creative writing pedagogy conference

V International Pedagogical On-Line Conference

The EACWP along with our official organisers from University of East Anglia (Norwich, UK) make extensive the invitation to worldwide participants to join our event Futures for Creative Writing to be celebrated on a on-line format from Friday 21 May to Sunday 23 May (2021). The new deadline for the call for papers is November, 16th (2020)

Keynote Speakers:

Bernardine evaristo, carolyn forché, andrew cowan, (scriptwriting keynote tba).

Fifty years ago, in September 1970, Ian McEwan became the sole inaugural student on the UK’s first MA in Creative Writing, established at UEA by the novelist-critics, Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson.

In 1987 UEA also launched the UK’s first PhD in Creative Writing. A BA in English Literature with Creative Writing was introduced in 1995. An MA Scriptwriting strand was added in 1993, and a Poetry strand in 1996. An MA in Lifewriting – now the MA in Biography & Creative Non-Fiction – was launched in 2001, and the UK’s first MA in Crime Writing in 2015.

The academic year 2020-21 therefore marks the half-centenary of Creative Writing innovation at UEA and presents an opportunity both to reflect on the development of the discipline of Creative Writing nationally and internationally and to consider how the discipline may develop over the next fifty years.

This online conference seeks to bring together PhD research students, Creative Writing tutors and graduates, writers and scholars to explore the varieties of practice in our discipline now, the points of convergence and contention, and, crucially, the opportunities for future development and the forces that may shape the nature of writing in the academy over the next several years.

Central to the conference will be an acknowledgement of the importance of literature and drama in helping us navigate challenging moments in history.

Topics for papers will be organised into virtual panels and we’d particularly welcome proposals that address the teaching of writing in response to recent global crises, which might include but not be limited to the following themes:

Innovations in Creative Writing pedagogy

• How creative is Creative Writing pedagogy?
•  What place collaboration in our teaching and practice?
• Can the workshop work online?

Decolonising the curriculum

• What assumptions about voice, identity, tradition and genre inform our teaching?
• How might knowledge and authority be dispersed in the classroom?
• How do we enable greater inclusion among our students and audiences and in our practice?

Digital Technology and Creative Writing

• How might the digital inform our teaching, especially in the wake of Covid-19?
• How might the digital influence the nature of writing and reading?
• What new forms should we be teaching, and by what means?

Writing and the environment

• What are our responsibilities as teachers and writers?
• What new forms may be called forth by the climate crisis?
• Might speculative writing help us envision better futures for the planet?

Employability and the Creative Industries

• How do we help our students develop strengths and passions to support them beyond graduation?
• What is the relationship between the academy and the creative industries?
• What is the relationship between creative practice and the knowledge economy?

Multiplingual Workshops

Additionally, the EACWP will, simultaneosly, support the call for papers by selecting a variety of one-hour workshops to be imparted in some of the European languages represented within the association: Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish and English.

We are keen to explore the expanded possibilities of online conferencing, and welcome suggestions for panels and roundtables that demonstrate the potential for a reconceived pedagogy in Creative Writing.

For a 20-minute paper or roundtable proposal , please submit an abstract of no more than 200 words to the conference organisers at [email protected] , including your name, affiliation, email address, and a 120-word biography.

For a one-hour multilingual workshop , please submit an abstract of no more than 200 words in your corresponding European language to the EACWP organisers at [email protected]   The submission message must be entitled as “Multilingual Workshop” and must include  your name, affiliation, email address, and a 120-word biography.

The NEW deadline for submissions is Monday 16 November 2020. We will reply to all applicants by Tuesday 15 December 2020.

Further information on technical arrangements will be provided in February 2021, when general registration will also open.

Conference rates

• Full delegate: £50
• Postgraduate: £30
• EACWP/NAWE/ Red members: £35

About University of East Anglia (UEA)

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• Creative Writing Pedagogies for the Twenty-First Century

In this Book

• Edited by Alexandria Peary and Tom C. Hunley
• Published by: Southern Illinois University Press

Table of Contents

• Title Page, Copyright
• 1. Rhetorical Pedagogy
• Tom C. Hunley and Sandra Giles
• 2. Creative Writing and Process Pedagogy
• 3. Mutuality and the Teaching of the Introductory Creative Writing Course
• Patrick Bizzaro
• 4. A Feminist Approach to Creative Writing Pedagogy
• Pamela Annas and Joyce Peseroff
• 5. Writers Inc.: Writing and Collaborative Practice
• Jen Webb and Andrew Melrose
• pp. 102-125
• 6. Writing Center Theory and Pedagogy in the Undergraduate Creative Writing Classroom
• Kate Kostelnik
• pp. 126-152
• 7. Service Learning, Literary Citizenship, and the Creative Writing Classroom
• Carey E. Smitherman and Stephanie Vanderslice
• pp. 153-168
• 8. Creative Literacy Pedagogy
• Steve Healey
• pp. 169-193
• 9. The Pedagogy of Creative Writing across the Curriculum
• Alexandria Peary
• pp. 194-220
• 10. A Basic Writing Teacher Teaches Creative Writing
• Clyde Moneyhun
• pp. 221-242
• 11. Digital Technologies and Creative Writing Pedagogy
• Bronwyn T. Williams
• pp. 243-268
• 12. Ecological Creative Writing
• James Engelhardt and Jeremy Schraffenberger
• pp. 269-288
• pp. 289-292
• Contributors
• pp. 293-298
• pp. 299-310

Additional Information

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About the Creative Writing/Teaching Conference

The purpose of The Creative Writing/Teaching Conference is to provide workshops on the craft of writing prose and poetry as well as pedagogy workshops for secondary teachers on using creative writing techniques to teach writing skills. The craft workshops are led by nationally acclaimed writers; the pedagogy workshops are led by qualified educators with a focus on the Utah Core Standards. The combination of workshops for both aspiring writers and teachers of writing allows for an exchange of ideas unique to most writing conferences.

The Creative Writing/Teaching Conference is directed by Dr. Danielle Beazer Dubrasky, associate professor of creative writing at Southern Utah University. Other consultants include Dr. John Meisner of the SUU Education Department. The conference is co-sponsored by the following organizations of Southern Utah University: The Grace A. Tanner Center for Human Values, The President’s Office, The College of Humanities and Social Sciences, The English Department, and the Art of Literature program. It is also a component of Utah Book Festival in partnership with Utah Humanities. The poetry pedagogy workshop is made possible through The Utah Poet Laureate’s Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets with appreciation to the current Utah Poet Laureate, Paisley Rekdal.

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Re-imagining Writing Pedagogy in a Post-Truth Landscape

Call for Papers

In our “post-truth” landscape, where “fake news” and “alternative facts” abound as the world struggles to make sense of an ever-changing global pandemic, it can be challenging for students, especially those transitioning from high school to college, to grasp the standards for composing and proving accurate and verifiable arguments. At the same time, teaching students to evaluate sources, construct fact-based arguments, as well as sharpen rhetorical and analytical skills is more important than ever before.

2021 SWCA Conference: Trauma & Transformation - Writing Centers in an Era of Change

The SWCA Board is excited to announce that the 2021 Southeastern Writing Center Association conference will be held fully online. Join us Feb. 11-13, 2021, to discuss the transformations writing center professionals and the field undertake during times of crisis and trauma. The COVID-19 pandemic, racial injustice, social unrest, natural disasters, and significant changes in the structure and leadership of higher education have greatly accelerated the pace of these changes and prompted all of us in the writing center field to reconsider many aspects of our approaches to writing center work and everyday operations. Writing center professionals are called not just to react, but to proactively transform their identities, missions, and services.

"Time in the Time of COVID-19: The Relationship Between Time and Distress"

Call for Papers: St. John’s University Humanities Review Spring 2021 Issue

 St. John’s University Humanities Review

“Time in the Time of COVID-19: The Relationship Between Time and Distress”

Deadline for Abstracts: December 19th, 2020

Deadline for First-Draft Submissions: January 23rd, 2021

Editor: Stephanie Montalti 

Contact Email: [email protected]

UPDATE: Great Writing 2021: Great Writing the International Creative Writing Conference

Great Writing International Creative Writing Conference

24th Annual Conference

Saturday July 10 – Sunday July 11, 2021 - Virtual -

Proposals are invited for presentations at the 24th Annual Great Writing International Creative Writing Conference, to be held Saturday July 10 – Sunday July 11, 2021.

Great Writing 2021 will be virtual and presenters from around the world will be scheduled throughout both Saturday and Sunday – this format was used in 2020 and is being expanded this year. The conference will be free and conducted on Zoom.

CALL CLOSING SOON.

Special Issue "In the Beginning was the Word - The Word as a Technical Object" - journal "Technology and Language"

journal  "Technology and Language"

Chief science editor  Alfred Nordmann , Darmstadt Technical University

The theme of the special issue is related to the Word as a starting point in interdisciplinary studies of the relationship between technology and language. We propose to publish research by specialists in philosophy, philology, linguistics, history, art, computer science, logic and others.

 Special issue  In the Beginning was the Word - The Word as a Technical Object   offers but not limited to the following topics:

Postcolonial Hauntologies (ACLA 2021)

What sorts of specters haunt the postcolonial realm? How can we conceive of hauntologies that enable us to effectively listen to postcolonial specters? Derrida defines hauntology as a way in which we can learn to acknowledge those things about us or around us that we have forgotten how to notice. He emphasizes that by acknowledging specters, hauntology performs a gesture of “positive conjuration” in which specters are raised to be listened to and not in order to be exorcised. Acting as a disruption to western notions of space and time, specters function as transformative mediums of postcolonial recovery by making space for the co-existence of the past within the present and acknowledging the existence of alternative histories.

• Colleges & Schools
• College of Arts & Sciences

Vermillion Writing and Literature Conference

The Vermillion Writing and Literature Conference is a national literary conference held at the University of South Dakota.

September 28–30, 2023

“beginnings: new approaches in creative writing, literary studies, and pedagogy”.

Please join us September 28–30, 2023 for the 1st biennial Vermillion Writing and Literature Conference at University of South Dakota. The 2023 conference theme, “Beginnings: New Approaches in Creative Writing, Literary Studies, and Pedagogy,” looks with hope to possibilities for new voices, ideas, forms, and projects in the literary arts. VWALC’s panel sessions and public readings will address these and other overlapping concerns.

Call for Papers

We invite proposals for critical and creative panels, roundtables, and individual submissions engaging with the exploration of our conference theme. Possible areas of focus and approaches include, but are not limited to:

• indigenous and Native American literature, history, and culture;
• hybrid texts, blurred genres, fact vs. fiction, and/or experimentation; 
• innovation in creative writing pedagogy that addresses diversity, emerging forms, shifting landscapes in education, or disability inclusion;
• discourses of marginalization, including race, ethnicity, multiculturalism, or ability; 
• women, gender, and/or sexuality;  
• representations of disability or mental illness in literature and/or popular culture; 
• postcolonial literature and/or theory; 
• western American literature, history, and culture; 
• cultural and media studies, including but not limited to popular culture, or speculative fiction; 
• the relationship between specific landscapes and forms of identity; 
• writing’s ability to question/challenge categories of gender, race, or ability;
• relationships between representation and textual experimentation.

Deadline for submissions: 1 April 2023

Please send to [email protected] .

Submission Guidelines:

For critical work, please submit a 250-word abstract, along with a brief biographical note, by 1 April 2023. Panel and roundtable proposals should include biographical notes for all presenters and a 250-word description for the session. Panel proposals should also include individual presenters’ abstracts. We welcome panel proposals that incorporate both critical and creative presentations.

For creative submissions , please provide either 8-10 pages of poetry or no more than 10-12 pages of creative prose writing, along with a short biographical note, by 1 April 2023. While creative work that explicitly or implicitly engages with the conference theme is especially welcome, we will gladly consider all types of creative work on any theme and in any style for readings at the conference’s creative writing panels.

Conference Schedule

Registration & Information—Muenster University Center, 2nd floor, 8:00 a.m. – 3:30

Conference Book Table—Bookstore in Muenster University Center, 2nd floor

Refreshments—Muenster University Center, 2nd floor, 8:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

Zak Sally Workshop: 2:30 – 3:30  - MUC Conference Room 216

Art Exhibit Opening: 4:00–5:30 p.m.  - Cee Cee’s Cocktail Lounge 1 East Main Street

Dinner Break: 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.

VLP Event Featuring Zak Sally: 8:00 – 9:30 p.m.  - Featured Reading by Zak Sally, The AV Lounge, 4 West Main Street Vermillion, Free and Open to the Public

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2023

Registration & Information

Al Neuharth Media Center, 8:00 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Conference Book Table—USD Bookstore in Muenster University Center, 2nd floor

Session 1: 9:00 a.m. – 10:30 p.m.

1A Exploring Genre and Engaging with Technology - Neuharth Conference Room

DC. Marie Martin: “THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL SUPERINTENDENT: TRANSFORMING PUBLIC”

1B Creative Works Session I - Farber Hall in Old Main

Stephanie A. Marcellus: “A HOW-TO-GUIDE TO PAINTING”

Session 2: 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

2A Creative Works Session II - Farber Hall in Old Main

Kevin MaGee: “MYTH OF THE RURAL (and more)”

J. D. Schraffenberger: “Forgetting (and more)”

2B Docu-Poetics: Using Documents from the Past to Shape Our Future - Neuharth Conference Room

Conference Lunch: 12:30 – 2:00 p.m.

Session 3: 2:00 – 3:30 p.m..

3A Fatima Alharthi: “What is Identity?” - Farber Hall in Old Main

Claudia Garcia: “Pelo malo, cuerpos rotundamente negros. Reflections on African diaspora, creative writing, and heritage”

3B Mike Speegle, Courtney Ludwick, Amelia Skinner Saint, Riah Hopkins: “Visualizing Emerging Trends in the Horror Genre: Graphic Narratives, Video Games, and Animated Horror” - Neuharth Conference Room

USD Faculty Reading with Lee Ann Roripaugh and duncan b. barlow: 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. - Farber Hall in Old Main, Free and Open to the Public

Conference banquet: 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. - dakotadome club (if you did not purchase a banquet ticket during registration, you are on your own for dinner), benjamin percy reading: 8:00 – 9:30 p.m. - farber hall in old main, free and open to the public, saturday, september 30, 2023.

Registration & Information—Muenster University Center, 2nd floor, 10:00 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Session 4: 9:00 – 10:30 a.m.

4A Tara Ballard: “Poetic Form as Political Praxis: On Deliberate Re-Membering in the Work of Marwa Helal” - MUC 216

M.F. Saligia: "Univinisible"

Bibiana Ossai: “Makoko”

Justin Gray: “The Wanderers”

Grant Tracy: “Artifacts”

4B Creative Works Session III - MUC 211

Session 5: 10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

5A Creative Works Session IV - MUC 211

Andrew Farkas: “The Imaginary Girlfriends of Canada”

Angela Sievers: “Old Plow (and more)”

5B Pinckney Benedict, Matthew Gordon: “Pre-linear to Non-Deterministic: Narrative, AI, and the Author a Quarter into the 21st” - MUC 216

Conference Lunch: 12:30 – 2:00 p.m. - Muenster University Center, 2nd floor

Session 6: 2:00 – 3:30 p.m..

