The Creative Writing Workshop in the 21st Century

Practical Strategies for a Modern Era

Adrian Markle, Marshall Moore, Sam Meekings

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2026
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350497405
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Teaching Arts & Humanities
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

A critical interrogation of the creative writing workshop model, this collection of essays provides practical suggestions for contemporary approaches to this contentious method and how it might be reimagined. Since the inception of the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1936, the workshop model pioneered there has become the bedrock of creative writing instruction around the world, with much existing scholarship on the subject rightly focusing on matters of inclusivity and social justice or dismissing the workshop altogether. With contributions from senior scholars in the field of creative writing pedagogy and authors ranging from the US, Australia and the UK to China, The Creative Writing Workshop in the 21st Century offers specific, actionable recommendations for ways the model can be reinvigorated. Covering topics such as module design, diversity and inclusion, facilitation and teaching style, assessments, internationality, and the integration of modern technology, each chapter surveys perspectives on the workshop and provides concrete strategies to help instructors and workshop facilitators update and bolster their pedagogical practice.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Introduction
• 1 Toward a New Literary Public: Reconfiguring the Creative Writing Workshop for Non-Majors
• 2 Designing and Running a UK Master’s Program in Creative Writing
• 3 Revising Purpose: How Workshop Can Create Supportive Communities for Young Writers
• 4 Weird in a Good Way: Helping Aspiring Writers Find Their People and Build Community
• 5 Against the Conveyor Belt: Narrative Medicine as Rehumanizing the Creative Writing Workshop
• 6 Varieties of Feedback with a Unifying Course Project
• 7 Failure and Workshopping: or Killing Butterflies in the Classroo
• 8 Creative Writing as Narrative Design
• 9 Generative AI in the Poetry Workshop
• 10 No Such Thing as a Final Draft: the Effects of Always Framing Student Work as “In Progress” and Never “Finished”
• 11 Getting Political with Craft
• 12 Wang Anyi’s Fiction Workshop: Basic Methods and Principles
• 13 Writers Get in Trouble: Encouraging Risk-taking Through Assessment Design in the Creative Writing Studio
• List of Contributors
• Index
• Imprint