Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom

Foreword - Anna Leahy

Part 1: Understanding the Larger Influences

1. Personal Therapeutic Writing vs. Literary Writing - Nancy Kuhl

2. Who Cares—and How: The Value and Cost of Nurturing - Anna Leahy

3. Inspiration, Creativity, and Crisis: The Romantic Myth of the Writer Meets the Contemporary Classroom - Brent Royster

4. Reinventing Writing Classrooms: The Combination of Creating and Composing - Evie Yoder Miller

5. The Double Bind and Stumbling Blocks: A Case Study as an Argument for Authority-Conscious Pedagogy - Carl Vandermeulen

Part 2: The Teacher’s Place, Voice, and Style

6. Teaching and Evaluation: Why Bother? - Mary Cantrell

7. Who’s the Teacher?: From Student to Mentor - Audrey Petty

8. The Pregnant Muse: Assumptions, Authority, and Accessibility - Rachel Hall

9. Dismantling Authority: Teaching What We Do Not Know - Katharine Haake

Part 3: Course Design

10. Contracts, Radical Revision, Portfolios, and the Risks of Writing - Wendy Bishop

11. An ‘A’ for Effort: How Grading Policies Shape Courses - Suzanne Greenberg

12. Gender and Authorship: How Assumptions Shape Perceptions and Pedagogies - Susan Hubbard

13. Writing the Community: Service Learning in Creative Writing - Argie Manolis

Part 4: In the Classroom

14. Where Do You Want Me To Sit?: Defining Authority through Metaphor - Cathy Day

15. Duck, Duck, Turkey: Using Encouragement To Structure Workshop Assignments - Mary Swander

16. How To Avoid Workshop Dilemmas: The Use of Myth to Teach Writerly Concepts - Amy Sage Webb

17. Writing in the Shadows: Topics, Models, and Audiences that Focus on Language - Sandy Feinstein

Afterword

The Reason It Is: the Rhyme It Isn’t - Graeme Harper and Stephanie Vanderslice

Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom, edited by Anna Leahy, serves as a fine example of this expanding, improving conversation on the teaching of creative writing. This book is generative, ranging and substantial. It is a book I wish I had read before I taught my first creative writing workshop. This is an impressive collection. Among other issues, The Authority Project addresses power dynamics in the classroom, assumptions about the roles of students and teachers in creative writing, gendering in creative writing, and how best to teach students in this complicated classroom space. To its credit, the collection provides no prescriptions. Authority, as all teachers know, is a central dynamic in the classroom, and this collection should be of use to creative writing teachers and others who want to learn more about it.