Does the writing workshop still work?

258 Pages·2010·0.952 MB·English

by  Donnelly, Dianne

Does the Writing Workshop Still Work?
NEWWRITINGVIEWPOINTS
SeriesEditor:GraemeHarper,UniversityofWales,Bangor,Wales,GreatBritain
Theoverallaimofthisseriesistopublishbookswhichwillultimatelyinformteaching
andresearch,butwhoseprimaryfocusisontheanalysisofcreativewritingpractice
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writingknowledge,withissuesofgenre,formandstyle,withthenatureand
experienceofcreativity,andwiththelearningofcreativewriting.Theywillallhave
incommonaconcernwithexcellenceinapplicationandinunderstanding,with
creativewritingpractitionersandtheirwork,andwithinformedanalysisofcreative
writingasprocessaswellascompletedartefact.
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onhttp://www.multilingual-matters.com, orbywritingtoMultilingualMatters,
StNicholasHouse,31–34HighStreet,BristolBS12AW,UK.
NEW WRITING VIEWPOINTS
Series Editor: Graeme Harper, University of Wales, Bangor,
Wales, UK
Does the Writing Workshop
Still Work?
Edited by
Dianne Donnelly
MULTILINGUAL MATTERS
Bristol I Buffalo I Toronto
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DoestheWritingWorkshopStillWork?/EditedbyDianneDonnelly.
Includesbibliographicalreferences.
1.Creativewriting.2.Workshops.3.Englishlanguage–Rhetoric–Studyandteaching.
4.Writingcenters.
I.Donnelly,Dianne.
PE1404.D642010
8080.042071-dc222010014103
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Contents
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii
Foreword: On Experience
Graeme Harper. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
Introduction: If it Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix it; Or Change is
Inevitable, Except from a Vending Machine
Dianne Donnelly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Section One: Inside the Writing Workshop Model
1 Once More to the Workshop: A Myth Caught in Time
Stephanie Vanderslice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2 Workshop: An Ontological Study
Patrick Bizzaro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3 Small Worlds: What Works in Workshops If and When
They Do?
Philip Gross . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
4 Teaching as a Creative Act: Why the Workshop Works in
Creative Writing
Anna Leahy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
5 Workshopping and Fiction: Laboratory, Factory, or Finishing
School?
Willy Maley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Section Two: Engaging the Conflicts
6 Poetry, F(r)iction, Drama: The Complex Dynamics of Audience
in the Writing Workshop
Tim Mayers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
7 Engaging the Individual/Social Conflict within Creative
Writing Pedagogy
Brent Royster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
v
vi DoestheWritingWorkshopStill Work?
8 Potentially Dangerous: Vulnerabilities and Risks in the
Writing Workshop
Gaylene Perry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
9 ‘Its fine, I gess’: Problems with the Workshop Model in
College Composition Courses
Colin Irvine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Section Three: The Non-Normative Workshop
10 The Creative Writing Workshop in the Two-Year College:
Who Cares?
David Starkey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
11 Workshopping Lives
Mary Ellen Bertolini . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
12 The Things I Used To Do: Workshops Old and New
Keith Kumasen Abbott . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Section Four: New Models for Relocating the Workshop
13 Re-envisioning the Workshop: Hybrid Classrooms, Hybrid
Texts
Katharine Haake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
14 Introducing Masterclasses
Sue Roe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
15 Wrestling Bartleby: Another Workshop Model for the Creative
Writing Classroom
Leslie Kreiner Wilson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
16 ‘A Space of Radical Openness’: Re-Visioning the Creative
Writing Workshop
Mary Ann Cain. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
Afterword: Disciplinarity and the Future of Creative Writing
Studies
Joseph Moxley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
Acknowledgements
I thank all of the contributors to this collection who have devoted their
time and expertise to this very important project. On behalf of these
contributors,IthankGraemeHarperandAnnaRoderickofMultilingual
Matters for their support, guidance, and belief that this workshop
collectionisavitalandtimelytopicincreativewritingscholarshipandan
excitingadditiontotheNewWritingViewpointsbookseries.Iadditionally
thank the creative writing teachers who responded to my survey on the
writing workshop model. Their insight proved critical to the develop-
ment of the collection’s introduction and to the first ‘voice’ in this
workshop dialogue. I also appreciate the University of South Florida’s
support and recognition of my teaching, writing, and scholarship, and I
am grateful to my colleagues Joseph Moxley, Rita Ciresi, John Fleming,
DeborahNoonan,HuntHawkins,andPatrickBizzarofortheirencourage-
ment in my professional development.
AspecialthankstoRob,SherryandConstancefortheirsteadfastfriend-
shipandlove.Asalways,Iexpressmydeepestgratitudeandaffectionto
myfamily,inparticularmychildren,KeithandJulia,whotellmeIamthe
best at whatever I do, even when I know this cannot be true.
vii
About the Authors
Keith Kumasen Abbott
The Things I Used To Do: Workshops Old and New
Keith Kumasen Abbott is an associate professor at Naropa University.
PublicationsincludethenovelsGush,RhinoRitzandMordecaiofMonterey,a
2009 reprint of Downstream from Trout Fishing in America and short story
collectionsHarumScarum,The FirstThing Coming and TheFrenchGirl.His
worksappearedintheinternationalanthologyRimbaudApr`esRimbaudand
RichardBrautigan:EssaysontheWritingandLife(forwhichhealsochaireda