6A Onyemechi Nwaeke: “A PLACE FOR NETIZEN CHARACTERS IN THE EPISTOLARY SPACE” - MUC 216

Sneha Chakraborty: “Tracing the change of symbolic representation of Naomi Alderman’s Power”

Sydney J.E. Evans: “There is no agony like bearing an untold story"

Kendall Grady Loving Couplets: “An Old Form for New Relational Aesthetics”

6B Heidi Hermanson Omaha: “6600 North (and more)” - MUC 211

Becky Zavada: “Dark Windows (and more)"

Michael Catherwood: “The Fatigue Poems”

Adelia Gregory: “How to Find Elvis in Paradise.”

USD MA 100th Anniversary Reading: 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. with Chel Campbell, Jacquelyn Morgan, Joshua Rudnik, Amelia Saint Skinner - Featuring Chel Campbell, Jacquelyn Morgan, Amelia Saint Skinner, Farber Auditorium, Old Main, Free and Open to the Public

Lisa fey coutley and steven wingate reading: 8:00 – 9:45 p.m.  - farber auditorium, old main, free and open to the public, keynote & featured readers.

• Benjamin Percy
• Lisa Fay Coutley
• Steven Wingate

Benjamin Percy is the author of seven novels -- most recently, Sky Vault (William Morrow) -- three story collections, including Suicide Woods -- and a book of essays titled Thrill Me that is widely taught in creative writing classrooms. 

He co-wrote the feature film Summering with director James Ponsoldt. Produced by Sony's Stage 6 and Bleeker Street, it debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2022. He is also currently writing an adaptation of Urban Cowboy for Paramount Plus with James Ponsoldt attached to direct. He has sold scripts to Starz, FOX, and Paramount Pictures. 

He wrote two seasons of the audio drama -- Wolverine -- produced by Marvel and Stitcher. The first season, "Wolverine: The Long Night," was listed as one of the top 15 podcasts of the year by Apple and won the iHeartRadio Award for Best Scripted Podcast. 

His latest audio drama -- Old Man Starlord -- is produced by Marvel and SiriusXM/Pandora and stars Chris Elliot, Timothy Busfield, Vanessa Williams, and Danny Glover.

He writes Wolverine, X-Force, and Ghost Rider for Marvel Comics. He has also written for DC Comics and Dynamite Entertainment and is known for his celebrated runs on Green Arrow, Teen Titans, Nightwing, and James Bond.

His fiction and nonfiction have been published in Esquire (where he is a contributing editor), GQ, Time, Men's Journal, Outside, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Ploughshares, Tin House, McSweeney's, and the Paris Review.

His other honors include the Whiting Award, an NEA fellowship, the Whiting Award, the Plimpton Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, and inclusion in Best American Short Stories, 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories, and Best American Comics. 

He has lectured at Harvard and taught at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Lisa Fay Coutley is the author of tether (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), (Southern Illinois University Press, 2015), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition, and In the Carnival of Breathing (BLP, 2011), winner of the Black River Chapbook Competition. She is also the editor of the forthcoming anthology, In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy (BLP, 2024). She’s the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, fellowships and scholarships to the Sewanee and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences, an Academy of American Poets Levis Prize, chosen by Dana Levin, and the 2021 Gulf Coast Poetry Prize, selected by Natalie Diaz. Recent prose and poetry appears or is forthcoming in Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day Barrelhouse, Black Warrior Review, Brevity, Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, and The Massachusetts Review. She is an Associate Professor of Poetry and Creative Nonfiction in the Writer’s Workshop at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and the Chapbook Series Editor at Black Lawrence Press.

Steven Wingate is the author of the novels The Leave-Takers (2021) and Of Fathers and Fire (2019), both part of the Flyover Fiction Series from the University of Nebraska Press. His short story collection Wifeshopping (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008) was selected by Amy Hempel as winner of the 2007 Bakeless Prize in Fiction from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. His experimental work includes the prose poem collection Thirty-One Octets (CW Books, 2014) and the digital interactive memoir daddylabyrinth , which premiered at the Art/Science Museum of Singapore in 2014. He has taught at the University of Colorado, the College of the Holy Cross, and South Dakota State University, where he is currently professor of English and coordinator or creative writing.

Celebrate the written word

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IWAC Conference Volume CFP

Writing worldviews: the 2023 international writing across the curriculum conference edited collection.

Growing out of the 2023 International Writing Across the Curriculum Conference, this volume recognizes the crucial moment at which we stand as scholars and practitioners of writing and communicating across disciplines. The collection focuses on the role we have in using the power of language to affect worldviews and address calls for linguistic and social justice. That role has never been more evident than now, in the face of current events. In recent years, we have had to respond to many educational challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on our students’ ways of learning and being in instructional settings; the increasing number of linguistically and culturally diverse students enrolled in our institutions; workplaces that require ever more sophisticated communication and critical thinking skills; the advent of generative artificial intelligence (AI); and the urgent need to help faculty and students teach and learn successfully in a time of global tensions and crisis.

This conference volume welcomes empirical work, empirically driven theoretical work, and theoretically informed reflective teaching narratives that are forward thinking in addressing these many challenges, both domestic and global. We invite proposals that address broad categories of writing across the curriculum (WAC) and writing in the disciplines (WID) scholarship, including but not limited to:

• The role of WAC/WID in addressing access, equity, and social justice/social justice literacy : Topics such as educating faculty members about antiracist writing and assessment practices (Condon & Young, 2016; García de Mueller, 2020; Gere et al, 2021; Inoue, 2022; Inoue & Poe, 2012; Martini & Webster, 2021); thinking forward to how WAC/WID becomes more focused on social justice literacy (LeCourt, 1996; Poe, 2016; Poe et al., 2018; Villanueva, 2001); helping cultivate accessible, inclusive and equitable environments for students and faculty (Hanauer et al., 2019; Hubrig et al., 2022; Mecklenburg-Faenger, 2022); opening access to higher education in communities (Kells, 2019); or the reach and impact of WAC/WID in two-year colleges, minority-serving institutions, and international campuses of US-based institutions (Jordan, 2022; Kester et al., 2016; Norment, 2021)
• The role of WAC/WID in a time of global turmoil : Topics such as the impact of global politics on WAC/WID teaching and education (Fraiberg et al., 2017; Martins et al, 2023; Rose & Weiser, 2018); the role of English language and communication globally (You, 2016, 2018); antidemocratic threats to colleges and universities (Mlyn, 2022).
• WAC/WID as a transnational movement : Topics such as WAC scholarship’s inter- or transnationality (Hall & Horner, 2023; You, 2016); inclusive multilingual, translingual, or second language pedagogies (Cox, 2014; Frost et al., 2020; Tardy, 2017; Zawacki & Cox, 2013; Zawacki & Habib, 2014); and international adaptations of WAC (Arnold, Nebel & Ronesi, 2017; Ávila Reyes, 2021; Morrison, Chen, Lin, & Urmston, 2021; Gustafsson & Eriksson, 2022).
• WAC/WID scholars as agents of change : Topics such as WAC/WID scholars acting as agents of change in the current political, economic and social climate; COVID-related pedagogical changes (Gage & Fleckenstein, 2022; Meyer, 2020); dealing with increasing costs of education and budget cuts (Basgier, forthcoming); proactive integration of generative AI in curricular and pedagogical contexts (Mills, 2022)
• WAC/WID and the relationship between the academy and the professions : Topics such as WAC’s ability to adapt to a world that is growing increasingly focused on STEM careers (Gere et al., 2018); transitioning from the academy to the workplace and how social justice plays into that transition; preparing students for communication at different stages of their lives (Poe et al., 2012)

Interested contributors should submit an abstract of 250-300 words to the editors by September 30, 2023. Contributors should expect to revise their submissions, rather than reproduce conference presentations, for several reasons:

• a voiced and visual conference presentation is a different genre from the written academic chapter in a print volume collection;
• a conference presentation is delivered for a particular audience and often needs to be revised for a print volume that reaches a wider audience;
• questions, feedback, and discussion following delivered papers often lead to expanded, more in-depth chapter versions.

Note that any files you submit must be suitable for anonymous review. To the greatest extent possible, please remove identifying information about you (and any co-authors) as well as institutional information.

To submit a proposal, please visit The WAC Clearinghouse Submissions portal , log in (or create an account), select “Submit a Chapter to an Edited Collection,” select the conference collection, and follow the subsequent prompts from there.

Questions can be directed to Christopher Basgier, 2:=E@i4C3__gdo2F3FC?]65F');"> ude.nrubua@5800brc .

November 2023: Invitations to submit complete chapter manuscripts

February 2024: Chapter manuscripts due; draft volume circulated to reviewers

First half of 2024: Target date for returning reviewer feedback to the contributors

Second half of 2024: Revised chapters due to the editors

Early 2025: Target for publication

Acknowledgement

This CFP has been revised and updated based on the IWAC 2023 conference CFP . We are grateful to the conference organizers for providing a thoughtful, provocative basis on which to build.

Arnold, Lisa R., Nebel, Anne, & Ronesi, Lynne (Eds.). (2017). Emerging writing research from the Middle East-North Africa region . The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado. https://doi.org/10.37514/INT-B.2017.0896

Ávila Reyes, Natalia (Ed.). (2021). Multilingual contributions to writing research: Toward an equal academic exchange . The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado. https://doi.org/10.37514/INT-B.2021.1404

Basgier, Christopher. (Forthcoming). Continuing writing across the curriculum programs amidst the contraction of higher education: Vision, mission, and strategy. In Jennifer Juszkiewicz & Rachel McCabe (Eds.), Composition and Rhetoric in Contentious Times .

Condon, Frankie, & Young, Vershawn Ashanti. (Eds.). (2016). Performing antiracist pedagogy in rhetoric, writing, and communication . The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado. https://doi.org/10.37514/ATD-B.2016.0933

Cox, Michelle. (2013). In response to today’s “felt need”: WAC, faculty development, and second language writers. In Terry Myers Zawacki & Michelle Cox (Eds.), WAC and second language writers: Research towards linguistically and culturally inclusive programs and practices (pp. 299–326). The WAC Clearinghouse. https:// 10.37514/PER-B.2014.0551

Fraiberg, Steven, Wang, Xiquiao, & You, Xiaoye. (2017). Inventing the world grant university: Chinese international students’ mobilities, literacies, and identities . Utah State University Press.

Frost, Alanna, Kiernan, Julia, & Malley, Suzanne Blum. (Eds.). (2020). Translingual dispositions: Globalized approaches to the teaching of writing. International Exchanges on the Study of Writing . The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado. https://wac.colostate.edu/books/international/translingual/

Gage, Scott, & Fleckenstein, Kristie (Eds). (2022). Violence in the work of composition: Recognizing, intervening, ameliorating . Utah State University Press. http://doi.org/10.17616/R31NJMSY

García de Müeller, Genevieve. Antiracist WAC toolkit. Syracuse University, https://thecollege.syr.edu/writing-studies-rhetoric-and-composition/writing-across-curriculum/antiracist-wac-toolkit/ . Nov. 30, 2020.

Garcia de Mueller, Genevieve, & Ruiz, Iris. (2017). Race, silence, and writing program administration: A qualitative study of US college writing programs. WPA: Writing Program Administration , 40 (3), 19-39.

Gere, Anne Ruggles, Curzan, Anne, Hammond, J. W., Hughes, Sarah, Li, Ruth, Moos, … & Zanders, Crystal J. (2021). Communal justicing: Writing assessment, disciplinary infrastructure, and the case for critical language awareness. College Composition and Communication , 72 (3), 384-412.

Gere, Anne Ruggles, Knutson, Anna V., & McCarty, Ryan. (2018). Rewriting disciplines: STEM students’ longitudinal approaches to writing in (and across) the disciplines. Across the Disciplines , 15 (3). http://wac.colostate.edu/atd/trans_wac/gereetal2018.pdf

Gustafsson, Magnus, & Andreas, Eriksson (Eds.). (2022). Negotiating the intersections of writing and writing instruction . The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado. https://doi.org/10.37514/INT-B.2022.1466

Hubrig, Ada/Adam, Olivas, Bernice, Van Duke, Turnip, Lovett, Sara, Rousculp, Tiffany, & Bernstein, Susan Naomi. (2022). Symposium: Cultivating anti-ableist action across two-year college contexts. Teaching English in the Two Year College , 49 (3), 257-272.

Hall, Jonathan, & Horner, Bruce (Eds.). (2023). Toward a transnational university: WAC/WID across borders of language, nation, and discipline . The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado. https://doi.org/10.37514/ATD-B.2023.1527

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Inoue, Asao B. (2022). Labor-based grading contracts: Building equity and inclusion in the compassionate writing classroom (2nd ed.). The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado. https://doi.org/10.37514/PER-B.2022.1824

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Bio : Brad Jacobson is Assistant Professor of English at The University of Texas at El Paso, where he teaches courses in writing studies and English education. His research focuses on student experiences writing across the high school to college transition and writing teacher education, and his work has appeared in Writing Program Administration, Currents in Teaching and Learning, and the Journal of Writing Assessment. In addition to his membership in AWAC, Brad is affiliated with CCC, NCTE, NWP, and the Coalition for Community Writing.

Statement : As a scholar and teacher, I am committed to facilitating reciprocal research, teaching, and learning opportunities across K-16 and community contexts. I believe AWAC is uniquely positioned to contribute to such collaborations. As Chair of the Partnerships committee, I would work with the committee to solidify our developing partnership with NWP while seeking new partnerships with like-minded organizations. I look forward to creating and sustaining opportunities like sponsored panels and collaborative events with our partners in the coming years.

Bio: Alisa Russell is an Assistant Professor of English and WAC Director in the Writing Program. Her areas of interest include rhetorical genre studies, public writing, and WAC, and her research focuses on increasing community access through writing and writing innovations. Her work has appeared in journals such as Composition Forum, The WAC Journal, Across the Disciplines, and Pedagogy. Alisa is a founder of the WAC Graduate Organization, and she currently serves as Co-Chair of the WAC Summer Institute Committee for AWAC. She enjoys hiking and re-watching television series.

Statement: For the first institute in 2019, our planning group met every month for a year and half prior: We juggled registration, housing, and catering logistics; we balanced budgets; we designed a jam-packed agenda and materials; we worked closely with local hosts; etc. And then the institute arrived, and it was like magic. WAC faculty from vastly different institutions and programs had this three day gift dedicated to learning from one another, developing their next steps, reenvisioning their program possibilities, and building community. All that hard planning work paid off. I would be honored to continue facilitating and improving this event as one piece of AWAC’s networked vision, the best part of which is collaborating closely with colleagues across WAC.

Bio: Mandy is a third-year PhD Candidate and Graduate Assistant Director of WAC Programs at the Howe Center for Writing Excellence (HCWE). Previously, she served as Graduate Assistant Director of the Howe Center for Business Writing where she worked with students and faculty across Miami’s business school. Mandy currently serves as Chair of WAC-GO and is conducting her dissertation research on graduate student writing support through case study research with graduate faculty on how WAC programming can support graduate students in the moment and, over time, in making meaningful programmatic change. She also is conducting research with the HCWE WAC team on innovative teaching of writing across disciplines.

