10th Annual Creative Writing Studies Conference || Online: November 7-8, 2025
Register here!
Relatable! Exploring Difference & Relationality in Creative Writing Studies
Our conference theme of relationality begins with postcolonial philosopher and author Édouard Glissant’s statement in Poetics of Relation that “each and every identity is extended through a relationship with the Other.” Readers, writers, and academics do not work in a vacuum; we’re in dialogue with texts, people, politics, institutions, industries, and conversations that inform our work and educations. We’re all part of multiple systems of relationality. Yet difference often stands in the way of understanding. When the word “relatable” really means “relevant to me,” as it often does in the classroom, anything outside the purview of “relatability” looks like it’s not worth examining. We are working to see beyond the faulty goal of “relatability” in creative writing studies; so, what more expansive visions of relationality and shared knowledge can we articulate?
During the conference, we will explore, redefine, and trouble the notions of relatability exploration of theories, histories, pedagogies, applications, and practices that critique existing paradigms of relatability and reorient us toward the complexity of difference in shaping our relations with readers, students, and other communities.
Registered attendees will receive the conference links via the email used to register for the conference.
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE – ONLINE
Legend for presentations:
(P) Paper/Panel (R) Roundtable (W) Workshop
Friday, November 7
Welcome: 9:30 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. EST
A short welcome from Audrey Heffers, CWSO Chair and Abriana Jette, EIC Journal of Creative Writing Studies
10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. EST
Room A: Expanding Pedagogy Panel (P)
Whose Rules of Storytelling? Negotiating “Show, Don’t Tell” in Cross-Cultural Creative Writing Pedagogy
Satyaki Kanjilal, O.P. Jindal Global University
Drawing on classroom experience in India, this presentation reflects on the challenges of adapting American creative writing pedagogy abroad. This presentation will share anecdotes of interaction with students in a fiction classroom and offer practical strategies for navigating cultural dissonance in teaching fiction.
Rounding the Flat: Empowering Idiosyncratic Character Development in Student Writing
Rachel Cochran, Marian University
This paper explores pedagogical approaches (including classroom scenarios and activities) to assisting students in developing characters across genres whose psychological and lived realities differ from the writer’s own experiences, without reverting to stereotype, simplification, or abstraction.
“Never Give Up…Never Face the Facts”: Teaching Gender Issues and Leadership in the Transnational Creative Writing Classroom Leslie Kreiner Wilson, Pepperdine University
This presentation explores how incorporating transnational texts in creative writing classrooms fosters student engagement with global issues like gender equity, encouraging them to write, discuss, and share their perspectives both in class and with the wider university community to promote meaningful cross-cultural conversations. Storytellers can be global leaders.
Room B: Writing Relationality (W)
Writing Relationality: Teaching the Personal Essay Through Trauma-Informed Pedagogy
Kara Mae Brown, University of California Santa Barbara
Ellen O’Connell Whittet, UC Santa Barbara
A workshop for teachers of the personal essay to craft trauma-informed classroom prompts that foster student relationality rather than competitive suffering narratives, drawing on research-based pedagogical approaches that center survivor needs and create healing educational spaces.
11:15 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. EST
Room A: Tracking Lineages Panel (P)
Beyond Dylan: Ethnopoetics and the Radical Expansion of Literary Relationality
Abiodun Bello, University of Southern Mississippi
This paper uses Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize as starting point to argue that ethnopoetics reveals radical alternatives to Western literary “relatability” by preserving cultural difference in cross-cultural poetic engagement, based on action research in creative writing pedagogy.
“Relatability” and the Origins of Creative Writing Studies
Tim Mayers, Millersville University
Creative writing studies and the CWSO both originated (at least in part) out of a yearning for “relatability.” How can we both understand our own histories and seek to re-cross the institutional boundaries we crossed in order to get here?
The Creative Writer’s Unpayable Debts
Emilio Carrero, Florida State University
This paper examines the paradoxical situation of the creative writer in which being creative is destructive and unsustainable due to the repressive constraints of neocolonialism.
