Establishing Creative Writing Studies as an Academic Discipline

This is a stunning challenge to MFA Programs! While critiques to the workshop method have been commonplace over the past decade, Donnelly provides a compelling argument for the creation of a new academic discipline: Creative Writing Studies. Bringing intellectual rigor to creative writing programs will do more than provide a seat at the table of literary critics and composition scholars: it will reinvigorate the workshop method and creative writing classroom. This is a must read book for anyone serious about teaching writing.

-- Joseph Moxley, Editor, Creative Writing in America

In a welcome addition to the field of creative writing studies, Dianne Donnelly has examined the theoretical bases of the prevailing pedagogies within the discipline. This book should be required reading for courses on creative writing pedagogy; for advanced students who hope to become academics in the field; and for those concerned with the future of creative writing as an academic discipline.

-- Nigel McLoughlin, University of Gloucestershire, UK

Dianne Donnelly does a service to scholars in English studies by tracing in this important book the growth of creative writing scholarship, including relevant work by others alongside her own important investigation into the workshop.

-- Patrick Bizzaro, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, USA

The book is well researched. Donnelly offers a measured and cogent contribution to what I would prefer to call the emerging discipline of writing studies. I recommend it to all teachers of writing.

-- Jeremy Fisher, University of New England, Armidale * TEXT, Vol 16, No 2, October 20