It can be difficult workshopping novels because any questions or qualms you have as the author can be like, 'That's next chapter, don't worry about it!' I don't think the workshop is set up so well to do that for novels.
I took a fiction-writing workshop my sophomore year at Northwestern, and I hadn't yet read Junot Diaz or George Saunders, Flannery O'Connor. There was something so attractive about those voices.