Does the Writing Workshop Still Work?

Edited by Dianne Donnelly

Publication date:

28 May 2010

Publisher

Multilingual Matters

Dimensions:

210x148mm
6x8"

ISBN-13: 9781847692696

This book explores the effectiveness of the workshop in the Creative Writing classroom, and looks beyond the question of whether or not the workshop works to address the issue of what an altered pedagogical model might look like. In visualising what else is possible in the workshop space, the sixteen chapters collected in ‘Does the Writing Workshop Still Work?’ cover a range of theoretical and pedagogical topics and explore the inner workings and conflicts of the workshop model. The needs of a growing and diverse student population are central to the chapter authors’ consideration of non-normative pedagogies. The book is a must-read for all teachers of Creative Writing, as well as for researchers in Creative Writing Studies.

Foreword - Graeme Harper

Introduction: ‘If it Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix it,’ Or ‘Change is Inevitable—Except from a Vending Machine.’ - Dianne Donnelly

Section One: Inside the Writing Workshop Model

1. Once More to the Workshop: A Myth Caught in Time - Stephanie Vanderslice

2. Workshop: An Ontological Study - Patrick Bizzaro

3. Small Worlds: What Works in the Workshop if and When They Do - Philip Gross

4. Teaching as a Creative Act: Why the Workshop Works in Creative Writing - Anna Leahy

5. Workshopping and Fiction: Laboratory, Factory, or Finishing School? - Willy Maley

Section Two: Engaging the Conflicts

6. Poetry, F(r)iction, Drama: The Complex Dynamics of Audience in the Writing Workshop - Tim Mayers

7. Engaging the Individual/Social Conflict within Creative Writing Workshops - Brent Royster

8. Potentially Dangerous: Vulnerabilities and Risks in the Writing Workshop - Gaylene Perry

9. 'Its fine, I guess’: Problems with Peer Review and What These Indicate about the Status of the Workshop Model in College Composition Courses - Colin Irvine

Section Three: The Non-Normative Workshop

10. The Writing Workshop in the Two-Year College: Who Cares? - David Starkey

11. Workshopping Lives - Mary Ellen Bertolini

12. The Things I Used to Do: Workshops Old and New - Keith Kumasen Abbott

Section Four: New Models for Relocating the Workshop

13. Re-envisioning the Workshop: Hybrid Classrooms, Hybrid Texts - Katharine Haake

14. Introducing Masterclasses - Sue Roe

15. Wrestling Bartleby: Another Workshop Model for the Creative Writing Classroom - Leslie Wilson

16. ‘A Space of Radical Openness’: Re-visioning the Creative Writing Workshop - Mary Ann Cain

Afterword: Disciplinarity and the Future of Creative Writing Studies - Joseph Moxley

A remarkable new collection of essays about the theory, practice, design, and reinvention of peer-review components in writing-courses. The expertise and range of experience represented by the contributors is astonishing. This is a bountiful offering indeed.