Statement: As current Chair of the WAC-Graduate Organization (WAC-GO), I hope to bring more graduate student involvement in AWAC activities and membership in this role as WAC-GO AWAC chair. Specifically, I see overlap in some of WAC-GO’s research and mentoring plans and ongoing AWAC initiatives that could lead to beneficial partnerships (e.g., I could see WAC-GO members joining AWAC writing groups). WAC-GO is dedicated to connecting graduate students interested in WAC work with scholars and practitioners in the field. I would work to provide graduate students with such opportunities by learning more about and relaying the work of AWAC and its various committees.

Heather Falconer, Curry College

Bio: Heather is an Assistant Professor of Writing and WAC Coordinator at Curry College. Her research focuses on diversity, equity, and inclusion in disciplinary spaces (particularly STEM), and has focused her time with the Research and Publications Committee (first as Chair, then as Co-Chair) on planning opportunities to support scholars at all stages of research.

Chris Basgier, Auburn University

Bio : Christopher currently works as Acting Director of University Writing at Auburn University, where he helps faculty integrate high impact practices into their courses and leads professional development for the writing center staff. His research on WAC, rhetorical genre theory, writing program administration, and threshold concepts has appeared in Across the Disciplines, the WAC Journal, Double Helix, Prompt, and Composition Forum. He served on the IWAC 2018 planning committee and currently chairs the CCCC WAC Standing Group. As a founding member of AWAC, he participated in the organization’s planning group, and he is interim co-chair of the AWAC Research and Publications committee.

Joint Statement: As co-chairs of the Research and Publications Committee, Drs. Basgier and Falconer intend to continue our successful initiatives, including virtual writing groups, awards for excellent publications, and support for cross-organizational presentations with the AAC&U and others. We also plan to continue developing grants to support WAC/WID research. Finally, we plan to collaborate with WAC-GO on a survey to understand the current level of preparation graduate students receive in WAC theory and practice, with the goal of making recommendations to AWAC and the discipline in general.

Amy Cicchino, Auburn University

Bio: Amy Cicchino is Associate Director of University Writing at Auburn University. At Auburn, she supports faculty development within the WAC program, leads the Graduate Writing Partners program, facilitates workshops related to writing and writing instruction, and is currently expanding online resources for writing across the curriculum. Her research takes up writing program administration, multimodal online instruction, and teacher professionalization. She is a member of the AWAC Mentoring Committee, an Executive Board At-Large member of the Global Society for Online Literacy Educators (GSOLE), and a member on the Association for Authentic, Experimental, Evidence-Based Learning (AAEEBL)’s Digital Ethics taskforce.

Lindsay Clark, Sam Houston State University

Bio: Lindsay Clark is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration at Sam Houston State University where she teaches business and managerial communication courses, directs the College’s Communication Lab, and serves as Co-Chair of the University Writing in the Disciplines Committee. Her research includes visual and multimodal communication, genre theory and pedagogy, and writing across the curriculum. She is a member of the AWAC Mentoring Committee and serves as the Secretary/Treasurer for the Association for Business Communication, Southwest Region.

Joint Statement: As Co-Chairs of the AWAC Mentoring Committee, we hope to grow the initiatives developed by the committee in the last year, including the AWAC Board of Consultants, the workshop series on WAC leadership and pedagogy, and an online repository for WAC resources in collaboration with the WAC Clearinghouse. Additionally, we hope to create new opportunities for conversation and mentorship. In looking forward to the return of the WAC Summer Institute and IWAC conference, we would like to develop opportunities for semi-structured horizontal mentorship in those spaces in addition to more flexible mentoring events that could take place online throughout the academic year.

Chris M. Anson, North Carolina State University

Bio: Chris Anson is Distinguished University Professor, Alumni Association Distinguished Graduate Professor, and Director of the Campus Writing and Speaking Program at North Carolina State University, where he works with faculty across the disciplines to enhance writing and speaking instruction. He has published 19 books and 140 articles and book chapters relating to writing, WAC, and WID, and has spoken widely across the U.S. and in 33 other countries. He is Past Chair of CCCC and Past President of the CWPA. He has received or participated as a co-principal investigator in over $2.1 million in grants. His full CV is at www.ansonica.net

Federico Navarro, Universidad de O’Higgins (Chile)

Bio: Federico Navarro is an Associate Professor and the President of the Latin American Association of Writing Studies in Higher Education and Professional Contexts (ALES) and the Chief Editor of International Exchanges: Latin America Section, The WAC Clearinghouse, Colorado State University. He has published more than 100 research papers in 12 countries, including the Spanish edition of “Reference Guide to WAC” (2016).

Joint Statement: Since AWAC was created, we have co-chaired the International Collaborations Committee with a goal of exploring how AWAC could extend its reach to learn from and exchange with people in many countries and organizations. We focused on three projects: 1) developing international AWAC affiliates and partnering, for starters, with organizations in Europe and Latin America; 2) working with international WAC representatives to collectively document trends in WAC and WID worldwide; 3) creating AWAC panels in international conferences. It would be a pleasure to see these projects to fruition and to embark on new initiatives for internationalization that will enrich research and instructional innovation across countries and cultures.

Swan Kim, Bronx Community College at City University of New York

Bio: Swan Kim is an associate professor of English and Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) coordinator at Bronx Community College (BCC) at City University of New York (CUNY). She received her PhD in English at University of Virginia specializing in Asian American diaspora. She teaches courses in composition and ethnic American literature. She has been directing the WAC program at BCC since 2015, and serving as the departmental personnel and budget committee, member of the faculty senate, and one of the co-leaders for the CUNY-wide WAC Professional Development.

LaKeisha McClary, George Washington University

Bio: LaKeisha McClary is an assistant professor of Chemistry. She has spent 9 years teaching a writing-in-the disciples (WID) 2000-level chemistry laboratory course that explicitly teaches students how to write a science manuscript. Her writing assignment received the 2020 Best Assignment Award from the GW WID Program. LaKeisha received her PhD in Chemistry from The University of Arizona and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in chemistry education research at Miami University. She currently serves as the mentor for GW Posse 2 cohort, a leadership and merit based scholarship program aimed to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus. She also is the inaugural Director of Undergraduate Studies in Chemistry.

Joint Statement: Participating in the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) committee meetings through the pandemic, we found ourselves sharing the same vision for AWAC. We are both eager to bring what we learned in theory and practice over the years: Dr. McClary, as a seasoned instructor of WID in Chemistry and mentor of DEI initiatives, and Dr. Kim, as a WAC coordinator at a Hispanic Serving Institution and who has also specialized in Asian diaspora. As co-chairs of the DEI committee, we will collaboratively lead, support, and promote efforts to find creative, simple, and impactful ways to incorporate DEI into AWAC. Our goal is to work toward implementing DEI so that it does not become an add-on but an integral part of AWAC.

Bio: Paula Rosinski is a professor of English/Professional Writing & Rhetoric and Writing Across the University Director at Elon University. She led her university’s 5-year Writing Excellence Initiative (QEP), which sought to enhance the teaching and learning of academic, professional, and co-curricular writing for students, faculty, and staff. Her recent research focuses on the transfer of rhetorical knowledge and writing strategies between self-sponsored, academic, and professional contexts; the writing lives of alumni; reframing rhetorical theories and writing practices in multimodal environments; and Writing Center Fellows. She is currently co-leading Elon’s Writing Beyond the University multi-year, multi-institution research seminar.

Statement: I’m running for this position to support and connect colleagues across the country/world as they work to develop sustainable cultures of writing and infrastructures to support WAC on their own campus. I’m particularly interested in exploring/supporting what WAC means in the 21st century, as writing is increasingly visual, newer genres are emerging, and we’re learning more about writing transfer between academic and co-curricular, professional, and personal contexts. I see in this moment great opportunities for collaboratively designing multi-institutional faculty development and research projects, as a way to address these emerging issues and to continue supporting faculty, staff, and students/alumni.

Bio: I earned my doctorate in Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy from The Ohio State University in 2020. Currently, I am a Visiting Assistant Professor at Indiana University East. My areas of scholarly interest include WAC/WID, writing center theory and practice, and composition pedagogy. My current research builds on my WID dissertation, which explores history and social work instructors’ writing-related expectations for their undergraduate students. One of my primary research goals is to uncover trends, patterns, and complexities in the writing-related expectations for undergraduates in a variety of disciplines. I pursue this avenue of inquiry with the aim of making implicit disciplinary writing expectations more explicit for students. Ideally, this research can help to reduce inadvertent gatekeeping into academic communities and to promote more just and equitable pedagogy.

Statement: As an early-career scholar, I want to connect with and contribute to the broader WAC/WID community of practice. As a member at large, I would hope both to share new ideas with like-minded scholars, as well as learn from established figures in the field. There are several areas in which I would like to see WAC/WID work expand. First, I would like to foster more collaborative partnerships with faculty across the disciplines, involving disciplinary instructors more directly in shaping WAC/WID scholarship and practice. Second, I would like to promote more mentorship and support for graduate students interested in WAC/WID as an area of inquiry. Finally, I would like to enhance WAC/WID initiatives at the undergraduate level, exploring new avenues to promote undergraduate engagement in WAC/WID work and study.

Bio: Sherri Craig is an Assistant Professor of Professional and Technical Writing at West Chester University where she specializes in teaching diversity and inclusion through business and non-profit writing courses. Much of her research centers upon the experiences of Black women in their academic and industry careers and their professionalization and mentorship. As a student organization advisor and a diversity and inclusion consultant, Sherri enjoys sharing her knowledge with others and being inspired by those around her. Her work can be found in WPA: Writing Program Administration and at SparkActivism.com.

Statement: As the former Chair of the AWAC Advocacy Committee, I have spent the last two years engaged in many conversations with the DEI committee about the relationships between Advocating for and with our AWAC members and supporting the organization’s commitment to inclusion and equity. As the member-at-large for the committee, I would be able to bring these ever-important issues to the forefront of our actions in the WAC community. As the member-at-large, I am most interested in offering my support and experience with diversity and inclusion to help the chair and members of the DEI committee.

Bio: Doug Hesse is Professor and Executive Director of Writing at the University of Denver, where he’s been named University Distinguished Scholar. He’s a past president of NCTE, chair of CCCC, president of CWPA, and editor of Writing Program Administration. Starting at Illinois State in the late eighties, he directed a large writing program that included a WAC effort. His current role includes directing a writing intensive general education requirement that has involved some 250 faculty in three-day seminars, plus ongoing support. His 75+ articles/chapters focus on program development and leadership, writing pedagogy, creative nonfiction, and professional issues in writing studies.

Statement: In addition to ongoing work supporting writing-to-learn and writing in the disciplines, AWAC should encourage research, practices, and policies toward four challenges. We must better understand (1) how conditions for WAC will differ in post-pandemic institutions; (2) how increasingly multimodal-by-default texts are effectively and ethically produced and circulated; (3) how writers with diverse identities, pasts, and futures negotiate academic languages; (4) how WAC might better connect with discourse beyond the academy. Current events demonstrate why publics need information and ideas grounded in scientific, social, and humanistic knowledge. In addition to cognitive growth and epistemological savvy, WAC should foster writers for a world that surely needs expertise.

Bio: Crystal N. Fodrey is director of writing at Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA. Her recent scholarship on writing pedagogy and curriculum development has appeared in Across the Disciplines, Composition Forum, and Implementing Multimodal Curricula and Programs and is forthcoming in multiple edited collections on WEC, faculty development, and multimodal writing. In addition to leading first-year writing and WEC efforts at Moravian, she is currently working with colleagues to develop a conceptual framework for promoting digital multimodal teaching praxes across the disciplines and co-leading a team of undergraduate researchers in studying the role of multimodality across the curriculum.

Statement: As a leader in AWAC, I will strive to promote and embody rhetorical listening, reflection, and flexibility in order to understand and represent the diverse needs of writers, writing faculty, and WAC program administrators across myriad situational ecologies. My vision is for AWAC to expand our influence through strategic and effective communication and outreach efforts, promote faculty development that highlights inclusive assignment design and assessment practices, promote the possibility of both the WEC model and designing college curricula for vertical writing transfer, explore the roles of digital multimodal composing and media literacy in a WAC context, and celebrate innovative work.

Bio : Beginning in 1993, I have been a member of the English department at the University of St. Thomas, serving first as Director of the interdisciplinary Academic Development Program for underprepared students (in which I still teach each year) and then, since its inception in 2009, serving as Director of Writing Across the Curriculum. With a supportive WAC Committee as well as Chris Anson as a mentor and guide, I have weathered the early years of program development. After a WPA Program Review in 2019, UST-WAC is now an established, growing part of our curriculum, and larger university culture.

Statement : As a Member-at-Large, my primary goal would be to make sure the needs of our members are met as they work to build, maintain, and grow their WAC programs during these challenging times. In order to achieve this goal, I would familiarize myself with the work of the AWAC committees and listen carefully to the needs expressed by our membership. As someone who has worked to build a WAC program over the past twelve years, I know how important it is to receive both practical and moral support; I will make sure our members receive these as well.

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

Home > JCWS

Journal of Creative Writing Studies is a peer reviewed, open access journal. We publish research that examines the teaching, practice, theory, and history of creative writing. This scholarship makes use of theories and methodologies from a variety of disciplines. We believe knowledge is best constructed in an open conversation among diverse voices and multiple perspectives. Therefore, our editors actively seek to include work from marginalized and underrepresented scholars. Journal of Creative Writing Studies is dedicated to the idea that humanities research ought to be accessible and available to all.

Journal of Creative Writing Studies is a publication of Creative Writing Studies Organization (CWSO), which also hosts the annual Creative Writing Studies Conference .

To comment on any of our articles, please visit our facebook page and find the related post.

Current Issue: Volume 8, Issue 1 (2023)

From the editors.

Research Pipeline? How About Research Forest? Jen Hirt

Research: Qualitative and Quantitative

Barriers to Creative Writing Among University Students in Qatar Sam Meekings Dr, Lujain Assaf, Gwiza Gwiza, Tayyibah Kazim, and Laiba Mubashar

Theory, Culture, and Craft

The De-Indigenisation of the English Language: On Linguistic Idiosyncrasy FAYSSAL BENSALAH

Speaking the Unspoken: Reconsidering the Craft of Subtext in Fiction through Nafissa Thompson-Spires’s Use of Palimptext in “Heads of the Colored People” Karen Lee Boren

Crossing the Boundaries: Integrating Poetry Writing with Translation Practice Xia Fang

Rethinking Length and Form in Fiction: Workshopping Short Stories, Novels, Novellas, Flash, and Hybrid Kevin Clouther

Digital and Multimodal/Multimedia

Why Poetry Comics? An overview of the form's origins, creative potential, and pedagogical benefits Mara Beneway

Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings: Major Reckonings on the Asian-American Identitarian Writer Wally Suphap Esq.

