ABC Writers Network » New Yorker

Can Creative Writing Be Taught?

Kevin — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:48:04 +0000

Can creative writing be taught or is it something that you have within yourself? That’s a question I hear new want-a-be writers ask all the time.

For those interested in the debate about whether creative writing can be taught or not, and the effectiveness of such courses, there is a fascinating (but very lengthy) overview of the impact of such courses on the American writing landscape at The New Yorker. Lois Menand, himself the product of a creative writing course (an experience he says he would not trade for anything) draws on Mark McGurl’s The Program Era : Postwar Writing and the Rise of Creative Fiction . This book is also reviewed at Conversational Reading where Andrew Seal finds it :

… a book that is very likely to matter, and a book that is very likely to lead to some very exciting and productive conversations about how American literature should be mapped and how it should be read—and written.