Grounded in progressive pedagogy, this essential resource leads creative writing instructors through each step of designing, teaching, and trouble-shooting a course. A Practical Guide to Teaching Creative Writing offers applied strategies and innovative insights equally valuable for novice and seasoned instructors. Tate and Vigna share tried and tested approaches to online, in-person, and hybrid classes from 6 to 300+ students, attentive to the specific opportunities and challenges of genres from fiction to comics, poetry to TV, creative nonfiction to lyric writing. This lively and accessible book includes timely and inclusive recommendations, enlightening interviews with a diverse lineup of writers and teachers, hands-on examples, and actionable interventions to help instructors create rich and meaningful courses that challenge and support students.
A Practical Guide to Teaching Creative Writing provides:
- Interviews with guest authors and instructors who share classroom strategies, pedagogical provocations, and proven practices—including Felicia Rose Chavez on inclusive course design, Liz Lerman on developing Critical Response Process, Nalo Hopkinson on research and speculative fiction, and many more.
- Approaches to active learning in undergraduate and graduate classrooms ranging in size and institutional context.
- Guidance on creating effective and meaningful assignments in writing, reading, research, and revision that scaffold learning and build capacity.
- Best practices for creating community and navigating the ever-evolving needs of students.
- Exploration of thorny topics like workshop conflict, assessment, and GenAI.
- Chapters devoted to supporting thesis and capstone work and navigating classroom challenges.
With a strong ethos of openness, mutual discovery, and exchange of ideas and expertise, A Practical Guide to Teaching Creative Writing invites instructors to experiment with new ways of thinking, creating, writing, and teaching memorable courses.
Table of Contents:
Interviews
Sample Assignments
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: The Narrative of Your Course
Chapter 2: Assignment Design
Chapter 3: Structured Experiments and Generative Writing
Chapter 4: In-class Activities and Active Learning
Chapter 5: Craft, Culture, Context
Chapter 6: Working with Models and Mentor Texts
Chapter 7: Workshop Approaches and Alternatives
Chapter 8: Revision and Iterative Practice
Chapter 9: Inquiry and Research
Chapter 10: Assessment and Grading
Chapter 11: Supporting Thesis and Capstone Work
Chapter 12: Navigating Classroom Challenges
Works Cited
Index
About the Author :
Bronwen Tate is Assistant Professor of Teaching and Undergraduate Chair in School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia, Canada, where she teaches poetry, creative nonfiction, and creative writing pedagogy. She is the author of the poetry collection The Silk the Moths Ignore, and her essays have appeared in venues including Contemporary Literature and Journal of Modern Literature. Bronwen has taught courses in literature, composition, interdisciplinary critical thinking, and creative writing across genres at institutions ranging from community colleges and a scrappy liberal arts college to large private and public R1 universities.
John Vigna is Associate Professor of Teaching and Teaching & Learning Chair in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia Creative Writing program, Canada, where he teaches fiction. His focus is on pedagogical and curricular strategies for 5000 Creative Writing students across the MFA, BFA Major, and Undergrad Minor programs, including online edX innovations. His first book of fiction, Bull Head, was received with critical acclaim in Canada and the US in 2012 and was also published in France in 2017. It was selected by Quill & Quire as an editor’s pick of the year and was a finalist for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. John was named one of 10 writers to watch by CBC Books. His novel, No Man’s Land, was published in Fall 2021.
Review :
This is a useful and inspiring book. The authors, Bronwen Tate and John Vigna, draw on their years of experience researching and teaching creative writing to discuss approaches to designing and teaching creative writing courses. These two authors are not afraid to expose the complexities involved with teaching creative writing and throughout the book question who we are as teachers and the purpose of teaching creative writing and provide us with tools to succeed. This book will be an invaluable companion for teachers and researchers of creative writing.
This is the book that Creative Writing instructors have been waiting for—in touch with a transformed world, a new generation of creators, the shifting contexts of craft and readership. A Practical Guide to Teaching Creative Writing is also a comprehensive guide. It outmaneuvers entrenched institutional expectations by offering new approaches to everything from designing a syllabus to developing research skills to grading to facilitating workshops. There are options galore, regardless of an instructor’s genre. Without hysteria, Bronwen Tate and John Vigna future-proof the field against AI, reminding us why this particular discipline thrives on human interaction, one mind in contact with another. This book is a timely defence of human decision-making, art-making, and cultural transmission.
