I sit in a large conference hall and look at those around me. Several hundred people are focused on the speaker, a professor from the esteemed Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She says, “And of course, there’s Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, a stellar exemplar of writing with authority.”

The heads around me nod solemnly.

“Yes, of course,” I think, having no idea who Rebecca West is.

I’m attending a nonfiction writers’ conference.

And I’m not at all sure that I belong among these people.

At the opening reception, I try to mingle, despite my misgivings. “You don’t have an MFA?” “Oh, you should try one of the low-residency programs.” “It’s impossible to publish in this field without a writing degree.”

In different ways, the same refrain.

I learn that there are hundreds of masters programs in creative writing around the country. And thousands of students graduate every year with a degree in writing. Part of the growing “MFA club.”

Is it even possible to be a successful writer if I’m not part of the “club?” Will today’s volatile publishing industry even notice me when it has come to look for and expect club membership?

During the following two days, I find myself increasingly uncomfortable at the conference, an outsider. Though I usually sit in the front row, in order to learn as much as I can from whatever meetings I’m attending, I begin to find a seat at the back of the room.

Maybe I’m not supposed to be writing after all, I think.

While the debate of ‘to MFA or not to MFA’ has gone on for a long time, attending this conference clarifies for me that an MFA provides a few important things that I don’t have: a supportive community of similar others who take eachother’s work seriously, and exposure to books and writers one wouldn’t otherwise find.

At the end of the second day of the conference, I call my husband. “I don’t think I belong here,” I say, and I describe my experience.

After a pause, he begins to sputter, “Are you forgetting about your success in the publish-or-perish world as a PhD in business strategy, your all-but-dissertation in French literary criticism, your fluency in five languages, and your successful speaking/consulting career in the competitive world of healthcare management? Not to mention that you were recognized as a distinguished fellow in a 20,000-member academic organization.”

I remain unconvinced. “But…”

He interrupts me. “And you’ve already published dozens of essays in literary magazines. Maybe you need to reflect on whether a person who is able to do all of that, might not also be capable of learning what it takes to write successful literary books — even without an MFA.”

It isn’t arrogance that leads me to give up my back-row seat during the final day of the conference. It’s simply a bit of wisdom from the fringes.

I even imagine that there may be some downsides to MFAs:

Does the supportive community become a me-too clan that loses the ability to think critically about its own craft? And is the exposure to other books and writers constrained to what is deemed exemplar by the clan’s experts?

“I know all of you are familiar with the essay Unspoken Truths by Christopher Hitchens,” says the final keynote speaker.

I don’t need to look around me to know that heads are solemnly nodding.