All conference attendees including presenters must be current CWSO members. To become a member, click here.

To register for the conference, login to the CWSO site with your username and password. Once logged in, scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Add to Cart button.

You may book lodging for the conference at http://www.montreat.org/creative-writing-retreat/

Conference registration fee on or before July 15 (early bird rate extended): $125

July 15 to October 17: $175

The conference fee includes access to all conference programming, receptions, and meals.

We are sorry, but we are unable to refund conference registration fees for cancellations.

The conference will be held at the Montreat Conference Center in Montreat, North Carolina (http://www.montreat.org/), and we encourage conference attendees to stay in the same wheelchair-accessible building in which we’ll hold conference events and meals. Rooms in the Assembly Inn (http://www.montreat.org/stay/assembly-inn/) are $100/night, and there is no extra charge to share a room (twin beds available). Montreat is around the corner from Black Mountain and is a short drive into Asheville, both of which boast many innovative restaurants, outdoor activities, shopping, and arts activities.

Questions? Email conference@creativewritingstudies.org

 

Creative Writing Studies Conference Schedule

Wednesday, October 18

10AM

Welcome and opening remarks

 

10:30AM-12PM

Jennifer Pullen, Alyse Bensel, Mercedes Lucero, David Bishop

Craft, the Workshop, and the Starship: The Creative Writing World’s Kobayashi Maru

 

12PM

Lunch

 

1:30-3PM

Lucy Sweetman

Resisting the Straitjacket: Reasserting Creative Writing as a Radical Practice in the Academy

 

Gabrielle Lawrence

Addressing Racial Grammar Through the Altered Book Project: Mixed-Media Projects, Sequential Thinking and Arts-Based Research as a Creative Writing Pedagogy

 

Jillian Merrifield

Neutralizing Linguistic Gatekeeping: Addressing Language Ideologies & Subordination in the Creative Writing Classroom

 

OR

John Vanderslice

“Teaching Students to Disrespect History: A Pedagogical Argument”

 

Anthony DeGenaro

Critiques & Revisions: Imagining Creative Writing as Inclusive, Community-Based Spaces

 

Abriana Jette

Reworking Working Pedagogy

 

 

3-4:30PM

Amy Ash, Callista Buchen, Dustin Hoffman, Dionne Irving Breymer

Beyond Peer Workshop: Models of Engaged Learning in Creative Writing Courses

 

OR

 

Xiaojuan Gao

Teaching English Creative Writing: A New Approach to University-Level EFL Education in the Chinese Context

 

Alexa Garvoille

Revising Secondary English Pedagogy for the Creative Writing Classroom

 

Gabrielle Pullen

The Critical Thinking Inherent in the Pedagogy of Creative Writing

 

4:30-6PM

Erick Piller

Beneath Our Theoretical Frameworks: The “Disciplinary Affect” of Creative Writing Studies

 

Khem K. Aryal

From “Author Talk” to Theories of Literary Production: Reworking the Definition of Craft for the Age of Creative Writing Studies and the New MFAs

 

OR

 

Karen Schiler

Creative Writing Instruction as Metaphorical Activity

 

Kate Kostelnik

Questioning the Purpose(s) of Imaginative Writing and Inviting Students Across the Disciplines to Write Creatively

 

John Vigna

The Blended Workshop: A Digital Craft Model Explored

 

4:30-6 PM

Evan Lavender-Smith

Narrative Theory for Creative Writers

 

Erick Piller

Beneath Our Theoretical Frameworks: The “Disciplinary Affect” of Creative Writing Studies

 

Khem K. Aryal

From “Author Talk” to Theories of Literary Production: Reworking the Definition of Craft for the Age of Creative Writing Studies and the New MFAs

 

6-7PM

reception

 

Thursday, October 18

 

7:30AM

breakfast

 

9-10:30AM

Stephanie Vanderslice

Where Best Practices Meet: Craft and Pedagogy in the Online Creative Writing Course