Room B: The Exclusivity of Relatability (R)
The Exclusivity of Relatability: Unteaching Reader Identification in Workshop
Rachel Haley Himmelheber, Warren Wilson College
Colleen Abel, Eastern Illinois University
Alysia Sawchyn, Warren Wilson College
Roundtable presenters will include writer-teachers of creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. Discussion will focus on practical pedagogical tools to enlarge students’ understanding of how they might connect with literature and how they might consider audience, the influence of social media, and the craft language they use to discuss texts.
1:15 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. EST
Room A: Relatability & AI Panel (P)
Mise-en-Place: Found Poetry, Computer-Generated Text, and Code as Kitchen Tools
P.D. Edgar, University of Central Florida
In a time where people relate more to computer-generated text to human-generated work, how can creative writers use computational tools to experiment reflexively and satiate the public’s hunger for meaning? P.D. will present a framework and demo interface projects (free on GitHub), poems and periodicals, with discussion to follow. Critique-friendly!
Author and algorithm: creative writing at the border of natural and artificial
Alexandra Mikhaylovskaya, Higher School of Economics
While AI often flattens difference into algorithmic predictability, we argue it can be a critical tool to expose this very flaw. Our workshop uses AI-generated content to help writers move beyond superficial “relatability” and actively construct more ethical, expansive relationality in their work through engagement with otherness.
An Idle Brain Is the Devil’s Workshop: Creative Writing as Thinking for Oneself in the Age of Gen AI
Anna Leahy, Chapman University
Drawing from current articles and books about the Gen AI phenomenon and the work of Carol Dweck, Angela Duckworth, Nicholas Carr, and others, this presentation considers how we can help our creative writing students become excited about learning—questioning, failing, surprising, reaching, grasping—as thinking for oneself.
Mathematics as the Place of Creation
Andres Sanchez, Independent Scholar
How does mathematics create new work? This paper will present a walkthrough of how mathematics can be used to create and problematize the way we create and think about poetry and text. In essence, we can and should step outside the familiar space of humanities and engage with mathematics as a method to find new ways for creation of text.
Room B: I Can Relate: Genre Fiction (R)
I Can Relate: Outer Space, Hauntings, Future Worlds, or Vampires: Genre Fiction Makes the Human Experience Relatable Roundtable
Kate Maruyama, California State University Los Angeles
Rhonda Jackson Garcia, Lone Star College
Lisa Wood, Shenandoah University
Creative writers and professors discuss relationality in genre fiction in terms of character authenticity and story design. The dichotomy between reality and the fantastic will be explored in depth.
2:45-3:45 EST
Room A: The Relatability Deck (W)
The Relatability Deck: Writing with Intuition and Affect
Sonakshi Srivastava, Ashoka University, India
A workshop that explores how we intuitively relate to one another as readers and writers across geographies.
Room B: This Speaks to Me: Finding Voice Together (P)
This Speaks to Me: Inspired Prompts, Workshop Tricks, and Other Methods of Finding Voice Together in the Creative Writing Classroom Panel
Alysse Kathleen McCanna, Colorado Mountain College
Juan J. Morales, Colorado College
Darci Schummer, Colorado State University Pueblo
In this panel, three creative writing professors from three different Colorado colleges and universities will discuss inspiring students with writing exercises, workshop methodologies, and other activities that help students connect, build community, and find voice so their writing may take them beyond the classroom and expected conventions in creative writing.
Readings: 4:00-5:15 p.m EST
Live Readings
Katie Marya
Andrea Rexilius
Kate Maruyama
Saturday, November 8
Welcome: 9:30 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. EST
A short welcome from Abriana Jette, EIC Journal of Creative Writing Studies
10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. EST
Keynote
“Not fixed in [our] places: How Movement Practices in Creative Writing are Shifting My Sense of Relation.”
