What is literary?

As I am preparing my talk at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop next month, I started thinking about the categories we use in publishing. It’s fair to say that the students at the Workshop write what we would describe as ‘literary fiction’, but what exactly is that? When I worked as an editor, we used to talk about plot-driven versus character-driven fiction, the former supposedly being in the domain of mainstream, or popular, fiction while the latter is the hallmark of literary fiction. During a recent conversation with a client he told me that plot was not something he was taught in his (extremely excellent) MFA program. It made me wonder: is there something … shameful about writing a novel with a plot? Whoever said that a literary novel can’t have a strong plot? As an agent, I dream of finding a novel that is beautifully written and is a suspenseful pageturner at the same time. So listen up all you creative writing students, soon to be MFA graduates: ‘literary’ does not have to mean no plot; and a story that turns on the transformation of its characters can also include dramatic and suspenseful twists and turns.