n a 2011 article, D.W. Fenza, Executive Director of AWP, tells one defining narrative. He recounts the history of democratization in creative writing and construes the success of its institutions as “a modest emulation of Promethean gift- giving.”1 Consistent with the Promethean story, the powerful protagonist (creative writing as institution in this case) becomes rendered as victim. Fenza writes, “the powers that be must punish the creative writing program for its generosity, for its willingness to share and multiply literary authority.”2 The rhetorical moves made in this statement indicate much about the orientation of contemporary creative writing. The creative writing program is here personified as a philanthropist, paternalistically doling out access to riches, multiplying the loaves to share with the masses. In this discourse of paternalism, Fenza renders the creative writing program as giving access and authority to those who would not otherwise have it. That this gifted authority is only gained through the creative writing program demonstrates the field’s role as gatekeeper, embedded in hierarchical power relations. But Fenza’s rhetoric sidesteps this fact, attaching the word “power” to the “powers that be” that punish the good philanthropic creative writing program for dispersing literary authority to the “have- nots.” These rhetorical maneuvers, which disavow the creative writing program’s circulations of power, hint at a disciplinary denial. That denial is the subject of this book.