Craft Through the Lens of Marginalized Identities Grace Sikorski

Teaching Creative Writing in Asia MD MUJIB ULLAH

Creative Writing in Asia: Places, Languages, Societies, and Cultures – Plural Elena Traina

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List of Writer’s Conferences and Workshops in North America: Updated for 2022

by Tom Corson-Knowles | 10 comments

There are hundreds of writer’s conferences, workshops, and events in North America every year.

All these events can be overwhelming, and it can be hard to find the right event for you.

That’s why our team put together this detailed list of the 200+ best writer’s conferences in North America every year.

Important Note on Writer’s Conferences

All of these events are annual, and usually take place around the same time each year. However, given the ongoing situation with Covid-19 pandemic, many of these conferences have been cancelled or postponed.

If you’re interested in attending any of these events, please check their respective websites for more detailed information about cancellations or postponements, or for information on their scheduled events for 2022.

List of Writers Conferences in North America

How to use this list.

You can use the search feature to quickly sort through the list to find the best writer’s conferences that match what you’re looking for.

For example, if you live in Texas, you can search for “Texas” or “TX” and find only those conferences that are within a few hours drive of where you live.

Once you’ve found a few conferences that look interesting to you, check out their websites or call them up for more information to make sure it’s a good fit for you.

Why You Should Attend a Writer’s Conference

Going to writer’s conferences is a big investment of time, money and effort. Being away from your family and day-to-day responsibilities is costly, so you want to make sure it’s worth your time.

Writer’s conferences are not just about learning how to write better . Here are a few benefits of attending writer’s conferences that you should know about.

1. Meet Other Editors, Authors, and Writers

At a large writer’s conference, you have an opportunity to meet hundreds of people that may be interested in you and your work. You will find people who can be very supportive and are ready to help you. But the best thing about meeting all these new people is you’ll be able to develop lifelong friendships and working relationships.

2. A Better Place to Learn

One of the reasons we write is because we love to read and gain knowledge. We get excited about learning new things and gain a solid understanding of writing and publishing. Writer’s conferences give new insights about writing craft, give you encouragement and support, and gives you real actionable advice about the journey of becoming a successful writer.

3. Improve Professional Effectiveness

Professionals in every industry know they need to attend conferences and industry events to stay at the top of their game. Writer’s conferences are an excellent way of improving your knowledge about your writing craft, and you’ll also learn about how to be professional by listening to the stories of other successful writers and what they did when they were just starting out.

4. Get Inspired

When you’re at a Writers’ Conference with thousands of other writers, authors, and publishers who are all passionate about writing, you will also get the desire to write more than you ever have before. It’s a great way to stay motivated and inspired and to make sure that you keep working on your writing career.

5. Community

Everyone at a writer’s conference shares a common love and passion for writing and stories, but they all come from different backgrounds and perspectives. This creates a dynamic community of writers. Many writers feel like they’ve finally “come home” when they show up at a writer’s conference for the first time.

So what are you waiting for? Find a writer’s conference near you and sign up!

Your family of writers will be there waiting for you.

P.S. Check out our guide on how to get the most out of a writer’s conference for more tips on what to do when you get there!

Tom Corson-Knowles is the founder of TCK Publishing, and the bestselling author of 27 books including Secrets of the Six-Figure author. He is also the host of the Publishing Profits Podcast show where we interview successful authors and publishing industry experts to share their tips for creating a successful writing career.

10 Comments

Hello! Can you direct me to a really good writers conference in California. I write non fiction.

Hey Anne, I don’t know much about each conference here so I can’t recommend you a specific one. We do have 15 or so conferences located in California. You can find them quickly by using the search function (ctrl+f).

Hi, I’d love for you to add our conference to the list. This year it’s in July, but normally it’s at the end of June. In Your Write Mind Workshop is a four day con that focuses on genre and popular fiction. It’s July 8-11 this year and is entirely virtual. Here’s the sign up page… Inyourwritemind.setonhill.edu

Thanks Donna, I’ll update the list!

Good afternoon!

We’re holding an in-person and virtual Writer’s conference in Blue Springs, Missouri, August 26-28, 2021 to help reconnect writers after the loss of most of our conferences last year. We’re looking forward to meeting other writers again! Our conference site is https://www.smiahwritersconference.com/ , we’d love to add this to your list and see you all!

Thanks Brian, I’ll update the list!

I’d like to add a few of our favorite annual conferences to this list, please.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Arkansas Writers Conference – https://www.arkansaswritersconference.com North Little Rock, Arkansas [email protected] xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Read.Write.Share. Conference – https://www.rwsweekend.org Little Rock, Arkansas https://www.rwsweekend.org/contact-us xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Tulsa NightWriters Craft of Writing Conference – https://tulsanightwriters.wordpress.com Tulsa, Oklahoma https://tulsanightwriters.wordpress.com/contact-us xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx East Texas Writers Guild – https://etwritersguild.org Tyler, Texas https://etwritersguild.org/contact xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Ozark Creative Writers Conference – https://www.ozarkcreativewriters.com Eureka Springs, Arkansas https://www.ozarkcreativewriters.com/contact-form xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Meet the Publishers! https://www.jespiddlin.com/publishers Tulsa, Oklahoma [email protected] xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

thanks for the suggestions, Renee! I’ll check them out and add them to the list :)

Hello, I’d like to request that you add the Lancaster Christian Writers conference which is an annual conference that will be held online in April 2021. Dates and other info are available on our website:www.lancasterchristianwriters.com. Thank you for your consideration.

Hi JP, thanks, I’ll check it out and add it to the list! :)

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Big Time Magic: Creative Writing Pedagogy in the Accelerated Learning Program Classroom

• March 28, 2022
• Melanie Dusseau, MFA

Quick: what is your favorite class to teach? Chances are this is not a particularly tough question for most faculty to answer. If you are like many teachers, the subjects which geek you out the most are the ones that tip your enthusiasm meter to bliss.

For many MFA degree holders moored to composition positions, this class is our single section of creative writing: the fun, talented, slightly unruly child you favor over your less sparkly kids with only a twinge of guilt. Since the course is universally an elective at community colleges, there is the added bonus that students want to be in creative writing. They choose to be there. The first time I heard the term “co-requisite remediation,” it sounded like something that is done to you, like a painful spinal adjustment. Billy, hold very still so that we do not have to restrain you during your co-requisite remediation. What it does not sound like is anyone’s favorite class, teacher, or student.

When my Dean approached me to create a pilot course in developmental writing, I wanted to abandon the workbook structure of deficit-based remediation and create a more engaged and inclusive experience for learners.  Like many community colleges, we were streamlining our developmental offerings and very excited about the research in Accelerated Learning Programs (ALP) coming out of the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC). I had the great benefit of attending a pre-conference workshop at the Conference on Acceleration in Developmental Education (CADE) with Dr. Peter Adams the summer before I taught my first developmental writing section. The subject was non-cognitive issues, something I thought I had a decent grasp of, as I am a devotee to both relationship-based and compassionate pedagogies. Such strategies rely on our abilities as educators to bear witness to traumas large and small; we have asked students for their stories, and we cannot leave them wanting an empathetic ear. What is the creation of any art if not a balm for the soul? Non-cognitive issues for developmental writers take on an entirely new dimension when immersed in the ALP philosophy, which strives to both remove the developmental stigma and give students more agency. As I listened to Dr. Adams speak about persistence, self-efficacy, emotional health, teamwork, community, and responsibility, something about the way he characterized “the cohort effect” began to feel familiar (Adams, 2015). The end of the semester is a celebration of writing! Students, even the most introverted, form genuine bonds of friendship with fellow classmates. This is what every professor who facilitates a creative writing workshop hopes for by the semester’s end. If these phenomena occur frequently in a class like creative writing, why not in my other classes? More importantly, what is really so different about that environment? The students? Perhaps my approach to the subject matter could use a little more magic and a little less spinal adjustment.

Enthusiasm for your subject matter does not a pedagogy make; therefore, the scaffolding of assignments and structure of the cohort itself in any linked, accelerated developmental course are essential. We decided on a 14 to 10 ratio of students, with the 10 developmental writers meeting directly after the credit-bearing composition section. In addition to forming strong bonds as a small group, the cohort effect also relies on the idea that exposure to college level writers as peers in the composition section allows developmental writers “access to role models who are stronger writers and more savvy about ‘doing college.’” (Adams & McKusick, 2014, p.18). We talk a lot about the cult of influence in creative writing, in which emerging poets and fiction writers examine and analyze craft elements of writers they admire and aspire to model. A student in a writing workshop with a single, gorgeous simile might be sitting next to one who produced a clunker of a cliché. Instead of, “I can’t do that,” the student with the clunker asks, “ How did you do that?” Luckily, writers of all stripes like to talk about process.

After the jolt of inspiration I experienced at CADE, I went in search of supplemental text. Let me tell you, this is a confusing world for those of us who are neither by trade nor training developmental learning experts. What I really wanted for the pilot class was something akin to a common read selection. Libraries, reading groups, and First Year Experience (FYE) programs everywhere have great success with titles that feel like non-required reading to students. Pick an interesting book and let that be the basis for everything from class discussion to minor assignments to fun, engaging reflections. I tell my students on the first day of class that writing is about ideas. Why not assign a text to reflect this—especially one that might also serve as an inspirational model for developmental writers? What if the big idea for the entire semester was creativity and not comma splices?

Enter Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic . This book is unapologetically goofy and cloaks its no-nonsense, kick-your-muse-off-the-couch self-help vibe with equal parts fairy dust and practical advice. The chapter titles—Courage, Enchantment, Permission, Persistence, Trust, and Divinity—directly hit so many of the non-cognitive marks essential to ALP that it instantly felt like a perfect match for an accelerated workshop. Since I normally trick my regular composition classes by treating the first few weeks of the narrative unit exactly like a creative writing class, what if I continued to immerse my developmental writers with subjects addressing and inspiring creativity for the entire semester? ALP pedagogy tells us that students must see the big picture, the big thing we want them to do well. In a composition course, this big thing is to master the academic essay, not its working parts in isolation. Imagine taking a woodshop class. First, we’re going to test your woodworking skills with a flawed, inequitable measure. Looks like you have some real deficits. In a small, stigmatized group, let’s work on sanding over here, hammering nails over there. Professor Voldemort will show you the plans for the birdhouse we want you to build only after you master these tasks. Every time I have overheard a student mutter a version of “this is stupid,” you can bet the more direct translation is: “This makes me feel stupid.” A workbook approach to developmental writing breeds the kind of “deep-rooted erroneous beliefs about learning that shape most remedial programs” according to reformers like the dearly missed Mike Rose (2012, p. 12).

An ALP class worthy of including the word “workshop” in its title can borrow a few ideas from creative writing, where everyone is a beginner. Here, upfront and center, are the big, complicated plans for the poem or short story we want you to write. Make mistakes; try different tools. We are all going to become better writers along the way. Not only can you build this birdhouse/essay/poem, you are also capable of creativity, humor, clarity, ethical research, and, yes: eloquence. A handout I still give to students—so vintage it always feels fresh from the mimeograph machine—is Kurt Vonnegut’s excellent essay “How To Write With Style,” which, like Gilbert’s book, treats writers as if they are capable of doing all of the big things we want for them, and not the lowered expectation version. “Pity the reader,” Vonnegut advises. A sharp-elbowed way of insisting on a concept for which every writer needs a reminder: writing is for someone, received in the brain of a fellow human: your audience of readers.

What does this look like in the classroom? For me, it involves borrowing the best activities from creative writing and applying them to another writing context: part collaborative workshop with its laughter and risks, part First Year Experience course with its practical advice, positive psychology confidence boosters, and individual attention, and another part book club with the chaotic, insistent expression of ideas, opinion, reflection, and inspiration. Gilbert has a wonderful notion on the origin of ideas: that they are a kind of bodiless, magical force looking for expression. In Big Magic , she writes: “Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner” (Gilbert, 2015, p.35). Every semester in my developmental writing workshops, I hope the same for my students: that they are both receptive to the Big Time Magic of ideas trying to get their attention, and willing to do the rewarding work of creativity and rhetoric in order to usher them into the world.

Melanie Dusseau holds an MA in English Language and Literature from The University of Toledo, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. She has taught Composition, Literature, and Creative Writing full-time at Northwest State Community College since 2011. When creating the co-requisite developmental writing pilot, the power of storytelling and creativity became the guiding pedagogy, and this focus continues in both Composition and ALP/developmental writing at NSCC.

Adams, P., & McKusick, D. (2014). Steps and missteps: Redesigning, piloting, and scaling a developmental writing program. New Directions for Community Colleges , 167, 15-25. doi:10.1002/cc.20107

Adams, P. (2015, June). Non-Cognitive issues in the accelerated classroom . Pre-conference workshop presented at the 7 th Annual Conference on Acceleration in Developmental Education, Costa Mesa, CA.

Gilbert, E. (2015). Big magic: Creative living beyond fear . New York, NY: Riverhead Books.

Rose, M. (2012). Back to school: Why everyone deserves a second chance at education . New York, NY: The New Press.

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Home » 2021 Conference

6th Annual Creative Writing Studies Conference Online

Creative writing as care & other lessons of the pandemic #cwsc21, friday and saturday, october 8 and 9, 2021.

Thank you for your interest in our 2021 conference. Below, you’ll find an archive of the schedule. Q&As were held via Zoom with a link sent out to all current members the week of the conference. No registration was required. Videos remain part of our YouTube Channel in an effort to expand the accessibility of academic conferences. Check out the #CWSC21 Playlist for a quick look at all the presentations in order.

As we imagine possibilities for a post-pandemic world, we use this conference to recenter care. How can creative writing studies build or rebuild practices and communities of care? The ongoing global pandemic has challenged our notions of productivity and created unexpected hardships for writers and students. What lessons will we choose to take forward into the After Times? In the post-pandemic world, we must absolutely reject the spurious argument that caring for students or acknowledging the therapeutic benefit of writing somehow negates the artistic and intellectual value of the field.

Presenters with an asterisk beside their name will serve as a facilitator for the Q & A.

Friday, October 8

Friday morning sessions.

