Teaching Creative Writing in Canada maps the landscape of Creative Writing programmes across Canada. Canada’s position, both culturally and physically, as a midpoint between the two major Anglophone influences on Creative Writing pedagogy—the UK and the USA—makes it a unique and relevant vantage for the study of contemporary Creative Writing pedagogy.
Showcasing writer-professors from Canada’s major Creative Writing programmes, the collection considers the climate-crisis, contemporary workshop scepticism, curriculum design, programme management, prize culture, grants and interdisciplinarity. Each chapter concludes with field-tested writing advice from many of Canada’s most influential professors of fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction and drama.
This authoritative volume offers an important national perspective on contemporary and timeless issues in Creative Writing pedagogy and their varied treatment in Canada. It will be of valuable to other creative teachers and practitioners, those with an interest in teaching and learning a creative art and anyone working on cultural and educational landscapes.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: On Teaching Creative Writing in Canada without Teaching “How to Make Love in a Canoe”
Part I Workshopping the (Canadian) Workshop
1. Can’tLit: (Anglophone) Canada’s Anomalous Disinterest in Creative Writing Doctoral Programs
2. The (Funding) Stories We Tell: Faculty Creative Writing as Nationally Funded University Research
3. Can the Workshop Be Saved? Notes from a Writing-School Dropout—and Former Department Chair
4. Origin Stories, Watersheds and Gendered Politics: On Launching a New Creative Writing MFA
5. Postcards from the Edge: On Launching Canada’s Most Recent MFA Creative Writing Program from a School of Journalism
6. Why, and How, Literary Prizes Matter
7. Supporting First-Time Workshop Leaders in Large Introductory Courses
Part II The Canadian CW Playground: Writing-as-Knowing (in Canada and beyond)
8. Poetry as Play: Teaching Poetry to Not-Yet-Poets
9. A Writer in Art School: Fostering Interdisciplinary Experiences in Postsecondary Art & Design Education
10. In Tranquillity: Writing through and beyond Ekphrasis
11. Listening Out and In
12. Generous Writing: Teaching the Avant-Garde
Part III Letters Home
13. MFA vs. NYC vs. MBA
14. From the Pool to the Page: What Coaching Swimming Taught Me about Teaching Creative Writing
15. The Climate Crisis in the Creative Writing Classroom
16. Shaggy Dog Queer Comedies, Handshake Deals and Speaking Back to Power: An Interview with Multi-Genre, LBGTIQA+ Writer Prof. Natalie Meisner
Index
About the Author :
Darryl Whetter is Professor of English Literature and Creative Writing at Université Sainte-Anne, Canada. He is the author of four books of fiction and three poetry collections, including the climate-crisis novel Our Sands (2020). He is also the editor of The Best Asian Short Stories 2022 (2023) and Teaching Creative Writing in Asia (2021).