Katie Marya, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
This talk introduces my current scholarly line of inquiry on the intersections of creative writing pedagogy and movement studies, or dance pedagogy. I will share how I am theorizing and applying techniques from the dance classroom to the writing classroom and to my own work as a translator and poet. Ultimately, I hope to leave you with practical ways of reimagining your own writing practice and a deepening sense of self and place.
11:15 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. EST
Room A: Literary Conversations (P)
Archipelagic Narratives: Frame Stories as Relational Poetics in Contemporary Creative Practice
Irfan Master, University of Canberra
This paper aims to provide a synthesis of Édouard Glissant’s relational theory with The Arabian Nights’ frame narrative structure to theorise “expansive relationality” in contemporary creative practice. Scheherazade’s infinite storytelling strategy becomes a paradigm for works that generate meaning through ongoing connection rather than closure, fostering community engagement and cultural transmission over individual expression.
Creative Writing and Writing Trauma: The Female Gothic Coming-of-Age Form in Trauma
Mona Jafari
This paper explores the relationality and difference between the creative processes of the Gothic and coming-of-age narratives along with the relationality between the Gothic and trauma fiction. In particular, it examines the significance of trauma and its literary representation in the female Gothic rendering of the Bildungsroman.
Relatable and Untellable: The Limits of Expression
Charmaine Cadeau, High Point University
This paper explores the ethical and expressive significance of the question of relatability by considering how Pater’s conception of private aesthetic intensity intersects with Goldstein and Shuman’s notion of tellability. My argument suggests how creative writing mediates the interplay between subjective perception and socially constructed narrative norms.
“When the Mouth Translates the Heart”: Bilingualism, Hybridity, and Relational Craft in Creative Writing
Mariana Arreola Montesinos
This paper examines how hybrid creative practices such as bilingual writing, cross-genre forms, and nontraditional publishing enact expansive relationality. Rather than privileging “relatability,” such work foregrounds hybridity and dissonance, generating transnational readerships and resisting literary simplification by embracing multiplicity, fragmentation, and contradiction as vital modes of cultural survival and connection.
Room B: Global Educational Communities (P)
Creative Writing in the Threshold: Narratives on Ibero-American Pedagogies of Creative Writing
Elena Traina, Independent Researcher
This paper presents findings from interviews with 63 creative writing tutors across eight Ibero-American countries, exploring narrative aspects of teaching creative writing and situating pedagogical practice in relation to language, place, and literary and institutional context.
Who Bells the Leopard?—Towards Tracing Historical Imaginaries of an African Creative Writing Institution, Pedagogy, and Ideological Underpinnings
Sheilla A. Nelson, Illinois State University
This paper attempts to construct and explore some of the historical, philosophical, cultural, and epistemological underpinnings that might help to trace a certain historical imaginary of an African Creative Writing Institution, and thereby, the African Creative Writing Pedagogies that this institution would imply and inform.
Short Story Writing Experiences and Perceptions of Saudi Female University Students
Ahdab Abdalelah Saaty, University of Jeddah
This session examines how Saudi female university students used short story writing in English to strengthen language skills and creativity. Findings show that writing fiction and nonfiction encouraged enjoyment, imagination, and personal expression, offering practical insights for integrating creative writing into EFL classrooms.
1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. EST
Room A: Inclusive Teaching Panel (P)
Hype Me Up: Accessing Relationality Through Praise
Leah Hedrick, Metropolitan Community College
Praise is a powerful, constructive tool that builds community, improves student retention, and helps uplift new writers from all backgrounds. This presentation will give participants ideas (and permission!) for building more praise into their pedagogies.
Subjectivity in Response, Objectivity in Critique: Insights from a College of Education—An Interdisciplinary Presentation
A.D. Nauman, Northeastern Illinois University
Creative Writing instructors wanting to establish more inclusive critique environments for diverse students might incorporate aspects of Louise Rosenblatt’s transactional theory of reading, which has become foundational in literacy educators’ understanding of reading comprehension and interpretation. Rosenblatt’s conceptualizations of stance, response, and subjectivity are especially relevant to Creative Writing Studies.