8:30-9AM EDT COFFEE & WELCOME with Rachel Haley Himmelheber

9-9:30 Time to prep for first panel Q&A

9:30-10 EDT Research in/as Creative Writing Q & A

John Vigna, “Why I Invited Peers to Review My Teaching in All of My Classes”

Sophia Stid & Carlina Duan, “Research as Creative Practice”

*Khem K. Aryal, “Writer as Creative Writing Researcher: Linking Writers’ Self-Reports to Autoethnography” 

10-10:30 Stretch your legs and prep for the next panel Q&A 

10:30-11 EDT Student-Centered Care Q & A

Audrey T. Heffers, “In the Room Where It Happens: Access, Equity, and the Creative Writing Classroom” 

Sydney Austin, “Expelling Joker from the Workshop: Approaching Mental Illness in the Creative Writing Classroom with Universal Design”

Zoë Bossiere & Sarah Haak, “Teaching Creative Writing in Times of Crisis: A Student-Centered Response” 

11-11:30 Stretch your legs and prep for the next panel Q&A

11:30-12 EDT Joy and Self-Determination Q & A

Bronwen Tate, “Reflect, Experiment, Report Back: Building Sustainable Writing Habits in a Context of Communal Care”

*Rachel Haley Himmelheber, “Hot Streaks, Magic Circles, and Loose Parts: Making Paths to a More Playful Pedagogy”

Chris Drew, “Finding the Full Value of Joy: The Unique Social and Emotional Power of Creative Writing during Difficult Times”

12-1 LUNCH BREAK

Friday Afternoon Sessions

1-1:30 Stretch your legs and prep for the next panel

1:30-2 EDT The Workshop Q & A

Emily Capettini, “Fandom Practices in the Workshop” 

Elena Traina, “Best Practice and Pedagogical Considerations from the ‘Sentimental Structure’ Workshop” 

Hans Lind, “Repairing the Creative Writing Workshop” 

2-2:30 Stretch your legs and prep for the next panel

2:30-3 EDT Interdisciplinary Takes Q & A

Laura Wetherington, “Henk Rossouw’s Xamissa and Creative Writing’s Imaginary Potentials”

*Cymelle Edwards, “On Declaration & Interpretation of Black Performance & Performativity” 

3-3:20 Stretch your legs and prep for the next panel

3:20-4 EDT Ritual and Wonder Workshop Session

Danielle Holmes, Alysse Kathleen McCanna & Juan J. Morales, “Ritual and Wonder: Methods of Reopening and Unsilencing the Workshop”

Saturday, October 9

Saturday morning sessions.

8:30-9AM EDT COFFEE & WELCOME with Alexa Garvoille

9-9:30 Time to prep for first panel

9:30-10 EDT Community and Collaboration Q & A

*Brandi Reissenweber, “Collaborative Storytelling as Community Care”

Sam Meekings, “Fostering Collaborative Writing and Creative Communities as Acts of Communal Care in Creative Writing Pedagogy”

Kara Mae Brown, “Nanofiction, Attention, and Care: Very Short Lessons in Building Classroom Community”  

10:30-11 EDT Care and Creative Nonfiction Q & A

Jennifer Case, “Carework in the Creative Nonfiction Classroom: A Synthesis of Narrative Medicine, Expressive Writing, and Trauma-Informed Pedagogy”

Darryl Whetter, “True (Caregiving) Stories, Well Told” ( video | text )

11-11:20 Stretch your legs and prep for the next panel Q&A [Links to video and script below]

11:20-12 EDT Graduate Student Pedagogy Workshop Session

Casey O’Ceallaigh, Daphne Daughtery, Gitte Frandsen, and Beth Vigoren, “Compassionate Pedagogy: Teaching Graduate Students How to Teach and Integrating Creative Writing in the Composition Classroom”

Saturday Afternoon Sessions

1-1:30 Stretch your legs and prep for the next panel Q&A

1:30-2 EDT Studies of the Individual Q & A

Hunter Blackwell, “Say It With Your Whole Chest: Knowing Your Voice Matters in Craft” 

Kimberly K. Williams, “Making Room for the Spirit: Encouraging Exploration of the Ineffable Self as Form of Self-care through Creative Writing” 

*C. Connor Syrewicz, “How do Expert (Creative) Writers Write? A Literature Review”

2-2:30 Stretch your legs and prep for the next panel Q&A

2:30-3 EDT Against Shame Q & A

PANEL: “Against Shame, Towards Embodiment: Expression and Pleasure in the 21st Century Creative Writing Classroom”

• *Alyse Bensel, “Embodiment in the Creative Writing Classroom” 
• Sara Henning, “Give It Back to the Body: Writing Toward Pleasure in the Creative Writing Classroom” 
• Jennifer Pullen, “Pleasure Not So Guilty: Toward Subverting Shame and Returning the Joy of Reading”
• Simone Savannah 

3-3:30 Stretch your legs and prep for the next panel Q&A

3:30-4 EDT Secondary and MFA Educations

Anna Leahy, Terry Thaxton, *Stephanie Vanderslice, “Business as Unusual: The MFA Professionalization Course & Identity Formation”

Connie Martin, “Towards Cohesive Creative Writing Instruction: A Curriculum Artifact Demonstrating How Threshold Concepts Can Create Cohesion in Secondary Creative Writing Curriculum” 

4-5 EDT Final Toast and Social Hour

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Towards a New Creative Writing Pedagogy

Fred d'aguiar | october/november 2016.

SELECTED TEXTS

In my first tenure-track MFA job in a two-year program that I went on to direct at the University of Miami, fully funded students taught two courses each semester and left with an MFA in fiction or poetry. I remember a session on poetry where we discussed the poem “In My Craft and Sullen Art” by Dylan Thomas. I waxed about the idea of art aligned with nature and how solitary and seer-like the calling of the artist and what a huge responsibility to be the visionary on behalf of a partially blind society which relies on the artist for ways to improve itself. A student piped up that when he read the poem in his teen years he blushed because he thought the poem was a paean to masturbation. His reading centered on the line, “exercised in the still night” and hinged on the verb, “exercised.” The student thought that if Thomas had chosen “practiced” instead of “exercised,” he (the student) would have thought of the more heraldic alternative than the intimate one. The lesson was not that our readings were at odds with one another and one or both of us might be wrong due to cognition governed by desire or its lack, but that art holds contrary possibilities as a matter of artistic procedure.

I helped to recruit the poet Maureen Seaton whose collaborations with Denise Duhamel showcased how cooperative and plural the lonely arts can be; how convivial in its insistence on community even at that coveted point of creativity. The lonely enterprise of writing, Seaton and Duhamel were saying by quiet example, need not be so lonely. Writing itself can embody E.M. Forster’s principle for life and art, “only connect,” but at the very level of composition rather than promulgation from a lonely place of crafting to the communal link with a readership. Of course, for Forster, that connection is as difficult to make in life. But the challenge is to see the cooperative impulse and the will to connect as twin sources of need in the artist and not as some bonus asset.

I left for another opportunity (as they say), this time to help in the ratification and inauguration of Virginia Tech’s MFA Program in Creative Writing, my second tenured job, a three-year program this time with the same exchange of funded study for teaching resulted in much the same qualification, an MFA in fiction and poetry. By the time of this second post, in the early 2000s, Dylan Thomas was out of fashion with students and I kept his secret ministrations on my nervous system to myself. My alternative was to turn to Sylvia Plath and her daddy poems as models of patriarchal malfeasance and imaginative attempts to buck it in dramatizations meant to release, by way of cathartic readings, solutions to traumatic crisis. One student thought the poems were just about the deep currents of “daddy love” gone horribly wrong due to poor mental circuitry in the poet. The lesson here (one of many to be sure) is that Plath (and the work of all authors) manifest in the imagination of the reader according to certain conditions formed at a particular time of that reading in the life of the reader and is therefore subject to change over time and between different readers. Nothing new about that. The take-away (one of many) might be to ask how does this variety of interpretation varying over time and between people apply to models of teaching creative writing in universities.

I found the same freeing illumination in Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “At the Fishhouses” at the point where she breaks into a new stanza and direct statement about the quality of the body of water in front of her where she is about to sing Baptist hymns to a seal (ludicrous, I know, but startling true in tone). Her “Cold, dark, deep and absolutely clear…” clears the table of discreet utterance for the large brush strokes of the philosophic. She earns that quantum leap from what you might call her pigeon steps of the proverbial to a ballet dancer’s rhapsodic grand jetes by a stroke of imaginative space opened by the stanza break for an intake of air and for the plunge into the element she related to up to that moment in a circumspect kind of way, as if testing the waters, as it were.

Surely, there is more to this learning moment, more than a Joycean epiphany, as in, for example, the music declared by Joyce in that “shook harness,” in his short story, “Araby.” More even than Morrison’s Beloved , that terrible American history of slavery, when I had to relinquish my turning of the pages because I found the mother’s mercy of killing her babies to save the children from a life of slavery, too much to bear. This is the equivalent of my private reader’s sense of verve and permission granted to me by one writer to another to be brave in similar ways, especially in my teaching life, that calls for the help of all of the writers mentioned here.

I talked with my Virginia Tech colleagues about adding nonfiction to fiction and poetry and in the curriculum offerings we kept up courses in nonfiction and drama to at least present the students with a morsel of the cross-genre work practiced by many of the faculty. We fretted about diversity, less so in my first job, but did nothing to alter the structure of recruitment, of how students found their way into our program. The formula for recruitment, inherited from the first Creative Writing program and tweaked over the years, basically asked applicants for a writing sample, two or three letters of recommendation, and sometimes a supporting statement by applicants saying why they wanted to study a particular art and craft and, if lucky, an interview conducted by a portion of the faculty. At no time did it crop up that the very structure of recruitment, if it wished to capture a diverse population, would need radical restructuring or risk repeated failure to reflect a need to train the nation rather than the ruling element of it.

I blame myself for entering the academy with a mentality that given structures could only be reformed at best, and left to founder at worst; that the real work of writing could happen because of my luck of landing a teaching job; that the problems of society as a whole could not be fixed by stirring up trouble for myself with useless reform thinking borne out of a longing for the academy to lead society rather than living in the shadow of it.

The students from diverse backgrounds who made it into the program had to be good writers first and strong individuals second, that is, imbued with a double vision (akin to Du Bois’s double consciousness though not synonymous with it since his two aspects of the self were both social, first to the group, and second, to the wider society). The students had to be able to hold their own in workshop settings and strike sparks of originality in each story or poem or essay or short play. The idea of defending their race, group, or mental space was a corollary of their artistic location, a sort of trade-off between the gifts offered by a professional setting for the improvement of their art, versus the static of always having to defend a mental and creative space defined by the particulars of their ethnicity, gender, race, or ability.

I imagined myself in their shoes and how I would negotiate this double pivot of having to write as I developed my writing persona and having to defend myself in the same writing space because of my particular historical place as a black male in a hemisphere where modernity was predicated on profit beaten out of my ancestors held in bondage. I talked with my students about the need for self-care and love of their art, of how to balance writing ambition and maintain mental health. At no time did I tell them the system was rotten to the core and all who walked into it risked a similar contamination of their creative soul. I did not believe that a spiritual death would accompany any compromise with an institution; that outsiderness as a stance would preserve my well being even if it proved deficient for the accelerated growth of my art as promised by an association with a creative writing program. I was not a student of Proudhon or Mayakovsky. I did not believe in an anarchic solution for bad structures—that tearing them down and starting over would save a lot of people a lot of pain. Instead, I wanted a romantic notion of engagement with the academy, one that would grow lasting and incremental reform of benefit to everyone regardless of privilege.

Writing in the academy held out the promise of a betterment of imagination and self together with others. The model for society as a whole could be tried and tested in the academy with the academy exporting its tested systems to a society begging for improvement. Then I woke up. Not to Proudhon. Not even to Alan Watts and his mediation of the spiritual philosophies of the east for the betterment of the materialist west. I woke up to the limits of individual reform and loose associations with likeminded souls in order to bring about change in the academy in the face of systematic and organized efforts that thwarted any such piecemeal and rhapsodic work. I saw race (one crucial piece to the diversity puzzle) as locked in a long battle with the country’s rulers as the nation struggled to realize its potential by including all its citizens and by giving up on the promotion of the majority by keeping down and exploiting minorities. Race still presented itself in the 21 st century as DuBois conceived it in the 20 th but with added groups side by side on that color line with blacks, with women’s rights, LGBTQ, and disability rights forming a more diverse opposition to the status quo. I thought the creative writing program could be this experiment in a just society with the arts of the imagination at the center of the enterprise spawning new systems for a more cooperative and kinder society with lessened extremes of wealth and health between groups. It seemed to me that as writers dreamed up their texts, simultaneously, their vexations with society would be addressed, that somehow by osmosis and due to the porous nature of thought and actions, the interconnectedness of these, that writers’ institutional affiliations, their teaching, inevitably would enrich and inform their writing and vice versa.

Tradition and individual or even group talent do not match up as if by magic but demand a lot of design and willful intent. As Eliot’s essay tells us, the values of an artistic tradition steeped in cultural patterns that are tried and tested in history transfer from one generation to the next in a complex play of reward and punishment conducted in a public sphere of prizes, reviews, news, and swift endorsement or curtailment. If it’s not automatic and underpinned by genes and genius then what is it and how does it work? What makes a writer great, successful, popular, even read and published? Popper says that “what is” questions walk into the trap of an enquiry posed on terms that cannot be met by reason alone, that intuition intrudes and spoils rational thought. We’re better off asking why a poor condition persists rather than what adds to its persistence.

The MFA, MA, and PhD in creative writing, now firmly a part of American and British cultures, need to be reframed in light of their persistent contribution to cultures of partiality (Wilson Harris’s term from his notion of an inevitable partial bias to all initiatives that need to be written through in order to reform that bias). In terms of diversity, this partial or bias frame for training writers has promoted whites by excluding blacks, Hispanics, Latinos/Latinas, Pacific peoples, and people with disability in a roughly patriarchal, ableist white supremacist model passed off as democratic pedagogy for training writers. Some minorities make it in the model; some pass through those turnstiles of control but most do not make it through the process of submission of an application with or without an interview. And it isn’t simply a case of whites as gatekeepers stopping others from entering the coveted spaces of writing programs. Some blacks make the same decisions of what passes for a writer with potential, talent, or ability in sufficient quantity to merit earning a place in a program.

If this is the case, if blacks in positions of authority repeat bias against otherness in the selection process in favor of whiteness or in preference of asserting a majority culture, then we need to ask why and how that happens. The selection process itself, imbued with certain values of what makes good writing or broadcasts good potential, needs close scrutiny. I have heard colleagues say that a good piece of writing seen blind, that is, without a name or any authorial marker attached to it, should declare itself to the reader, no matter the conditions under which it is read by the reader. In other words, good is good no matter how it is expressed since the reader cannot help spotting goodness. The problem with this claim is that it implies a degree of awareness in the reader, a depth of knowledge, which surpasses the usual makeup of writers in the American academy. The model assumes that the writer reads internationally and across all genders, races, and cultures, in translation and even in languages other than English.

This is far from the case. The objectivity claimed by a writer who says that good is clear because good writing can be detected anywhere and every time simply express another form of bias and arrogance designed to insure the success of the majority culture in the application process. That type of writer parading as objective reader sees whiteness, or enactments of it, every time, and declares it good always, which fills the programs with that expression of sensibility embodied by that writer at the expense of other forms of expression. The process of application, that first point of entry to a program needs to be reconceived to omit the repeated problem of readers who recruit like minds.

The reform should target the writing sample, add correctives to it, and build in a set of counterbalances to widen the scope of what passes for good. A short phone interview helps to bring out strengths hinted at in the writing sample. The short phone interview, say, fifteen or twenty minutes with another ten for discussion among the interview panel of two or three writers, aims to see if the promising writer can survive the program with its specific demands on the personality of the writer outside of any test of that writer’s talent. For example, many programs expect students to train and teach composition for the most part and some creative writing. Hearing from applicants that this expectation does not clash with their writing ambition helps those writers to make it to graduation. A short statement of one, or two pages max, in support of the application about why the applicant wants to write in that environment and what got the writer started on the path of writing and wanting to continue as such, helps to clarify intent and devotion to a difficult path ahead and shows whether the writer is a reader as well (reading remains a single most important component in the formation of a writer’s sensibility and in the growth of it too). Along with getting in touch with current students and campus visits, an open model—one that is porous and unafraid of close scrutiny—helps to widen recruitment and retain variety.

