On Creative Writing

Graeme Harper’s book comes at the right time for the discipline of Creative Writing. It is a bold statement of the human-centred view of writing, in which nothing is alien to the writer at work or reflecting on that work: the practical, the personal, the intellectual and above all the unformed and the unfinished are all part of the reflection. There are new tools here to help writing students to connect the academic viewpoint to the true and secret lives of their own writing. It also widens the terms in which writing educators can pursue the debate with each other. Harper does the job with clarity and wit and, above all, good creative questions.

* Philip Gross, Professor of Creative Writing, University of Glamorgan, Wales. *

This book is an engaging attempt to explore a field of artistic enterprise from an angle that is very much often ignored. It is refreshing to see act/process/mysterious game (call it what you will) that we term Creative Writing discussed in such a thorough and rigorous manner.

-- John Weldon, lecturer in Professional and Creative Writing at Victoria University, in Text Vol 14 No 2 October