 

Hannah Kroonblawd

The Craft of the Unknown: Transnational Texts in the Creative Writing Classroom

 

Mitchell R James

The Author of This Book Has Been Able to Earn $50/Week Writing During Her Spare Time, While Taking Care of Her Children and Household: Or Women and Writing Craft in the Early Twentieth Century

 

OR

 

Julie Babcock and Megan Levad

Crafting Possibilities: A Revision Workshop

 

10:30AM-12PM

Alice Sebrell (Pro?gram Director, Black Mountain College Museum + Art Center), Marilyn Zapf (Assistant Director & Curator, Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design), Tim Mayers (Millersville University), Jon Udelson (University of Louisville), Ben Ristow (Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Facilitator)

Re(Crafting) Craft: Amending the Cultural, Institutional, and Scholarly Conceits

 

OR

 

D. Shane Combs

Toward an Affective-Relational Pedagogy: Teaching Nonfiction as “Bearing Witness through Life Writing”

 

Susan Meyers

Creative Writing Across the Disciplines: A Rhetorical Approach to the Power of Storytelling

 

Jenni Moody

Stargazing in the Gutters: Teaching Subtext through Dialogue, Image-text, and Closure

 

 

12PM

lunch

 

1:30-3PM

Courtney Laughlin, Alexis Speaks, Taylor Cole, Emma Tysinger, Shayla Moore (moderated by faculty Dr. Marissa Schwalm)

What Can We Learn From This?: Varied Undergraduate Majors Present on their Literary Journal Research & Experiences

 

OR

 

Brandi Reissenweber

Learning from the Creative Process: Collaboration in the Fiction Writing Classroom

 

LindaMarie Tonn

Teaching Creative Writing Through Fanfiction

 

Chris Drew

Professor as Peer: When Teachers Bring Their Own Work into the Creative Writing Classroom

 

 

3-4:30PM

Editors of JCWS panel roundtable discussion and Q&A session

 

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Original CFP – 2018 Creative Writing Studies Conference “Critiques and Revisions: Examining Ideologies of Craft”

We are now accepting proposals for the 2018 Creative Writing Studies Conference (CWSC) through May 1, 2018. Read about the conference theme and the submission guidelines below and then click here to submit your conference proposal.

Our conference theme this year is “Critiques and Revisions: Examining Ideologies of Craft in Creative Writing” and will explore questions pertaining to the craft of creative writing, including what we mean by craft, how we teach the craft of writing, what ideological assumptions may be hiding behind the label, and more.

For years, creative writers have taught “craft” as if it were a transparent set of values—fixed and universally agreed-upon in how it defines a particular genre.  But creative writing is always embedded in particular cultural, aesthetic, critical, and (often) institutional contexts. Since the rise of creative writing programs in the post-World War II United States, the dominant pedagogical model has been the peer workshop. While workshops have always come in many shapes and sizes, one common thread is that student writers read, write, and critique each other’s work, usually with the (stated or unstated) goal of submitting it for publication.

Scholars working in the field creative writing studies have increasingly questioned the workshop model as the de facto form of creative writing pedagogy, noting how unexamined workshop practices can privilege the voices of predominantly white male authors while minimizing or excluding other workshop participants along the lines of gender, race, class, and sexual orientation. Others have critiqued the assumption that the creative writing workshop is to foster the production of print literature in the Western literary tradition as opposed to works of genre fiction, writing for children and young adults, or experimental works in digital or media spaces. Other critics have noted that notions of an objective “literary craft” only reflects a narrow concern of interests that pertain to white middle-class writers.

This year at CWSC, we will investigate the relationship between authors and these respective contexts, particularly as it stands to theoretically ground creative writing studies in the arts and humanities at large and to further enrich what we talk about when we talk about “craft.”