But the application process, even with these added reforms, remains a first step to recruitment but does not address the problem of retention of applicants from minority groups. The culture of high attrition rates for minorities in majority settings where they feel isolated and on the defensive that needs to be staunched as well. But how? Once inside the citadel of a writing culture, it is hard to examine it from the inside. The open dialogue appears to stop once the student arrives. The process of isolation and a rise in the tension and a shift of talk from cultural to psychological take precedence over the usual and easy to identify bias practices. Now it becomes psychological warfare. Who likes whom and who takes over the workshop and which teacher is most solicitous of whites at the expense of others takes over talk among students in and out of classes, assuming that the minority student is able to talk about this at all which is not always the case. Most minority students in a majority culture feel silenced and bear the burden of account and defense in isolation until they feel overwhelmed and have to leave the program to stay sane.

Going out to catchment areas where minorities thrive and bringing them into institutions divorced from and at variance with those communities seem tantamount to designing the recruit to fail as a student who is cut off from the very nutrients that feed the writing persona. Opening satellite campuses in the communities starved of varieties of capital investment or occupying empty buildings in communities profiled for crime and prison and not learning and improvement, may be a better step. Drawing on oral and scribal traditions practiced in those communities, and on orature and literature generated by them, as tools for instruction, cannot be bad either. Why not study existing structures, such as Wednesday and Thursday night Bible instruction at churches in the heart of those communities? For their strategies of instruction, among subjects ordinarily viewed as outside the remit of creativity, may improve the democratization of our own mired as it is in elitism. 

I am not talking about religion (as__would say in his ironizing zeal posited as an art of resistance to despotism). I am talking about creative pedagogy. Not quite pedagogy of the oppressed but echoes of it. And why not? Why must the liberal exclusion of all things radical be the norm for reform? (An oxymoron if ever there was one.) To be fair, some elements of communal outreach and input exist in the academy. For example, I recall my former colleague Nikki Giovanni at Virginia Tech organizing a bus to ferry students and some faculty to an audience with Maya Angelou in North Carolina. A large cage in Maya’s yard stood with its cage door ajar signifying that the song may have had a hand in unbolting that door and that the songs have spread far and wide. As a still moment inviting the student gaze and contemplation there was the momentum of a flown bird in the current of an endlessly unfolding newsflash about its art. Maya dropped pearls of wisdom that afternoon about her abhorrence of the n-word seen by her as beyond rehabilitation, about art in life as life itself, and by her example of continued artistic practice and spiritual and political thought at the disposal of society.

The extent of the control exercised by faculty and students alike over a tyranny of interiority, of behavior on the inside of a writing program that masquerades as expert creative writing pedagogy but is just bias on the rampage, becomes central to keeping women and minorities in healthy numbers and in good health in any program. Cultures within programs school newcomers into early compliance to its rigors and strictures. Creativity must make accommodations to those cultures of conformity. A healthy creative writing program seeks to minimize those variables that stifle creativity and diversity and foster the ones that promote growth of the talent and the person.

Ideally, programs should be all about the writing, but as in most things in life the expression of talent is tied up with the person’s feelings of comfort with the writing environment. Democratic spaces are all about diversity and inclusion. But diversity can be undermined by a minimalist devotion to meeting its requirements. Writers in the role of administrators become odd arbiters of taste by paying minimal attention to inclusion as a gateway to a diverse student body and therefore a varied creative writing practice. On one level, the radical imagination thrives outside of teaching time. On another, the most conservative responses from writers are on display during term time as if the radical is reserved for the real enterprise of writing while teaching must suffer slings and arrows of blind conformity and dispiriting bias. It’s wrong to separate the two as private and public. They function in tandem in that the writing of the teacher is made possible by the teaching of the writer. Radical reform as a creative imperative—better scripts that upset the status quo and invest in invention—must feed into teaching and administration since the reverse is true as well.

What seems to be true is that while writers studiously hone their writing skills, they stumble and fall back to knee jerk reactions when it comes to administrative decisions that shape and define a writing program. This means that more training may be needed for writers who act as administrators. Writers in administrative roles may need instruction in how to examine biases and invigilate against them. Leaving it to chance and throwing up hands in exasperation when it comes to diversity and retention of students just won’t do anymore since to surrender rather than to embrace reform risks a process of atrophy of the institutional imagination in a testing economic and social climate when there is urgent need to grow and be flexible.

Recruitment of diverse faculty seems paramount in the process of growing diversity and inclusion. The usual single search where one or two diverse faculty find themselves in a throng of majority culture merely serves to cement weird practices not reform them since the few diverse faculty must answer to the majority for tenure reviews and other committees. What happens all too often is that minority faculty are stretched and pulled to answer too many demands on their time at the expense of productive participation in the reforming aspects of life of the institution. Instead, the minority status of minority faculty leads to institutional burnout. A siege mentality on the part of the minority writer and teacher who must protect their writing time and sanity quickly replaces a creative institutional engagement. Recruitment when deployed as a token gesture fails at the outset and may be viewed as designed to fail even though it advertises itself as the opposite and presents disguised as a liberal and democratic initiative.

Writing a job description may be key to recruiting diverse faculty and at least two jobs if not three may be needed to help to bring about a supporting and supportive cast of writers. No writer I know wants to be the only one to represent reform. All writers crave a supportive community, which speaks to their writing and their person. A diverse faculty is a prerequisite for a diverse student body. Diversity feeds into the curriculum as well and into the formal innovations claimed by some writers who do not see the silos of their thinking as they busy themselves with occupying as much white space on the page as possible in bold ways.

Who do you read and teach? This may be a question for current faculty of programs to pose themselves. Lunchtime sessions of research-in-progress that include books to read and talk about should help to change the culture of conformity among writing faculty. Difference may be the new template just as taste seeks to cohere in calcifying practices of sameness in sound, look, and feel. Breaking that mold may call for a difference matters movement in the same resistance narrative and practices of the Black Lives Matter movement. What is dying in the academy is varied imaginative practice. What’s at stake is the very diversity of thought in the culture that is needed to undermine stories of hostile others. Arguments constructed on delusions of communal monocultures gain traction by appealing to a sense of powerlessness and by claiming a past glory that never benefited more than a few.

The idea that creativity in educational institutions—the creative being that last bastion of inclusion, that is necessarily plural and inventive at the level of form and content, that it must kowtow to current cultural patterns or face extinction rather than amp up the dials of its own scale for reform versus conformity, diversity versus uniformity—seems a no brainer to me at this moment in history precisely because I believe that the creative imagination aimed at societal questions tends to trump social theory borne out of maintaining things as they are. Creativity can and should shape social practice if only because of the privilege of contemplation granted to the creative thinker in the academy versus the hustle of everyone else in jobs that number two or more to pay the bills and often lead to continually deferred dreams aimed at the moment of retirement that founder at the age of retirement in that dreamer’s instant death from exhaustion, assuming they make it to that point. I see writing programs as miniexperiments in civics, grounded in the generation of texts and intertextual by nature (as well as naughty) they model systems and organisms of social being, of inner and outer worlds working together, of reader and writer engaged in the same revolutionary practices of making and unmaking, remaking and molding the oral and written texts in and out of private and public individual and varied group contexts.

The magical thinking of the creative writer, quantum and inventive by nature, should have an impact on the institutional forms given to students who come to the academy to hone their writing skills. But how to avert the great danger of mis-education (as intoned by Lauryn Hill) of inculcating values into student writers that merely serve to shore up recalcitrant elements in wider society and denigrate free thinking? By the time student writers reach graduation, they feel excluded from civic society as if to participate in civic acts were somehow vulgar to the refined arts of the imagination. Unexamined creative writing schooling presented as exclusive imagination at work frequenting results in feelings of exclusion among students from the very arts these programs purport to serve for the greater good of art and society. Such schooling is really malpractice, embedded in the nuts and bolts of programs, in reading lists for courses, in discussion etiquette and student-faculty protocol, and in pedagogical practices, all of which work in concert to demand a surrender to their coercive rules in exchange for graduation, and all aimed at a civics of compliance by citizens but disguised as indispensable time-tested rules of writing,

I don’t buy it. Why should our students? The blank page, the mic, demand invention as progression, the story and breath ask for continual surprise. The long engagement of fiction, drama, poetry, and nonfiction, even when those forms shrink to haiku, sonnets, flash fiction, and short monologues, including the MC in the sound booth in front of a demanding mic and armed with breath, chemistry, and calling at fingertip control, all that risk leads to reward; that the high jinx of waking up each day to a writing project may be the greatest reward of all. So why pull creativity’s sting for a docile and mute artistic practice invested in conformity and exploitative pluralistic practices? Why settle for a dull version of the norm where variety is imported piecemeal and pressed into service to shore up a purportedly monocultural edifice? (Purported because things aren’t necessarily what they seem in that mono I.D.–run institutions and places advertise one thing on the surface but scratch that surface and they reveal quite a bit of sustaining diversity that is sidelined or forced into the background for foregrounded stories of sameness as a precursor for belonging. Alternatively, the Machiavellian and cynical radar in me must point out the opposite to be just as true, in that diversity when it is foregrounded by institutions and places may simply be using diversity and inclusion as a front to hide a mono I.D. practice wholly invested in maintaining dominant group rule over minorities.) Students should be suspicious of these enticing (for enticing read spruced up with rhetoric and funds) models and teachers who are writers even more so if they wish to resist ascribed roles within institutions as agents for sameness.

I cannot be wrong about the power of the imagination since the work of dreaming remains the single most transformative aspect of being alive. I want students to arrive at places of stillness and contemplation as represented by the academy, wide-eyed with possibility rather than jaded and guarded. I want them to make it a habit to be present where libraries foster stale air of nonmovement of the body in contrapuntal relation to the flux of thought, for them to remain receptive to and inventive of what seemed impossible as it is made suddenly real. By them. By the models in institutions that are meant for them opening up fast and reaching out far to send a clear signal to writing students how available these models really are to anyone who wishes to learn the craft of their chosen art. Dream on. With or without the offer of that institutional olive branch. Of the writers inside saying to those students coming in, that they are welcome, and what they bring is valued and needed by the academy to foster its experimental persona of excellence in the arts of life for the life of the arts, practiced as those arts are, for a better understanding of ourselves, our puzzlement, and for the improvement of life in society.

Claudia Rankine’s cross-genre exegesis of racism practiced against black people in all walks of life and her AWP LA conference lecture about models for recognizing and sidestepping the psychogeography of racialized practices aimed to promote white privilege and continue the underdevelopment (Walter Rodney’s term) of all minorities and of women as well, presents the opportunity for this radical re-envisioning process by writers and students in an academy rife with faults and therefore ripe for radical reform. Grab it. The moment (if history could be invoked in the middle of the literary and metaphorical) reveals symmetries between the academy and society. There is matching institutional and social unrest. Given that the two are coterminous in their discontents now may be the time for forward thinking administrators and teachers and students to pool their collective worth at reconfiguring a much needed creative thinking space on the basis that the academy still looks like a fit place for the teaching, mentoring, and modeling of this art and craft.

I channel the critic, Hazel Carby, here when I thank Phyllis Wheatley (1753–1784) for her mischievous secretions of rebellious intent in her 18 th -century panegyrics to her sponsors. With no other means available to her, Wheatley broadcasts her discontent in coded double-speak of praise tinged with blame, with loss of Africa informing her affirmation of a new and sustaining America. Could this seeing two things at once be a condition for a reinvigorated institutional contract between writer and institution?

The model of the writer, with story, narrative, lyric, drama, of the artist with plastic arts, could lend itself to teaching in the academy. Writing asks for a fluidity and nimbleness on the part of the writer. An intuitive imagination is at work inching the poem forward one word at a time or the story line by line or the phrasal architecture of drama, or simply adding sound to a call for silence (contradiction as a creative imperative) or managing the consciousness of time as art.

My young colleague at UCLA, Justin Torres, has a first book of linked vignettes, We the Animals , no more than 128 pages tops, which has the intensity of prose poetry and yet it works by an accumulation of scenes and details like a fat 19 th -century Russian novel, the same lasting reverberation of feeling and meaning. The wonder is how did Torres achieve such bigness by such compression. The answer, one of many, resides in the belief that the image and scene really do compress things readers find endlessly yielding as sites of contemplation. That characters outside of their acts and speech and in league with the two, signal dilemmas and life changes only readers can divine. As an act of reading We the Animals over and again, I ask if there is submerged within the confined spaces of Torres’s meta-narrative, solutions for institutional pedagogy? Maybe so.

I know from my readings of Torres (spoiler alert for those who have not read the book) that the image towards the end of a father bathing his normatively transgressive son emits an illuminating charge every time and commands me to make all sorts of links to my life and to benevolent authority and sensuously governed teenage explorations of the self and of belonging. The quantum thinking encouraged in readers by stellar models of creativity such as Torres’s should, as a process, be applied to creative writing teaching programs. The translation of one into the other may depend on reading more translations into English from other languages and comparing versions to see how meaning and feeling between objects and thoughts moved across language boundaries flourish. I have just read Sholeh Wolpe’s translation of The Conference of the Birds by Attar, the Sufi poet from the 12 th century (forthcoming from Norton) and feel a similar font of knowledge (a layered cake of meanings if you like or if it helps to see it, a pond into which a stone is dropped to cause those widening circles outwards to the end and back from the edge) with wider application to my teaching as a writer and my reading as a writer (who writes as a reader as well).

A sense of building meaning or a critique of it goes hand-in-hand with these structures and organisms of thought. Can the academy with creative writing at its center mimic these creative procedures as a way for enshrining creative pedagogy? Low-residency programs free up writers to work and live as they make their art. In my present job at UCLA, where a long-term goal for an MFA provokes my daily work practices, I’d like to see a mixed model of funds gleaned from empathetic sources in private industry, with matching monies from the academy, form the basis of an MFA in creative writing.

I’d welcome the porous model of a place deliberately kept open to influences from outside as an imperative for policy and practice. Some offsite part-time teaching in atypical places and spaces minorities live in, would be a good thing for the academy and the writer teaching in it. Such outreach would serve as cultivating ground for recruitment to the luxury of full-time study in the academy. Diversity and inclusion conceived as central to creativity at UCLA should invigorate the art with a relevance unblemished by institutional paralysis of groupthink disguised as think tank and Balkanized defenses of small spaces and supersized, self-proliferating bureaucracies. Love of the arts, central to any dedication, should be the guiding light of our working lives as artists.

I prepare with each poem, story, play, and essay to fail as a way of embarking on those forms in the first place. With Beckett’s “fail again, fail better next time” as my raison d’etre for artistic production I see my life in the academy as attempts (elegantly failed ones some would say) to reconcile the bravura of art with the quotidian of academic routine. Another image, if I am spinning many plates on rods as a way in the world I really do not want them to come crashing down due to neglect of one aspect of my life in favor of another, I’d like to think that I can move from each plate and give each one the whir it needs to maintain the flux I benefit from in untold ways.

