'Dear Stanford': Letter 2

A Collection of Letters in Support of Stanford's 23 Jones Lecturers

On August 21, 23 Creative Writing lecturers were ‘future fired’ in a meeting with Deans, Directors, and Professors that oversee the program. Writing against the firing and in support of their teachers, students and alumni’s letters to the administration alike have received autoreplies and brief responses to their concerns. This Substack is a space for these letters. This one is from recent alum Kyla Figueroa '24.

subject: Concerns on the Restructuring of the Creative Writing Program

Hello Stanford,

My name is Kyla Figueroa. I graduated from Stanford two months ago with a BA in English on the Creative Writing track.

I am writing to you to express my concerns on the future “restructuring” of Stanford’s Creative Writing Program. During my time at Stanford, I, a first-generation, low-income student, was finally able to explore my passion at a school with plentiful resources that I never had beforehand. I knew I wanted to major in English before I stepped foot on campus (figuratively, as my first Stanford class was a 7 AM Zoom call). This was mainly because of Stanford’s renowned Creative Writing curriculum, which the university has boasted about in the past with new additions in its faculty and even now on the English Department’s website. Indeed, my memories at Stanford have been marked by my time in Creative Writing classes and external workshops, thanks to hard work and heart of the Jones Lecturers. 

Jenn Trahan, my professor from “Contemporary American Short Stories,” showed me during freshman year that you can succeed as a writer despite socioeconomic challenges, and there is a magnitude of strength of the stories from women of color. She has held workshops on being FLI and writing about your identity with vulnerability and authenticity. Her work has made me feel seen. She has been a friend, inside and out of class, celebrating my birthday and listening to my stories when I felt blindsided by Stanford’s hits of elitism and power.

Tom Kealy and Scott Hutchins are two amazing professors who truly care about their students. Both teach the beloved NaNoWriMo Class every fall, where novels such as Aparna Verma’s “The Phoenix King” get their starts and are supported in a way that allows them to later become Gen-Z staples. I have met both professors in other classes I loved: Kealy in the “First Chapters” class during my sophomore year and Hutchins in “Intermediate Fiction” during my junior year. In “First Chapters,” Tom cultivated a class environment that was encouraging, insightful, and innovative as we discovered new ways to approach the most intimidating part of starting a novel. I would later take the work I wrote in this class and transform it into my Creative Thesis for the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, for which I received honors. As for Scott’s class, his feedback and introduction to new techniques made me feel more confident in my work. Not only did I decide to pursue a thesis during that term, but thanks to his class I also began to seriously consider an MFA program for my future. Scott took time to call after the spring quarter ended to discuss different programs and options writers could take. 

The lecturers are always there for their students. These are teachers that I learned from throughout my time at Stanford, and seeing the Jones Lecturers around campus even after the class ends (from always supporting visiting artists at Creative Writing events to them hosting workshops at Mariposa House) made my day. They are writers that have believed in my work, helped me improve, and supported my future career in writing.

When I saw the news on social media that 23 of Jones Lecturers would be terminated in the future, sadness completely filled me. Not only would their hard work and roots they planted at Stanford be disregarded, but I am concerned for the future of the Creative Writing program. Classes and projects—the NaNoWriMo class, the Graphic Novel Project, Fiction into Film, etc.—that have taken years to develop and teach with skill would cease to exist. Having lecturers constantly entering and leaving the program would break continuity in advising for students in the English department and cause a shortage of potential advisors, and in the quality and depth of classes as it takes time to improve one’s own pedagogy and create sustainable courses. It would dissolve the Creative Writing community on campus by encouraging our writers to come-and-go.

The decision to “future fire” our lecturers is a disgrace to the humanities and arts, despite Stanford’s claims that it does a lot to uplift these subjects. It is nothing to advertise the program’s success for Stanford’s own image without investing in the Creative Writing Program for the long run. As an alum, I am hesitant to support Stanford in its future educational endeavors without the university supporting the program and teachers that I care about.

Best,
Kyla