Creative Writing: A Workbook with Readings

by Jane Yeh (Editor), Sally O'Reilly (Editor)

Creative A Workbook with Readings provides a complete creative writing from ways to jump-start your writing and inspire your creativity, right through to presenting your work to agents and publishers.

It covers the genres of fiction, poetry and life writing (including autobiography, biography and travel writing), combining discussions of technique with readings and exercises to guide you step by step towards becoming more adept at creative writing.

The second edition has been updated and in large part newly written, with readings by a diverse group of contemporary authors displaying a variety of styles and approaches. Each chapter also features an array of inspiring writing exercises, enabling you to experiment with different methods and discover your strengths. Above all, Creative A Workbook with Readings will help you to develop your abilities while nurturing your individual voice as a writer.

647 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 10, 2022

About the author

Jane Yeh is a poet and journalist. Her first collection of poems, Marabou (Carcanet, 2005), was shortlisted for the Whitbread, Forward, and Aldeburgh poetry prizes. Her next collection, The Ninjas, was published by Carcanet in 2012. She was a judge for the 2013 National Poetry Competition and was named a Next Generation poet by the Poetry Book Society in 2014. Her poems have appeared in The Guardian, The Independent on Sunday, The Nation (US), Poetry Review, and other journals, as well as in anthologies including The Best British Poetry 2012 and The Forward Book of Poetry 2013 and 2006.

Jane was educated at Harvard University and holds master’s degrees in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa and Manchester Metropolitan University. Before coming to the Open University, she was a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Kingston and Oxford Brookes universities, and was Co-Director of the MA in Creative Writing Programme at the latter. As a journalist, she writes on books, theatre, fashion, and sport for such publications as The Times Literary Supplement, Time Out, and The Village Voice (US).

Reviews

[Arnau Bertran Manyé]

It has been many nights I read over this workbook and ceremoniously went through each exercise as the good (flawless) student that I am. And what can I say? That I feel proud about my consistency and my dedication? Perhaps. That I feel prepared to embark on this journey? Not at all - I still don’t know if I am making a terrible mistake, but this workbook has been a loyal companion in helping me discover what I want to focus on and it is an excellent resource to have when you want to further develop your creative writing skills.

Thank you Sally O’Reilly and Jane Yeh - I hope to see you/hear from you in the upcoming weeks!

Additionally, I noted the following authors to expand my readings based on the fantastic excerpts found in this book:

Olive Senior, Nick Hornby, Gloria Anzaldúa (« Borderlands: The new mestiza (1987) »), Kapka Kassabova (also for poetry), Xiaolu Guo, Tessa McWat, Jorge Semprún, and Lorna Sage.

[Bryan Olin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the book, but read only those parts associated with the course I was taking. The Life writing section looks interesting and may revisit later

The strength was in the good examples and the assignments to get you to try the techniques. As one with 30 yrs of business and regulatory writing, this was a big change, but a fun challenge. Ironically, I liked the poetry the best as it tends to be more terse and compact like my accustomed writing style.

Beware that it is highly focused on contemporary English (UK) writers. Not bad for me, but perhaps may be less identifiable for others.

[CJ Payling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great companion text to the Open University module A215: Creative Writing.