Relational Storywork: Indigenous Pedagogies in Creative Writing
Rebecca Pelky, Le Moyne College
Building on scholarship in Indigenous pedagogies, anti-racism, and universal design, this presentation will consider how the creative writing classroom—already somewhat aligned with Indigenous values in teaching—can be even further enhanced by more intentionally implementing aspects of Indigenous pedagogies like relationality and holism into classroom structures and activities.
Room B: Process Feedback (W)
Using Process Feedback to Foster Empathy and Transparency in the Writing Classroom
Badri Adhikari, University of Missouri–St. Louis
Khem Aryal, Arkansas State University
This workshop introduces Process Feedback, a free tool that visualizes the writing process, helping teachers and students build empathy, transparency, and constructive dialogue about writing and AI use.
2:45 p.m. – 3:45 p.m. EST
Room A: Radical Relations (P)
Radical Relations: Creative Writing, University Writing Centers, and Prison Education Initiatives
Emma Catherine Perry, University of Idaho
Miriam Åkervall, University of Idaho
Nick Koenig, University of Cincinnati
M.A. Miller from Washington State University
Three university prison educators share experiences leveraging creative writing to build literary community with incarcerated writers. These presentations describe a speculative fiction-writing assignment in a climate futures course, the operation of an online writing center for incarcerated writers, and the publication of a literary journal featuring incarcerated student writing.
Room B: Interdisciplinary Poetics (R)
Interdisciplinary Poetics: Identity Construction, Cultural Representation, and Risk in Poetry
Audrey T. Heffers, Illinois State University
Edcel Javier Cintron-Gonzalez, Illinois State University
Chrysogonus Siddha Malilang, Malmö University
This roundtable will take an interdisciplinary look at relatability, combining the lens of identity-focused scholarly fields (Latinx Studies, Indonesian Studies, Queer Studies, and Disability Studies) with the practice of writing poetry.
4:00 p.m. – 5:15 p.m. EST
Room A: Interdisciplinary Intersections Panel (P)
Gastropoetry: Significance of Food as a Lens and a Motif in Creative Writing of Poetry
Saima Afreen, Illinois State University PhD candidate
This paper focuses on the subgenre of gastropoetry and its significance in creative writing praxis to examine foodways, ethnic culinary practices, and embodied memories along with the presence of food in narratives and imagery in poetry as a literary device and theoretical lens.
Two Step, Riff, Box Step, Shuffle: Relational Alterity in Writing and Dance
Rebbecca Brown, UC Santa Barbara
In this paper I explore how movement and dance foster notions of relatability in ways that textual art forms cannot and complicate the homogeneity of experience relatability often implies; I also examine how physical expression can create connections and consider how radical alterity might also foster spaces for situational belonging.
Ecopoetic Climate Communication: Rhetorical and Linguistic Exploration of University Science Majors’ Ecopoems
Justin Nicholes, University of Wisconsin-Stout
I report results of rhetorical analysis of undergraduate science majors’ ecopoems, illustrating relationality among creative writing studies, rhetoric, poetry, and environmental-science communication.
“Finger: Do NOT Throw Out”: The Relatability of Illness Narratives (Even in Hermit Crab Essays)
Darryl Whetter, Université Sainte-Anne
This demonstration of a recently published formally innovative hermit-crab CNF essay, which recounts accidental injury through the “crab shell” of the author’s phone call for an ambulance, will discuss the relatability of illness narratives and creativity by constraint.
Room B: Map as Muse (W)
The Map as Muse: Google Maps for Digital Storytelling
Gwendolyn Paradice, Murray State University
In this workshop, participants will first explore how online maps might be used in creative writing, and then they will receive instruction for how to use Google Maps to create fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or hybrid works in the classroom.