Proposal Guidelines and Conference Tracks
The Creative Writing Studies Conference is focused on research and scholarship in creative writing. We seek proposals that are well written, well researched, theoretically grounded, and connected to current conversations in the field. Proposals should demonstrate an understanding of previous scholarship on the subject under investigation and should aim to create new knowledge and/or challenge disciplinary conceptions and practices. Proposals based solely on the author’s own experience may be appropriate if they are the result of well-defined action research and used established research methods. It is expected that research involving human subjects will conform to the highest standards of ethical conduct as outlined by the Institutional Review Board of the scholar’s home university.

We are interested in proposals that concern creative writing and pedagogy; history; qualitative and quantitative research; the digital and multimodal; diversity and inclusion; professionalization and labor; theory, craft, and culture; and social action. Proposals that respond to the theme of “Critiques and Revisions: Examining Ideologies of Craft in Creative Writing” will be given priority. Papers that respond to the conference theme should also correspond to one of the tracks below.

Pedagogy
We seek articles on creative writing pedagogies that offer both a theoretical and historical background as well as practical applications to engage and reinvigorate the creative process for both students and teachers. We also welcome articles that advance and enlarge theoretical perspectives for creative writing pedagogy scholarship.

History
We welcome proposals exploring the histories of individuals, groups, and communities; institutions (broadly defined); and texts related to creative writing as a process, taught subject, or cultural practice. We seek proposals on creative writing pedagogies that offer both a theoretical and historical background as well as practical applications to engage and reinvigorate the creative process for both students and teachers. We also welcome proposals that advance and enlarge theoretical perspectives for creative writing pedagogy scholarship

Qualitative and Quantitative Research
We seek proposals that investigate the practice, pedagogy, and history of creative writing based on empirical research. We are also open to receiving work that is grounded in research while also challenging the assumptions and conventions of academic discourse in narrative, lyrical, dramatic, avant-garde, theoretical, or meta-theoretical modes. Additionally, we are interested in proposals that interrogate the definition and practice of creative writing research itself.

Digital and Multimodal
Creative Writing Studies scholarship welcomes examination of and engagement with changes in the technologies–especially digital technologies–that affect the composition, publication, and distribution of creative writing of all genres.

Diversity and inclusion
We particularly seek proposals that directly address race, ethnicity, ability, culture, class, language, and gender/sexuality difference as experienced and studied in the creative writing academic arena.

Professionalization and Labor
Teaching creative writing in the university or college intersects employment and institutional issues that often go unexamined. We seek proposals that discuss adjunct/contingent or professorial status; exploitative and/or uneven workloads, pay, and/or benefits; teacher training; interdisciplinarity; assessment; funding; and diversity requirements (or lack thereof).

Theory, Craft, and Culture
For years, creative writers have taught “craft” as if it were a transparent set of values—fixed and universally agreed-upon in how it defines a particular genre.  But creative writing is always embedded in particular cultural, aesthetic, critical, and (often) institutional contexts. We seek proposals that investigate the relationship between authors and these respective contexts, particularly as it stands to theoretically ground creative writing studies in the humanities at large and to further enrich what we talk about when we talk about “craft.”

Social Action
We seek proposals that examine the connection between creative writing and its role in the public sphere. More specifically, we seek scholarly essays that reveal how creative writing is being used to engender social change, promote community activism, or intervene in culture in ways that reconnect poetics and politics, form and function, innovation and action, play and protest, artfulness and utility.

Workshops
Workshops are 60-minute sessions where participants will be actively involved in doing or making something related to creative writing, such as classroom activities or how to use tools or techniques. Workshops must be grounded in sound pedagogical theory and evidence-based practice; we are not interested in lore-based writing prompts (even if they’re really good ones!) unless they connect to one of the conference tracks in an explicit way, for example using digital tools, engaging with social action, or addressing issues of diversity and inclusion.

Before you begin, note that in order to complete the CFP you will need:

> Names and email addresses of all presenters

> A description of your submission that does not exceed 500 words

> A minimum of 5 relevant scholarly citations that support the proposal’s description