Binghamton (State University of New York)

SUNY Binghamton offers a good program in fiction writing. John Gardner teaches there because of its fine reputation.

California State University, Chico

"Chico State" in Northern California is one of John Gardner's earliest academic posts as a professor of English. His student, the noted author Raymond Carver, in his Foreword to On Becoming a Novelist, describes Gardner as a generous mentor there, offering him use of his office and sharing stories of his own struggle to get published. With Lennis Dunlap, a slightly older colleague, Gardner spends two years preparing an anthology of fiction, The Forms of Fiction.

Independent Literary Agents Association (ILAA)

The ILAA is a New York-based organization providing information on reliable agents for writers.

Iowa Writers' Workshop

John Gardner considers the Iowa Writers' Workshop, one of the oldest in America, the best young writer's "hothouse." He attends it after...