Lena Dunham previews Hannah’s University of Iowa MFA life on ‘Girls’

At the end of Season 3 of “Girls” (apologies if this is a spoiler), Hannah got accepted into the University of Iowa’s MFA program. The new trailer for Season 4 shows us a little bit of her Iowa City life after she picks up and moves from New York for the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

In the trailer, she does what many MFA students do: Marvels at her new surroundings, embarasses herself in a workshop, drinks to excess.

Lena Dunham’s take on the workshop looks like it’s going to be interesting. In the clip, the authoritative teacher and a row of sneering fellow students enter the age-old debate: What is fiction? Several seem to agree that Hannah isn’t writing it.

This is of course a bit meta, as Dunham is writing and playing Hannah; in “Girls” and her movie “Tiny Furniture” she has often drawn from her real life to tell a story. She can put the criticisms she’s not fond of into her fellow classmates’ mouths.

Meanwhile, the rest of the “Girls” cast go about their New York lives. Will Hannah stay at Iowa or return to the Big Apple?

I hope she sticks around a little bit. For anyone who’s ever moved away to get an MFA, myself included, the idea of seeing Lena Dunham’s take on the process is intriguing. I’m looking forward to seeing what she has planned for portraying writing workshops, and all the rest -- as excrutiating as it might be -- too.

Dunham’s debut book, the bestselling essay collection “Not That Kind of Girl,” is at No. 1 on the Los Angeles Times nonfiction bestseller list, where it has been for four weeks.

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