Teaching Creative Writing to Undergraduates: A Practical Guide and Sourcebook

by Stephanie Vanderslice, Kelly Ritter, Allison D. Smith (Editor)

Teaching Creative Writing to A Practical Sourcebook is written for the graduate student or novice instructor who is about to teach his or her first creative writing class. The text not only answers the obvious questions about how to plan a class, how to comment on student work, how to evaluate creative products, but also the less obvious questions about the instructor s role and their identity in the classroom, their parameters as a teacher, and their responsibilities to student writers. The text A course plan including a course syllabus and sequence of assignments, A grading apparatus, A set of scenarios about problem-solving, An extensive bibliography of further resources, An overview of the field of creative writing, Questions for further thought

153 pages, Paperback

First published August 10, 2011

About the author

A Huffington Post writing life blogger (The Geek's Guide to the Writing Life) and university creative writing teacher, I write fiction and creative nonfiction (memoir) and have published many books and essays on creative writing in higher education. Represented by Anne Bohner at Pen and Ink Literary, my fictional territory remains the German and Irish neighborhoods of Queens, NY in the last century, where I grew up.

Reviews

[Echo · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gives a good overview of teaching creative writing, but it fails to consider the history and context of creative writing as a field. This book fails to consider the implicit biases in how creative writing classrooms are currently structured. I also found the chapter on "problem students" to be vaguely horrifying. Firstly, there is no consideration of metacommunication, of directly addressing how we will behave as a classroom community (because unless you explicitly say how students should behave, you cannot expect them to behave in any particular way.) Secondly, the majority of the chapter focused on "the mentally ill student" and was terribly ableist (I could write an entire essay on this but I will spare y'all.) Anyway, expectations of student behavior are often rooted in ableism, classism, racism, and xenophobia. Read some gosh darn bell hooks why don't you??

tl;dr useful when thinking about how one will structure the material of creative writing, but do NOT use as a guide to pedagogy. I read this book in a class alongside bell hooks' "Teaching to Transgress" and Felicia Rose Chavez's "The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop" and between the three of them I think you can get a diverse yet balanced pedagogy with practical information on how to structure the creative classroom.

[Rudolph · Rating 5 out of 5]

A useful and extensive guide for first-time teachers and grad students, who are learning pedagogical techniques as a part of an MFA program. A complete run down from experienced professionals in the layout of creative writing courses, dealing with course material necessary for enriching student experiences in the discipline, how to conduct a writing workshop with easy and difficult students, and suggested reading material for beginners. There are also syllabus samples that could be modeled after while learning the ropes of teaching. There are a few points that are kind of stressful, considering the position of the role as instructor.

Dispel the myths of writing and erase the 'easy A' from the student vocabulary.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a rhetoric and composition professor, I have spent years looking for books that lead good discussion about the practical applications of teaching creative writing at the undergraduate level. This slim volume did not disappoint me, as the book contains chapters on successful workshopping techniques in the classroom, assessment of creative writing classes, and even sample assignments. A great bibliography is also included.