Life after the MFA

Thoughts on Teaching, Day Jobs, and Finishing that Book

An MFA student recently reached out to me after reading our post, “Is an MFA Worth It?” In her email, she asked excellent questions about teaching at the university level, finding a sustainable day job, and finishing a book for publication. This month's AMA will break down the professional steps I took after completing my MFA and the advice that I found helpful as a new grad.

As always, take what’s useful (if anything at all), and leave what’s not behind.

February 2025 AMA

I didn’t walk at graduation, but I still shelled out $200 for the ‘gram.

1. It’s been a couple years since you graduated from your MFA program. What have you been up to in your professional life since graduation?

I graduated from the University of South Florida in May 2021. At the time, I was working on a novel about Korean folklore that I had started during my Fulbright in 2018. I needed to move back to Korea to finish my folklore research in order to finish the novel. In November 2021, I took a teaching job at an English language academy in Seoul simply because that is the easiest way for an American citizen to get a long-term visa in South Korea. Then in February 2022, I was recruited out of the blue to write for a video game company in Seoul. I worked at that company for two years, and I've just moved back to the US a few months ago.

2) I saw that you have a novel forthcoming with Simon & Schuster. Did you complete this book during your MFA or was this something you achieved outside of academia?

It took me nine years to get Good People from ideation to contract signed/advance in hand.

Here’s a basic timeline of my path to publication:

• 2015: I started Good People as a series of short stories when I was a junior in college.

• 2017: I finished the first draft of Good People a month before I started my MFA at the University of San Francisco.

• 2017-2018 Academic Year: Good People was my thesis novel at San Francisco. I workshopped ~80 pages from the novel in my first year and revised 120 pages with my thesis advisor in summer 2018.