing to you because I'm one of the Iowa grads who will be affected by the University's policy of providing open access to creative graduate theses, and I'm not happy about it.

My objection is both a matter of principle and a matter of my own personal, practical interest. As a matter of principle, it strikes me as outrageous that a university should actively violate the copyright of its own students. I understand the principle of free exchange of scholarship that underlies open access, but surely it must be self-evident that creative works fall under a different interpretation. These are works of art, acts of individual expression, and while I'm not a copyright scholar, I do know how hard it has been for creative writers over the centuries to gain control over their own work. For an institution of higher learning—and one that is branding itself as "the writing university," no less—to disregard that history and make its graduates' work freely available is a betrayal of the trust of every writing student who has ever graduated from one of the university's writing programs.

As a practical matter, I'm sure you're well aware that the Writers' Workshop is no ordinary MFA program. While graduate creative writing programs are not professional programs in the way that most academic disciplines are—you don't need to go to grad school to be a novelist—I know from firsthand experience, as both a student and a teacher at the Workshop, that most people who attend Iowa fully intend to publish the work they do during their time in Iowa City. Within a month of my arriving at the Workshop in 1987, I had an agent, and I sold my first novel a year and a half later, during my final semester. The copy of my thesis in the Iowa Graduate Library—the one that Iowa's director of Information Technology is "not in a position to guarantee" won't be made available to the public in the future—is the final draft of my first published novel, The Wild Colonial Boy. This book is still in print, and still making me money (not a lot, but some). I don't see how anyone can argue that making the text of my thesis (which is 95 percent the same as the published book) does not violate my copyright. The two-year embargo offered by the university is almost as insulting as the open access policy itself; many writers continue to sell books from their backlist for years after first publication.

I'm proud of my association with the Writers' Workshop and the University of Iowa. My experience there helped launch my career as a professional fiction writer, and with the boost I got from Iowa, I have gone on to publish three more books, Publish and Perish, The Lecturer's Tale, and Kings of Infinite Space. My time in Iowa City as a grad student was one of the most exciting periods of my life, and my return as a visiting professor comes a close second. The training I received there has also helped me as a teacher, and I've often found that many of my students over the years have been more impressed with the fact that I went to the Writers' Workshop than they are by the fact that I've published novels. If this policy stands, not only do I run the risk of damage to my career, but I will be profoundly disappointed in my alma mater.

As a writer and a teacher associated with Iowa, I'm often asked by undergraduate writers for advice on where to go to grad school, and many of them ask me for letters of recommendation to the Writers' Workshop. If this policy stands, I'll have to steer them away from Iowa. As good as the program is, I'm not going to recommend that any talented young writers go to a university that means to take away two years of their hard work. And as a midlist writer, I can't afford a lawyer, but I'd be happy to lend my name to a class action suit to overturn the policy, if it comes to that.

I certainly hope it doesn't come to that. The most frustrating thing for me is that no one seems to be taking responsibility for this mess at the moment—the library folks seem to be saying, "Hey, it's not up to us," and the graduate college folks seem to reply, "Don't look at me, talk to the library." I came to Iowa as a student in 1987, during the first semester that the late, great Frank Conroy took over the Workshop, and I came back as a teacher in 2005, during Frank's final semester. Frank was nothing if not an expert problem solver, and I can't think of any better suggestion for fixing this mess than for you to channel Frank's spirit a little bit, cut through the bullshit (to put it Frankishly), and rescind this ill-advised policy.

No doubt you're getting an earful from a lot of people about this, so thanks for taking the time to hear my contribution.

sincerely yours,

James Hynes