All of this boils down to an altered MFA and PhD in creative writing that is inclusive in nature and cross-genre by definition since it gives equal weight to at least three genres in terms of credits taken. Faculty, drawn from each genre, comprises a selection committee tasked to recruit students for the multigenre degree. This prevents those stultifying silos of thinking, practice, and recruitment designed to Balkanize student body loyalty to certain approved and recalcitrant practices, which undermine diversity in training and bowdlerizes creative thinking. The mixed degree and varied selection panel break down disciple syndrome tendencies in the recruitment of students, that is, faculty would find it harder to recruit students who mirror their style, values, and tone which brings in greater variety to the program and may well translate to a higher presence of minority voices. This new plural model helps small programs to diversity as well by promoting cross-genre work, intergenre talk, as mixed faculty bring their particular expertise to bear on a search committee and must listen and exchange with colleagues from other genres and disciplines (perhaps a literature faculty could be invited to join the process) for the selection process to be a productive one. The new MFA, no longer forcing students to specialize and securing diversity in student training, better prepares students to write in a world that is international and multigenre in scope. Experimental work would find it easier to meet a ready audience, receptive to the spirit of invention and overcoming barriers. As a result a multigenre, creative writing MFA or PhD would sport a distinct identity of diversity and flexibility among a crowded field of specialisms while appealing to work that demands a nimble creative spirit. While many programs allow some cross-genre work for students who are required to specialize in one genre in order to earn the degree, none have put forward this plural model which privileges the creative enterprise as a whole rather than a single genre over another. The two-fold aim of this upgraded model for teaching creative writing in the academy is first, to grow a writing program’s diverse student body, and second, legitimize the cross-genre writer and reader persona of every writer. A broader outcome legitimizes the plural reader in all writers. Multiple sources feed the writer’s art and craft, exercised and practiced at all hours, day and night.                

Fred D’Aguiar ’s most recent poetry collection, his sixth, is The Rose of Toulouse (Carcanet, 2013). His latest novel is Children of Paradise (HarperCollins, 2015). He is an associate editor of CALLALOO and Professor of English at UCLA, where he serves as Director of the Creative Writing Program.

Selected Texts

Maureen Seaton and Denise Duhamel, Oyl (Pearl, 2000) and Exquisite Politics (Northwestern, 1997).

Dylan Thomas, Collected Poems.

Sylvia Plath, Collected Poems .

W. E. B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk (1901).

James Joyce, Dubliners (1914).

T.S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” first published in The Egoist , 1919 (see Selected Essays ).

John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1999).

Hazel Carby, Reconstructing Womanhood (OUP, 1987).

Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems 1929–1979.

Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968).

Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Collected Poems.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, What is Property and The General Idea of Revolution in the Nineteenth Century.

Vladimir Mayakovsky, The Bedbug and Selected Poetry and My Discovery of America.

Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity (1951) and Tao: The Watercourse Way (1975).

Claudia Rankine, Citizen.

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French Journal of English Studies

Home Numéros 59 1 - Tisser les liens : voyager, e... 36 Views of Moscow Mountain: Teac...

36 Views of Moscow Mountain: Teaching Travel Writing and Mindfulness in the Tradition of Hokusai and Thoreau

L'auteur américain Henry David Thoreau est un écrivain du voyage qui a rarement quitté sa ville natale de Concorde, Massachusetts, où il a vécu de 1817 à 1862. Son approche du "voyage" consiste à accorder une profonde attention à son environnement ordinaire et à voir le monde à partir de perspectives multiples, comme il l'explique avec subtilité dans Walden (1854). Inspiré par Thoreau et par la célèbre série de gravures du peintre d'estampes japonais Katsushika Hokusai, intitulée 36 vues du Mt. Fuji (1830-32), j'ai fait un cours sur "L'écriture thoreauvienne du voyage" à l'Université de l'Idaho, que j'appelle 36 vues des montagnes de Moscow: ou, Faire un grand voyage — l'esprit et le carnet ouvert — dans un petit lieu . Cet article explore la philosophie et les stratégies pédagogiques de ce cours, qui tente de partager avec les étudiants les vertus d'un regard neuf sur le monde, avec les yeux vraiment ouverts, avec le regard d'un voyageur, en "faisant un grand voyage" à Moscow, Idaho. Les étudiants affinent aussi leurs compétences d'écriture et apprennent les traditions littéraires et artistiques associées au voyage et au sens du lieu.

Index terms

Keywords: , designing a writing class to foster engagement.

1 The signs at the edge of town say, "Entering Moscow, Idaho. Population 25,060." This is a small hamlet in the midst of a sea of rolling hills, where farmers grow varieties of wheat, lentils, peas, and garbanzo beans, irrigated by natural rainfall. Although the town of Moscow has a somewhat cosmopolitan feel because of the presence of the University of Idaho (with its 13,000 students and a few thousand faculty and staff members), elegant restaurants, several bookstores and music stores, and a patchwork of artsy coffee shops on Main Street, the entire mini-metropolis has only about a dozen traffic lights and a single high school. As a professor of creative writing and the environmental humanities at the university, I have long been interested in finding ways to give special focuses to my writing and literature classes that will help my students think about the circumstances of their own lives and find not only academic meaning but personal significance in our subjects. I have recently taught graduate writing workshops on such themes as "The Body" and "Crisis," but when I was given the opportunity recently to teach an undergraduate writing class on Personal and Exploratory Writing, I decided to choose a focus that would bring me—and my students—back to one of the writers who has long been of central interest to me: Henry David Thoreau.

2 One of the courses I have routinely taught during the past six years is Environmental Writing, an undergraduate class that I offer as part of the university's Semester in the Wild Program, a unique undergraduate opportunity that sends a small group of students to study five courses (Ecology, Environmental History, Environmental Writing, Outdoor Leadership and Wilderness Survival, and Wilderness Management and Policy) at a remote research station located in the middle of the largest wilderness area (the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness) in the United States south of Alaska. In "Teaching with Wolves," a recent article about the Semester in the Wild Program, I explained that my goal in the Environmental Writing class is to help the students "synthesize their experience in the wilderness with the content of the various classes" and "to think ahead to their professional lives and their lives as engaged citizens, for which critical thinking and communication skills are so important" (325). A foundational text for the Environmental Writing class is a selection from Thoreau's personal journal, specifically the entries he made October 1-20, 1853, which I collected in the 1993 writing textbook Being in the World: An Environmental Reader for Writers . I ask the students in the Semester in the Wild Program to deeply immerse themselves in Thoreau's precise and colorful descriptions of the physical world that is immediately present to him and, in turn, to engage with their immediate encounters with the world in their wilderness location. Thoreau's entries read like this:

Oct. 4. The maples are reddening, and birches yellowing. The mouse-ear in the shade in the middle of the day, so hoary, looks as if the frost still lay on it. Well it wears the frost. Bumblebees are on the Aster undulates , and gnats are dancing in the air. Oct. 5. The howling of the wind about the house just before a storm to-night sounds extremely like a loon on the pond. How fit! Oct. 6 and 7. Windy. Elms bare. (372)

3 In thinking ahead to my class on Personal and Exploratory Writing, which would be offered on the main campus of the University of Idaho in the fall semester of 2018, I wanted to find a topic that would instill in my students the Thoreauvian spirit of visceral engagement with the world, engagement on the physical, emotional, and philosophical levels, while still allowing my students to remain in the city and live their regular lives as students. It occurred to me that part of what makes Thoreau's journal, which he maintained almost daily from 1837 (when he was twenty years old) to 1861 (just a year before his death), such a rich and elegant work is his sense of being a traveler, even when not traveling geographically.

Traveling a Good Deal in Moscow

I have traveled a good deal in Concord…. --Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854; 4)

4 For Thoreau, one did not need to travel a substantial physical distance in order to be a traveler, in order to bring a traveler's frame of mind to daily experience. His most famous book, Walden , is well known as an account of the author's ideas and daily experiments in simple living during the two years, two months, and two days (July 4, 1845, to September 6, 1847) he spent inhabiting a simple wooden house that he built on the shore of Walden Pond, a small lake to the west of Boston, Massachusetts. Walden Pond is not a remote location—it is not out in the wilderness. It is on the edge of a small village, much like Moscow, Idaho. The concept of "traveling a good deal in Concord" is a kind of philosophical and psychological riddle. What does it mean to travel extensively in such a small place? The answer to this question is meaningful not only to teachers hoping to design writing classes in the spirit of Thoreau but to all who are interested in travel as an experience and in the literary genre of travel writing.

5 Much of Walden is an exercise in deftly establishing a playful and intellectually challenging system of synonyms, an array of words—"economy," "deliberateness," "simplicity," "dawn," "awakening," "higher laws," etc.—that all add up to powerful probing of what it means to live a mindful and attentive life in the world. "Travel" serves as a key, if subtle, metaphor for the mindful life—it is a metaphor and also, in a sense, a clue: if we can achieve the traveler's perspective without going far afield, then we might accomplish a kind of enlightenment. Thoreau's interest in mindfulness becomes clear in chapter two of Walden , "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For," in which he writes, "Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?" The latter question implies the author's feeling that he is himself merely evolving as an awakened individual, not yet fully awake, or mindful, in his efforts to live "a poetic or divine life" (90). Thoreau proceeds to assert that "We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn…. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor" (90). Just what this endeavor might be is not immediately spelled out in the text, but the author does quickly point out the value of focusing on only a few activities or ideas at a time, so as not to let our lives be "frittered away by detail." He writes: "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; … and keep your accounts on your thumb nail" (91). The strong emphasis in the crucial second chapter of Walden is on the importance of waking up and living deliberately through a conscious effort to engage in particular activities that support such awakening. It occurs to me that "travel," or simply making one's way through town with the mindset of a traveler, could be one of these activities.

6 It is in the final chapter of the book, titled "Conclusion," that Thoreau makes clear the relationship between travel and living an attentive life. He begins the chapter by cataloguing the various physical locales throughout North America or around the world to which one might travel—Canada, Ohio, Colorado, and even Tierra del Fuego. But Thoreau states: "Our voyaging is only great-circle sailing, and the doctors prescribe for diseases of the skin merely. One hastens to Southern Africa to chase the giraffe; but surely that is not the game he would be after." What comes next is brief quotation from the seventeenth-century English poet William Habbington (but presented anonymously in Thoreau's text), which might be one of the most significant passages in the entire book:

Direct your eye sight inward, and you'll find A thousand regions in your mind Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be Expert in home-cosmography. (320)

7 This admonition to travel the mysterious territory of one's own mind and master the strange cosmos of the self is actually a challenge to the reader—and probably to the author himself—to focus on self-reflection and small-scale, local movement as if such activities were akin to exploration on a grand, planetary scale. What is really at issue here is not the physical distance of one's journey, but the mental flexibility of one's approach to the world, one's ability to look at the world with a fresh, estranged point of view. Soon after his discussion of the virtues of interior travel, Thoreau explains why he left his simple home at Walden Pond after a few years of experimental living there, writing, "It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves" (323). In other words, no matter what we're doing in life, we can fall into a "beaten track" if we're not careful, thus failing to stay "awake."

8 As I thought about my writing class at the University of Idaho, I wondered how I might design a series of readings and writing exercises for university students that would somehow emulate the Thoreauvian objective of achieving ultra-mindfulness in a local environment. One of the greatest challenges in designing such a class is the fact that it took Thoreau himself many years to develop an attentiveness to his environment and his own emotional rhythms and an efficiency of expression that would enable him to describe such travel-without-travel, and I would have only sixteen weeks to achieve this with my own students. The first task, I decided, was to invite my students into the essential philosophical stance of the class, and I did this by asking my students to read the opening chapter of Walden ("Economy") in which he talks about traveling "a good deal" in his small New England village as well as the second chapter and the conclusion, which reveal the author's enthusiasm (some might even say obsession ) for trying to achieve an awakened condition and which, in the end, suggest that waking up to the meaning of one's life in the world might be best accomplished by attempting the paradoxical feat of becoming "expert in home-cosmography." As I stated it among the objectives for my course titled 36 Views of Moscow Mountain: Or, Traveling a Good Deal—with Open Minds and Notebooks—in a Small Place , one of our goals together (along with practicing nonfiction writing skills and learning about the genre of travel writing) would be to "Cultivate a ‘Thoreauvian' way of appreciating the subtleties of the ordinary world."

Windy. Elms Bare.

9 For me, the elegance and heightened sensitivity of Thoreau's engagement with place is most movingly exemplified in his journal, especially in the 1850s after he's mastered the art of observation and nuanced, efficient description of specific natural phenomena and environmental conditions. His early entries in the journal are abstract mini-essays on such topics as truth, beauty, and "The Poet," but over time the journal notations become so immersed in the direct experience of the more-than-human world, in daily sensory experiences, that the pronoun "I" even drops out of many of these records. Lawrence Buell aptly describes this Thoreauvian mode of expression as "self-relinquishment" (156) in his 1995 book The Environmental Imagination , suggesting such writing "question[s] the authority of the superintending consciousness. As such, it opens up the prospect of a thoroughgoing perceptual breakthrough, suggesting the possibility of a more ecocentric state of being than most of us have dreamed of" (144-45). By the time Thoreau wrote "Windy. Elms bare" (372) as his single entry for October 6 and 7, 1853, he had entered what we might call an "ecocentric zone of consciousness" in his work, attaining the ability to channel his complex perceptions of season change (including meteorology and botany and even his own emotional state) into brief, evocative prose.

10 I certainly do not expect my students to be able to do such writing after only a brief introduction to the course and to Thoreau's own methods of journal writing, but after laying the foundation of the Thoreauvian philosophy of nearby travel and explaining to my students what I call the "building blocks of the personal essay" (description, narration, and exposition), I ask them to engage in a preliminary journal-writing exercise that involves preparing five journal entries, each "a paragraph or two in length," that offer detailed physical descriptions of ordinary phenomena from their lives (plants, birds, buildings, street signs, people, food, etc.), emphasizing shape, color, movement or change, shadow, and sometimes sound, smell, taste, and/or touch. The goal of the journal entries, I tell the students, is to begin to get them thinking about close observation, vivid descriptive language, and the potential to give their later essays in the class an effective texture by balancing more abstract information and ideas with evocative descriptive passages and storytelling.

11 I am currently teaching this class, and I am writing this article in early September, as we are entering the fourth week of the semester. The students have just completed the journal-writing exercise and are now preparing to write the first of five brief essays on different aspects of Moscow that will eventually be braided together, as discrete sections of the longer piece, into a full-scale literary essay about Moscow, Idaho, from the perspective of a traveler. For the journal exercise, my students wrote some rather remarkable descriptive statements, which I think bodes well for their upcoming work. One student, Elizabeth Isakson, wrote stunning journal descriptions of a cup of coffee, her own feet, a lemon, a basil leaf, and a patch of grass. For instance, she wrote:

Steaming hot liquid poured into a mug. No cream, just black. Yet it appears the same brown as excretion. The texture tells another story with meniscus that fades from clear to gold and again brown. The smell is intoxicating for those who are addicted. Sweetness fills the nostrils; bitterness rushes over the tongue. The contrast somehow complements itself. Earthy undertones flower up, yet this beverage is much more satisfying than dirt. When the mug runs dry, specks of dark grounds remain swimming in the sunken meniscus. Steam no longer rises because energy has found a new home.

