Writing from the Big Brain:
An Argument for Image and Process in Creative Writing Education
Amy Bonnaffons
10.2
For reasons I didn’t fully understand, I found myself drawn for inspiration not only to creative nonfiction exploring similar themes (Maxine Hong Kingston, Gloria Anzaldúa, Maggie Nelson) but also, specifically, to hybrid visual-verbal memoirs (Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother?, Nora Krug’s Belonging, Anne Carson’s Nox, Anna Joy Springer’s The Vicious Red Relic, Love). In 2015, I took a comics class and started exploring my ancestors’ stories in this format—and was surprised to find that formal problems that had previously stymied me seemed easily resolved once I had the tools of literal image at my disposal. Visual metaphor became structurally load-bearing; more importantly, there was something about moving my hand across the page, in marking lines, that allowed the material itself to move—to unstick itself and begin to transcend the cramped conditions of its origin.
It seemed so obvious, once I’d figured it out: a drawn line cannot leave the body behind. Whether it’s polished or raw, loopy or straight, a drawn line cannot ever be anything other than a mark made by a body. A graphic narrative is, among other things, a record of a body’s attempt to make sense of a story. As I continued to develop this work, I also paid more attention to my dreams and learned to practice a style of trancelike visualization called shamanic journeying. I didn’t do either of these things for the sake of my writing, but found that they made my writing deeper and richer; it was like I was developing fluency in the visual language of my subconscious, or my soul, or my body—or all of the above, intertwined and enmeshed. Click here to continue reading. |
Normalizing Creative Writing Scholarship in the Classroom
Micah McCrary
10.2
We need greater openness towards a more foundational, fundamental overhaul of how (especially new) student-authors become exposed to the world of professional creative writing. While I don’t currently teach at a university where introductory creative writing courses are cross-genre, I think one way to go about this might be in examining these issues specifically within the multigenre CW course as an access point towards discussing identity, access, privilege, and representation in CW. Alternately, curricula may be designed to be split by genre (my current course design is titled Critical Concepts in Creative Writing: Nonfiction) so that the course may be treated as an introductory survey in critical readings on creative writing (which, for nonfiction, are taken from journals including Assay, TEXT, New Writing, and The Essay Review) and their literary counterparts, examining the present issues through lenses specific to the genres that are part of an instructor’s specialization. In teaching these texts, and in having these conversations with my own student-authors, I’ve been able to watch them develop a healthy conception of how creative writing may work both culturally and professionally—examining not just how it works inside and outside the college/university, but in communities directly informing (or impacted by) student-authors’ writing projects. Click here to continue reading.
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The Braided Essay as Change Agent
Candace Walsh
10.2
Until the fall of 2021, the braided essay was just another form to me. Little did I know that teaching students to write braided essays would crack open new, surprising pedagogical worlds that have yet to be exhausted, and set me on a journey of my own. It all began with Melissa Febos’ essay “The Mirror Test.” In this essay, Febos examines slut-shaming from three main braided strands: personal narrative, evidence-based research, and a critical response to popular culture’s depictions of it throughout history. She thickens the braid by including theory, literary analysis, and interviews with women from minoritized subject positions on their experiences, going beyond the limits of her subject position as a white woman to represent the topic.
As often happens in the best writer friendships, my friend and colleague Anna Chotlos, an accomplished essayist in her own right, read “The Mirror Test” first, then sent me a link my way. I sat down and read it in one go, experiencing the tingly feeling I get when an essay or story is crafted so well it kind of hurts. It was immersive, deft, complex, and kaleidoscopic, yet tight and compelling the whole way through, and absolutely stuck the landing. As essayists, Anna and I wanted to do more than admire “The Mirror Test.” We wanted to dive deeper into its structure. I sensed technical rigor under its lyrical sheen, which led me to open up a software I generally try to avoid as much as possible: Excel. We began to make a running list of the essay’s interweaving strands, noticing artfully irregular patterns of unspooling, synthesis, and weave. When we finished, the ineffable had become the approachable. A main braid of personal narrative, research findings, and cultural critique seemed to be at the heart of its success. Click here to continue reading. |