Monday, April 13, 2009

Writing Centers and Creativity

If you work in a college (or high school) writing center, know someone who does, or refer students to writing centers, you may want a) to have your library order the following book [or purchase the book yourself], b) read the book, and/or c) tell others about it:

Creative Approaches to Writing Center Work, edited by Kevin Dvorak and Shanti Bruce. New Jersey: Hampton Press, 2008.

I was in on the beginnings of two writing centers, one at U.C. Davis and one where I teach now, so I have a certain fondness for writing centers in theory and practice, and I refer students to the one here all the time. Sometimes writing centers get exclusively (and falsely) associated with remedial writing and/or with narrowly defined academic writing. In fact, writers with basic compositional things to work on and writers working on traditional papers can indeed find assistance at writing centers, but they can also find help with poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. How to work with such writing is one topic this book addresses--among many others.

2 comments:

Frank Partisan said...

It's a difficult path, to get recognition and compensation, as a writer. I'm sure the centers are useful to serious writers.

svenole said...

I make a motion for "Father and
Son".