Can Creative Writing Be Taught?
Jul 1st, 2009 | By Kevin | Category: Writting Articles/tips
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.
Tags: creative writing course, New Yorker, teaching creative writing
