Essential and engaging essays about the joys and challenges of creative writing and teaching creative writing by a host of Canada’s leading writers.
Writing Creative Writing is filled with thoughtful and entertaining essays on the joys and challenges of creative writing, the complexities of the creative writing classroom, the place of writing programs in the twenty-first century, and exciting strategies and exercises for writing and teaching different genres. Written by a host of Canada’s leading writers, including Christian Bök, Catherine Bush, Suzette Mayr, Yvette Nolan, Judith Thompson, and thom vernon, this book is the first of its kind and destined to be a milestone for every creative writing student, teacher, aspirant, and professional.
Rishma Dunlop was an award-winning poet, playwright, essayist, and translator. She was a Professor of Creative Writing and Education at York University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Her publications include Lover Through Departure, Metropolis, and White Ink: Poems on Mothers and Motherhood.
Daniel Scott Tysdal is an award-winning writer and professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough. He is the author of Fauxccasional Poems, Predicting the Next Big Advertising Breakthrough Using a Potentially Dangerous Method, and a poetry textbook, The Writing Moment: A Practical Guide to Creating Poems. Daniel lives in Toronto.
Priscila Uppal is an internationally acclaimed poet, prose writer, and playwright. A York University professor and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, she is the author of Ontological Necessities and Cover Before Striking. Her memoir, Projection: Encounters with My Runaway Mother, was shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Prize and a Governor General’s Award. Priscila lives in Toronto.
Introduction
Rishma Dunlop, Daniel Scott Tysdal, and Priscila Uppal: Writing Creative Writing: A Student, A Teacher, and a Genre Walk Into a Classroom and into Endless Possibilities
PART I: Writing Creative Writing Pedagogy
A: By Genre(s)
Wanda Campbell: Raid, Warp, Push: The Pedagogy of Poetic Form
Daniel Scott Tysdal: Beginning at the Edge: Teaching Poetry Through Comic Book Panels and Internet Comment Threads
Mary Schendlinger: The Comics Connection
Peggy Thompson:It’s All About Structure: The Craft of Screenwriting
Nicole Markotic and Suzette Mayr: He Put His What, WHERE? Or: how to teach creative writing students to write plausible sex scenes, prevent them from winning the Bad Sex Award, while not suffering from fear, alarm, dread, or embarrassment in the process
B: By Approach
Rishma Dunlop: Creative Writing as Hybrid Pedagogy
Louis Cabri: “I’m Stone in Love With You”: Stylistics in the Creative Writing Classroom
Jennifer Duncan: Textual Culture: A Postmodern Approach to Creative Writing Pedagogy
Priscila Uppal: The Joys of Adaptation: Pedagogy and Practice
C: By Classroom
Gülyase Koçak: From Memorization to Improvisation: The Challenges of Teaching Creative Writing to Students Coming from a Culture of Rote Learning
Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer: How to Teach (Online)
Kathy Mac: Small Group Workshops in Large Creative Writing Classes: Because You Can’t Be Everywhere at Once
PART II: Re-Writing the Creative Writing Tradition
David Goldstein: Poetic Form as Experimental Procedure: The View from Renaissance England
Andrea Thompson: Spoken Word: A Gesture Toward Possibility
Christian Bök: Two Dots Over a Vowel
Yvette Nolan: Bastards, Pirates, and Halfbreeds: Playwriting in Canada
PART III: Writing the Creative Writing Professor
Aritha van Herk: Teaching, or Not Teaching Creative Writing
Judith Thompson: Inciting a Riot: Digging Down into a Play
Lorri Neilsen Glenn: Writes of Passage: Women Writing
Stephanie Bolster: One of These Things is Not Like the Others: The Writer in the English Department
PART IV: Writing Creative Writing Programs
Darryl Whetter: Can’tLit: What Canadian English Departments Could (but Won’t) Learn from the Creative Writing Programs They Host
Lori A. May: The Low-Residency MFA: Coast to Coast and Across the Border
Catherine Bush: Engaged Practice: Coordinating and Creating a Community within a Creative Writing MFA Program
thom vernon: Selling It: Creative Writing and the Public Good
Acknowledgements
Contributor Bios
Editor Bios
