Beyond Lores: Linking Writers’ Self-Reports to Autoethnography
Khem Aryal
9.2
In their 2017 article, “Research in Creative Writing: Theory into Practice,” Christine Bailey and Patrick Bizarro report on a study the findings of which were presented in the form of a novel. “Using this method,” they explain, “we studied creative writing aesthetically as creative writing ….” (77). Their research question for the study was: “Is there a method of research uniquely suited to conducting research in academic creative writing” (79)? While the primary focus of the article remains to be the authors’ intent to develop a research method for creative writing away from composition studies because, they argue, research methods borrowed from composition have “not advanced the cause of creative writings’ existence in English studies as an independent subject” (79), this effort to develop “appropriate aesthetic research methods that collect data and report those data in a manner consistent with the values of the creative writing community” (79) aptly reflects the field’s lack of established research methods and a continued search for the ones that adequately serve our disciplinary needs. Click here to continue reading.
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Carework in the Creative Nonfiction Classroom:
Toward a Trauma-Informed Pedagogy
Jennifer Case
9.2
Not too long ago, I attended a panel presentation on writing personal essays about illness and healing. The panelists were all instructors in a graduate-level program on narrative medicine, and so I hoped it would give me ideas on how to best respond to students and student work about trauma. In particular, I was thinking of an MFA student I’d mentored a few years before, whose entire thesis built up to a traumatic moment, but when it came time to actually write that scene, she froze, unable to even write around it. More recently, I was thinking about two students—a graduate student and an undergraduate—who had chosen to write about suicide attempts (in one case, an attempt made just two months before the class started), and whose essays were similarly stilted, with large gaps.
I recognized these student’s behaviors as trauma responses, but I found myself at a loss on what to do in the classroom. How should I respond to an essay when I’m not sure the writer is capable, emotionally or psychologically, of filling in the holes the essay reveals? How much do I push the student? Is it ever damaging or detrimental to ask a question about their essay that might trigger them? How do I balance the needs of the essay with the needs of the individual sitting in front of me? Click here to continue reading. |
Creating Nonfiction Within and Against Nature and Climate Tropes
Liesel Hamilton
9.2
Nature writing, to me, feels like an accessible way to access researched writing. Perhaps this is because of my affinity for the genre, or my affinity for long walks beneath the droopy, Spanish-moss festooned live oaks that cover my new home, but also, I think nature writing should be readily accessible to my students. My home city of Tallahassee is surrounded by national and state forests and the coast is less than an hour from campus. City parks abut our campus, including a large retaining pond surrounded by a paved trail, the water a favorite feeding spot for charismatic shorebirds like wood storks and egrets, and, as I write this, is currently hosting a (very) lost East Siberian Wagtail—a white, black, and gray bird whose name derives from its need to constantly “wag” its long tail as it wanders back and forth across muddy banks, feeding on flies and beetles trapped in the muck. Even the campus I teach on is meticulously landscaped—red brick buildings wall off hidden courtyards that gardeners fill with pink Ti plants, spiky sago palms, groves of tangerine trees, or puffs of blue plumbago. Even if my students don’t know the names of these plants or birds, they can practice their imagery by attempting to describe them to a reader, or they can take what they know and turn to the internet, the library, gardeners, or identification guides for answers. Even if they are not experts in botany or ornithology, I hope to teach them they possess unique perspectives they can add to the genre. Click here to continue reading.
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Late Night Thoughts on What Street Photography
Can Teach Us About Teaching Writing
W. Scott Olsen
9.2
What seems like 100 years ago, but was likely only 30, Nebraska poet Bill Kloefkorn visited Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, a liberal arts college of about 2000 students where the western border of Minnesota meets Fargo, North Dakota, where I teach. Bill was lively, insightful, and entertaining. He did the usual visiting writer routine with a public reading and several class visits, and his time on campus was a large success.
However, several weeks (and now several decades) after his visit, an unexpected small moment hung in the air. What people kept talking about was a conversation in a workshop with creative writing students. Bill spoke about how a piece of writing may first appear to be a poem but is actually an essay in disguise. Sometimes, he said, essays want to become short stories and short stories want to become poetry. He argued that a piece of writing oftentimes wants to blend genres in the early stages, and revision is where we make some definition choices. He talked about the creative process and how we need to allow for a piece of writing to discover itself. It was good advice, but that’s not what lingered. Bill also talked about how the vocabulary of one genre can inform a conversation and an understanding of the others. Click here to continue reading. |