symposium). Ziji Productions optioned his story ‘Spanish Castle’, and he
co-wrotethescreenplay.Hisworkistranslatedintofivelanguages,notably
booksinGermanandFrench,includinghisnovelRacer,whichwasshort-
listed for the Berlinale Film Conference in 2007. An ordained lay Soto
monk,hisZenartandcalligraphywereshownatSeoul’s11thInternational
Calligraphy Exhibition and Beijing’s China–USA Calligraphy Exhibition.
Mary Ellen Bertolini
Workshopping Lives
AssociateDirectorofWritingatMiddleburyCollege,MaryEllenBertolini
teaches, tutors writing, and directs the Peer Writing Tutor Program. She
has published on Frank McCourt and Sandra Cisneros and has given
presentations on Jane Austen, writing and healing, First-Year Programs,
blogging, and writing pedagogy. She has held positions as Director of
AcademicSupport,ActingDirectoroftheCenterforTeaching,Learning,
and Research and of the Writing and First-Year Seminar Programs. She
received a BA in English from College of New Rochelle (NY) and has
graduate degrees from Bread Loaf School of English (VT) and Wesleyan
University (CT).
Patrick Bizzaro
Workshop: An Ontological Study
Patrick Bizzaro has published nine books and chapbooks of poetry, two
critical studies of Fred Chappell’s poetry and fiction, a book on the
viii
AbouttheAuthors ix
pedagogy of academic creative writing, some textbooks, and a couple of
hundred poems in magazines. He is a frequent reviewer of his peers’
work in magazines like Asheville Poetry Review, North Carolina Literary
Review, and Appalachian Journal, among others. Bizzaro, first Director of
the University Writing Program at East Carolina University, is a UNC
Board of Governors Distinguished Professor for Teaching and ECU
Scholar–Teacher Award winner. He lives quite happily with Resa Crane
andtheirfive-year-oldson,Antonio,inIndiana,PA,whereheiscurrently
a Professor of English in Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s doctoral
programinCompositionandTESOL,afterretiringfromECU.Duringhis
last year on the ECU faculty, he received the ‘Outstanding Professor’
awardfromtheECUDepartmentofDisabilitySupportServices,theninth
award for teaching he has received during his career. His articles on
composition studies have appeared regularly in College English and
College Composition and Communication. His co-edited book on poet and
pedagogue Wendy Bishop is forthcoming from Hampton Press.
Mary Ann Cain
‘A Space of Radical Openness’: Re-Visioning the Creative Writing Workshop
Mary Ann Cain is Professor of English at Indiana University-Purdue
UniversityFortWayne,wheresheteachesfictionwritingandcreativenon-
fiction,alongwithotherwritingcoursesthatexplorethenexusofrhetoric
and poetics. Recent publications include a novel, Down from Moonshine,
stories in The Bitter Oleander, The Denver Quarterly, and The Hawai’i
PacificReview,amongothers.HerscholarlyworkincludesBreathingSpace:
Composing Public Spaces for Writing and Teaching (co-authors Michelle
Comstock and Lil Brannon) and Re-visioning Writers’ Talk: Gender and
Culture in Acts of Composing along with numerous articles and book
chapters that explore social, spatial, and material aspects of writing and
writing instruction.
Dianne Donnelly (Editor)
Introduction: If it Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix it, Or Change is Inevitable, Except
from a Vending Machine
Dianne Donnelly is the recipient of multiple teaching, scholarship, and
writing awards and haspublished articles andshort stories in a number
ofvenues.Sheisalsoafrequentpresenteratconferencesonthesubjectof
creative writing theory and pedagogy and on the emergence of creative
x DoestheWritingWorkshopStill Work?
writingstudies.Hermostrecentpublicationisanessayontheintersection
of creative writing and composition in the collection, The Teacher–Writer
inEnglishStudies:StartingwithWendyBishop.SheholdsaPhDinEnglish
and teaches creative writing at the University of South Florida and
Eckerd College.
Philip Gross
Small Worlds: What Works in Workshops If and When They Do?
Philip Gross is a writer of many parts – a poet and writer of thought-
provokingfictionforyoungpeoplewhohasalsopublishedsciencefiction,
haikuandschoolsoperalibretti,playsandradioshortstories.Hispoetry
‘The Wasting Game’ was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Prize and
collectedinChangesofAddress.HehaspublishedsixbookswithBloodaxe,
including The Water Table, The Egg of Zero, Mappa Mundi, and Changes
ofAddress:Poems1980–1998.Grosswasannouncedasthe2009winnerof
the T.S. Eliot Prize for his collection of poems, The Water Table. A new
collaboration,ISpyPinholeEye(withphotographerSimonDenison)isdue
from Cinnamon Press. He is the author of ten teenage novels – most
recently The Lastling and The Storm Garden. His collections of children’s
poetry include The All-Nite Cafe´ which won the Signal Award. He has
taught in universities for 20 years and since 2004 has been Professor of
Creative Writing at the Glamorgan University, South Wales.
Katharine Haake
Re-envisioning the Workshop: Hybrid Classrooms, Hybrid Texts
Katharine Haake is the author of a new collection of stories, The Origin
of Stars. Her prior works are a hybrid novel, That Water, Those Rocks,
andtheLATimesbest-sellingcollectionofstories,TheHeightandDepthof
Everything. Her first book of stories was No Reason on Earth (1986). Her
work has appeared widely in such journals as The Iowa Review, Witness,
OneStory,NewLetters,andTheSantaMonicaReview,andhasbeenfeatured
in the online journal, Segue, as well as in the LA’s New Short Fiction
Performance Series. Haake is a recipient of an Individual Artist’s Grant
from the Cultural Affairs Department of the City of Los Angeles, along
withdistinguishedstoryrecognitionsfromBestAmericanShortStoriesand
Best of the West, Editor’s Choice Award from Cream City Review, and an
honorable mention in the Foundation Award for Speculative Fiction. A
regularcontributortoscholarshipinthetheoryandpedagogyofcreative
writing, she is also the author of What Our Speech Disrupts: Feminism