In the 1950s, the Iowa Writers Workshop received funding from the CIA to push a writing style that centered the emotional life of the individual while decentering the social and political forces that shape human behavior. “The Workshop popularized an idea of craft as non-ideological,” writes Matthew Salesses , summarizing Eric Bennet’s history of post-World War II MFA programs, “but its claims should make clear that individualism is itself an ideology.” Article continues after advertisement This ideology—that good craft centers “apolitical” individualism—has continued to affect the teaching of writing well into the 21st century. In 2010, my peers in an undergraduate creative writing workshop critiqued my work as “too political.” Granted, there was a lot to criticize in my writing, which was suffering from all sorts of problems, from structural incoherence to insufficient character development to—yes—didactic heavy-handedness that broke the reader’s immersion.…