12 For the grassy lawn, she wrote:

Calico with shades of green, the grass is yellowing. Once vibrant, it's now speckled with straw. Sticking out are tall, seeding dandelions. Still some dips in the ground have maintained thick, soft patches of green. The light dances along falling down from the trees above, creating a stained-glass appearance made from various green shades. The individual blades are stiff enough to stand erect, but they will yield to even slight forces of wind or pressure. Made from several long strands seemingly fused together, some blades fray at the end, appearing brittle. But they do not simply break off; they hold fast to the blade to which they belong.

13 The point of this journal writing is for the students to look closely enough at ordinary reality to feel estranged from it, as if they have never before encountered (or attempted to describe) a cup of coffee or a field of grass—or a lemon or a basil leaf or their own body. Thus, the Thoreauvian objective of practicing home-cosmography begins to take shape. The familiar becomes exotic, note-worthy, and strangely beautiful, just as it often does for the geographical travel writer, whose adventures occur far away from where she or he normally lives. Travel, in a sense, is an antidote to complacency, to over-familiarity. But the premise of my class in Thoreauvian travel writing is that a slight shift of perspective can overcome the complacency we might naturally feel in our home surroundings. To accomplish this we need a certain degree of disorientation. This is the next challenge for our class.

The Blessing of Being Lost

14 Most of us take great pains to "get oriented" and "know where we're going," whether this is while running our daily errands or when thinking about the essential trajectories of our lives. We're often instructed by anxious parents to develop a sense of purpose and a sense of direction, if only for the sake of basic safety. But the traveler operates according to a somewhat different set of priorities, perhaps, elevating adventure and insight above basic comfort and security, at least to some degree. This certainly seems to be the case for the Thoreauvian traveler, or for Thoreau himself. In Walden , he writes:

…not until we are completely lost, or turned round,--for a man needs only be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost,--do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature. Every man has to learn the points of compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations. (171)

15 I could explicate this passage at length, but that's not really my purpose here. I read this as a celebration of salutary disorientation, of the potential to be lost in such a way as to deepen one's ability to pay attention to oneself and one's surroundings, natural and otherwise. If travel is to a great degree an experience uniquely capable of triggering attentiveness to our own physical and psychological condition, to other cultures and the minds and needs of other people, and to a million small details of our environment that we might take for granted at home but that accrue special significance when we're away, I would argue that much of this attentiveness is owed to the sense of being lost, even the fear of being lost, that often happens when we leave our normal habitat.

16 So in my class I try to help my students "get lost" in a positive way. Here in Moscow, the major local landmark is a place called Moscow Mountain, a forested ridge of land just north of town, running approximately twenty kilometers to the east of the city. Moscow "Mountain" does not really have a single, distinctive peak like a typical mountain—it is, as I say, more of a ridge than a pinnacle. When I began contemplating this class on Thoreauvian travel writing, the central concepts I had in mind were Thoreau's notion of traveling a good deal in Concord and also the idea of looking at a specific place from many different angles. The latter idea is not only Thoreauvian, but perhaps well captured in the eighteen-century Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai's series of woodblock prints known as 36 Views of Mt. Fuji , which offers an array of different angles on the mountain itself and on other landscape features (lakes, the sea, forests, clouds, trees, wind) and human behavior which is represented in many of the prints, often with Mt. Fuji in the distant background or off to the side. In fact, I imagine Hokusai's approach to representing Mt. Fuji as so important to the concept of this travel writing class that I call the class "36 Views of Moscow Mountain," symbolizing the multiple approaches I'll be asking my students to take in contemplating and describing not only Moscow Mountain itself, but the culture and landscape and the essential experience of Moscow the town. The idea of using Hokusai's series of prints as a focal point of this class came to me, in part, from reading American studies scholar Cathy Davidson's 36 Views of Mount Fuji: On Finding Myself in Japan , a memoir that offers sixteen short essays about different facets of her life as a visiting professor in that island nation.

17 The first of five brief essays my students will prepare for the class is what I'm calling a "Moscow Mountain descriptive essay," building upon the small descriptive journal entries they've written recently. In this case, though, I am asking the students to describe the shapes and colors of the Moscow Mountain ridge, while also telling a brief story or two about their observations of the mountain, either by visiting the mountain itself to take a walk or a bike ride or by explaining how they glimpse portions of the darkly forested ridge in the distance while walking around the University of Idaho campus or doing things in town. In preparation for the Moscow Mountain essays, we read several essays or book chapters that emphasize "organizing principles" in writing, often the use of particular landscape features, such as trees or mountains, as a literary focal point. For instance, in David Gessner's "Soaring with Castro," from his 2007 book Soaring with Fidel: An Osprey Odyssey from Cape Cod to Cuba and Beyond , he not only refers to La Gran Piedra (a small mountain in southeastern Cuba) as a narrative focal point, but to the osprey, or fish eagle, itself and its migratory journey as an organizing principle for his literary project (203). Likewise, in his essay "I Climb a Tree and Become Dissatisfied with My Lot," Chicago author Leonard Dubkin writes about his decision, as a newly fired journalist, to climb up a tree in Chicago's Lincoln Park to observe and listen to the birds that gather in the green branches in the evening, despite the fact that most adults would consider this a strange and inappropriate activity. We also looked at several of Hokusai's woodblock prints and analyzed these together in class, trying to determine how the mountain served as an organizing principle for each print or whether there were other key features of the prints—clouds, ocean waves, hats and pieces of paper floating in the wind, humans bent over in labor—that dominate the images, with Fuji looking on in the distance.

18 I asked my students to think of Hokusai's representations of Mt. Fuji as aesthetic models, or metaphors, for what they might try to do in their brief (2-3 pages) literary essays about Moscow Mountain. What I soon discovered was that many of my students, even students who have spent their entire lives in Moscow, either were not aware of Moscow Mountain at all or had never actually set foot on the mountain. So we spent half an hour during one class session, walking to a vantage point on the university campus, where I could point out where the mountain is and we could discuss how one might begin to write about such a landscape feature in a literary essay. Although I had thought of the essay describing the mountain as a way of encouraging the students to think about a familiar landscape as an orienting device, I quickly learned that this will be a rather challenging exercise for many of the students, as it will force them to think about an object or a place that is easily visible during their ordinary lives, but that they typically ignore. Paying attention to the mountain, the ridge, will compel them to reorient themselves in this city and think about a background landscape feature that they've been taking for granted until now. I think of this as an act of disorientation or being lost—a process of rethinking their own presence in this town that has a nearby mountain that most of them seldom think about. I believe Thoreau would consider this a good, healthy experience, a way of being present anew in a familiar place.

36 Views—Or, When You Invert Your Head

19 Another key aspect of Hokusai's visual project and Thoreau's literary project is the idea of changing perspective. One can view Mt. Fuji from 36 different points of views, or from thousands of different perspectives, and it is never quite the same place—every perspective is original, fresh, mind-expanding. The impulse to shift perspective in pursuit of mindfulness is also ever-present in Thoreau's work, particularly in his personal journal and in Walden . This idea is particularly evident, to me, in the chapter of Walden titled "The Ponds," where he writes:

Standing on the smooth sandy beach at the east end of the pond, in a calm September afternoon, when a slight haze makes the opposite shore line indistinct, I have seen whence came the expression, "the glassy surface of a lake." When you invert your head, it looks like a thread of finest gossamer stretched across the valley, and gleaming against the distinct pine woods, separating one stratum of the atmosphere from another. (186)

20 Elsewhere in the chapter, Thoreau describes the view of the pond from the top of nearby hills and the shapes and colors of pebbles in the water when viewed from close up. He chances physical perspective again and again throughout the chapter, but it is in the act of looking upside down, actually suggesting that one might invert one's head, that he most vividly conveys the idea of looking at the world in different ways in order to be lost and awakened, just as the traveler to a distant land might feel lost and invigorated by such exposure to an unknown place.

21 After asking students to write their first essay about Moscow Mountain, I give them four additional short essays to write, each two to four pages long. We read short examples of place-based essays, some of them explicitly related to travel, and then the students work on their own essays on similar topics. The second short essay is about food—I call this the "Moscow Meal" essay. We read the final chapter of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma (2006), "The Perfect Meal," and Anthony Bourdain's chapter "Where Cooks Come From" in the book A Cook's Tour (2001) are two of the works we study in preparation for the food essay. The three remaining short essays including a "Moscow People" essay (exploring local characters are important facets of the place), a more philosophical essay about "the concept of Moscow," and a final "Moscow Encounter" essay that tells the story of a dramatic moment of interaction with a person, an animal, a memorable thing to eat or drink, a sunset, or something else. Along the way, we read the work of Wendell Berry, Joan Didion, Barbara Kingsolver, Kim Stafford, Paul Theroux, and other authors. Before each small essay is due, we spend a class session holding small-group workshops, allowing the students to discuss their essays-in-progress with each other and share portions of their manuscripts. The idea is that they will learn about writing even by talking with each other about their essays. In addition to writing about Moscow from various angles, they will learn about additional points of view by considering the angles of insight developed by their fellow students. All of this is the writerly equivalent of "inverting [their] heads."

Beneath the Smooth Skin of Place

22 Aside from Thoreau's writing and Hokusai's images, perhaps the most important writer to provide inspiration for this class is Indiana-based essayist Scott Russell Sanders. Shortly after introducing the students to Thoreau's key ideas in Walden and to the richness of his descriptive writing in the journal, I ask them to read his essay "Buckeye," which first appeared in Sanders's Writing from the Center (1995). "Buckeye" demonstrates the elegant braiding together of descriptive, narrative, and expository/reflective prose, and it also offers a strong argument about the importance of creating literature and art about place—what he refers to as "shared lore" (5)—as a way of articulating the meaning of a place and potentially saving places that would otherwise be exploited for resources, flooded behind dams, or otherwise neglected or damaged. The essay uses many of the essential literary devices, ranging from dialogue to narrative scenes, that I hope my students will practice in their own essays, while also offering a vivid argument in support of the kind of place-based writing the students are working on.

23 Another vital aspect of our work together in this class is the effort to capture the wonderful idiosyncrasies of this place, akin to the idiosyncrasies of any place that we examine closely enough to reveal its unique personality. Sanders's essay "Beneath the Smooth Skin of America," which we study together in Week 9 of the course, addresses this topic poignantly. The author challenges readers to learn the "durable realities" of the places where they live, the details of "watershed, biome, habitat, food-chain, climate, topography, ecosystem and the areas defined by these natural features they call bioregions" (17). "The earth," he writes, "needs fewer tourists and more inhabitants" (16). By Week 9 of the semester, the students have written about Moscow Mountain, about local food, and about local characters, and they are ready at this point to reflect on some of the more philosophical dimensions of living in a small academic village surrounded by farmland and beyond that surrounded by the Cascade mountain range to the West and the Rockies to the East. "We need a richer vocabulary of place" (18), urges Sanders. By this point in the semester, by reading various examples of place-based writing and by practicing their own powers of observation and expression, my students will, I hope, have developed a somewhat richer vocabulary to describe their own experiences in this specific place, a place they've been trying to explore with "open minds and notebooks." Sanders argues that

if we pay attention, we begin to notice patterns in the local landscape. Perceiving those patterns, acquiring names and theories and stories for them, we cease to be tourists and become inhabitants. The bioregional consciousness I am talking about means bearing your place in mind, keeping track of its condition and needs, committing yourself to its care. (18)

24 Many of my students will spend only four or five years in Moscow, long enough to earn a degree before moving back to their hometowns or journeying out into the world in pursuit of jobs or further education. Moscow will be a waystation for some of these student writers, not a permanent home. Yet I am hoping that this semester-long experiment in Thoreauvian attentiveness and place-based writing will infect these young people with both the bioregional consciousness Sanders describes and a broader fascination with place, including the cultural (yes, the human ) dimensions of this and any other place. I feel such a mindfulness will enrich the lives of my students, whether they remain here or move to any other location on the planet or many such locations in succession.

25 Toward the end of "Beneath the Smooth Skin of America," Sanders tells the story of encountering a father with two young daughters near a city park in Bloomington, Indiana, where he lives. Sanders is "grazing" on wild mulberries from a neighborhood tree, and the girls are keen to join him in savoring the local fruit. But their father pulls them away, stating, "Thank you very much, but we never eat anything that grows wild. Never ever." To this Sanders responds: "If you hold by that rule, you will not get sick from eating poison berries, but neither will you be nourished from eating sweet ones. Why not learn to distinguish one from the other? Why feed belly and mind only from packages?" (19-20). By looking at Moscow Mountain—and at Moscow, Idaho, more broadly—from numerous points of view, my students, I hope, will nourish their own bellies and minds with the wild fruit and ideas of this place. I say this while chewing a tart, juicy, and, yes, slightly sweet plum that I pulled from a feral tree in my own Moscow neighborhood yesterday, an emblem of engagement, of being here.

Bibliography

BUELL, Lawrence, The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture , Harvard University Press, 1995.

DAVIDSON, Cathy, 36 Views of Mount Fuji: On Finding Myself in Japan , Duke University Press, 2006.

DUBKIN, Leonard, "I Climb a Tree and Become Dissatisfied with My Lot." Enchanted Streets: The Unlikely Adventures of an Urban Nature Lover , Little, Brown and Company, 1947, 34-42.

GESSNER, David, Soaring with Fidel: An Osprey Odyssey from Cape Cod to Cuba and Beyond , Beacon, 2007.

ISAKSON, Elizabeth, "Journals." Assignment for 36 Views of Moscow Mountain (English 208), University of Idaho, Fall 2018.

SANDERS, Scott Russell, "Buckeye" and "Beneath the Smooth Skin of America." Writing from the Center , Indiana University Press, 1995, pp. 1-8, 9-21.

SLOVIC, Scott, "Teaching with Wolves", Western American Literature 52.3 (Fall 2017): 323-31.

THOREAU, Henry David, "October 1-20, 1853", Being in the World: An Environmental Reader for Writers , edited by Scott H. Slovic and Terrell F. Dixon, Macmillan, 1993, 371-75.

THOREAU, Henry David, Walden . 1854. Princeton University Press, 1971.

Bibliographical reference

Scott Slovic , “ 36 Views of Moscow Mountain: Teaching Travel Writing and Mindfulness in the Tradition of Hokusai and Thoreau ” ,  Caliban , 59 | 2018, 41-54.

Electronic reference

Scott Slovic , “ 36 Views of Moscow Mountain: Teaching Travel Writing and Mindfulness in the Tradition of Hokusai and Thoreau ” ,  Caliban [Online], 59 | 2018, Online since 01 June 2018 , connection on 02 April 2024 . URL : http://journals.openedition.org/caliban/3688; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/caliban.3688

About the author

Scott slovic.

University of Idaho Scott Slovic is University Distinguished Professor of Environmental Humanities at the University of Idaho, USA. The author and editor of many books and articles, he edited the journal ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment from 1995 to 2020. His latest coedited book is The Routledge Handbook of Ecocriticism and Environmental Communication  (2019).

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