Creative ne’er-do-well Flip Montcalm isn’t cut out for office life, so he jumps at the chance to join an MFA program in the rural Midwest. Broke and infatuated with the 20th century literary canon, he alienates his writing workshop with five hundred pages of existential dread, can’t name a single player on the university football team, and is actively trying to steal a rival writer’s girlfriend.Flip needs a new novel idea fast, so he turns to his cohorts for help: a career PhD student who hasn’t written in a decade, a professor with no opinions, a narcissist whose novels read like action movies, and a frat boy underplaying his suburban privilege. As he fights off academic conformity and obsessive football fans, Flip faces the challenge of writing a novel that’ll not only satisfy his artistic passions, but might even get him a better job.
A delicious romp through the smudged halls of academia, this book will make you laugh out loud, as pretenders, druggies, hapless romantics, and the slightly talented do battle in fiction, trying to invent a book that will save them from the fate of ordinary life.
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Praise for MFA Thesis Novel
"John Irving on steroids." ~Jonis Agee, author of The Bones of Paradise
"This isn’t just a delightful lampoon—it’s a book full of heart and charm, with characters seeking meaningful lives, connection, and inspiration." ~Timothy Schaffert, author of The Perfume Thief
"Wry, contemplative, heartfelt, and very funny, Ian M. Rogers is a terrific new voice, and his debut novel is a winner." ~Sean Doolittle, author of Lake Country
"A fierce testament to the struggle of fitting into the MFA environment and choosing to blaze your own path." ~S.R. Stewart, managing editor of Unsolicited Press
"Ian M. Rogers is a heck of a satirist!" ~Jonis Agee, author of The Bones of Paradise
"If you have ever wondered what would happen if Joseph Heller had gone to a not particularly distinguished MFA program instead of Italy and World War Two…" ~Annabel Davis-Goff, author of Walled Gardens
About Ian M. Rogers
Ian M. Rogers grew up in New Hampshire before studying literature at Bennington College in Vermont and creative writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he learned to write short bios like this one. He has worked as a copy editor, a greenhouse assistant, a school secretary, a grocery clerk, an online test-grader, a housepainter, a gardener, and a teacher of English in Japan.