Dispatches from the Classroom: Graduate Students on Creative Writing Pedagogy

With emphasis on practical classroom application, this up-to-date and refreshingly honest collection of essays is a wonderful resource for teaching creative writing. "Dispatches from the Classroom" is a collection of pedagogical essays written by graduate students, with an emphasis on practical classroom application. Divided into four sections - "Laying the Ground Rules", "What is 'Appropriate' for the Workshop?", "Teaching 'Technique'", and "The Hybrid TA", it explores issues of daily concern to creative writing instructors from many viewpoints. Although these essays draw on recent theoretical scholarship, the emphasis remains on ways in which theory can be applied to course structure, student interaction, and other practical concerns. Also examined is the unusual blend of teaching assignments that Teaching Assistants face, addressing ways that the creative writer can apply her skills to composition instruction and even writing center tutoring. These essays have been selected from the work of current graduate students in creative writing, all of whom have very recent experience of dealing with these specific issues in the classroom. This anthology will not only provide Teaching Assistants with an introduction to current issues in creative writing pedagogy, but also with a much-needed teaching resource for their introductory courses.

Table of Contents:
Introduction; Part I- Laying the Ground Rules; Workshop, Revision, and Grading in the Creative Writing Syllabus; Preventing Tears in Workshop:; Teaching Students How to Give and Receive Criticism; Kristen Gottstein, Georgia State University; Eradicating Reviser's Block:; Bringing Revision to the Foreground; Ashley Cowger, University of Alaska Fairbanks; Confronting the Unavoidable:; Grading Creative Writing; Ashley Wurzbacher, Eastern Washington University; Part II - What Is "Appropriate" for the Workshop?; Censorship, Trauma, and Memory in the Creative Writing Classroom; Invoking the Muzzle:; Censorship and the Creative Writing Workshop; M. Thomas Gammarino, The University of Hawaii; Dear Diary:; Violence, Confession, and (Creative) Writing Pedagogies; Laura Madeline Wiseman, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; What Time Was I Supposed to Remember That?:; Memory, Constraint, and Creative Writing Pedagogy; Michael Dean Clark, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Part III - Teaching "Technique"; Craft Elements and Exercises; Exercises in Authority:; Teaching Fiction and Poetry in the Undergraduate Classroom; Jeremy Lakaszcyck, University of Massachusetts; Write What You Don't Know:; Teaching Creative Research; Joseph Rein, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Making the Parts of the Workshop Come Together:; A Practical Example; Yelizaveta P. Renfro, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Avoiding Meaning:; A Classroom Exercise to Improve Students' Homophonic Sensibilities; David Bartone, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Unleashing the Nemesis of Genre Fiction; Karen Gentry, Georgia State University; Specificity of Dialogue:; A Coke is a Soda is a Pop is a Cola; Liane LeMaster, Georgia State University; So Much For That Happy Ending:; Rendering Complex Emotion in Fiction; Anthony J. Sams, University of North Carolina Wilmington; Part IV| The Hybrid TA; Literary Theory, Writing Centers, and the New Creative Writer; Something to Push Up Against:; Using Theory as Creative Pedagogy; Kimberly Quiogue Andrews and John Belk, Pennsylvania State University; Adapting Writing Center Pedagogy for the Undergraduate Creative Writing Workshop; Janelle Adsit, Colorado State University; Composing Creatively:; Further Crossing Composition/Creative Writing Boundaries; David Yost and Chris Drew, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.