The Creative Writing Workshop in the 21st Century: Practical Strategies for a Modern Era

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, Workshopping 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.

Adrian Markle is Lecturer in Creative Writing at Falmouth University, UK. He has a PhD in English by Creative Practice from the University of Exeter and a Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. He is the co-author of a chapter in the pedagogy text The Power of Storytelling in Hong Kong Education (2024) as well as several short pedagogy essays. He is the author numerous short stories and the novel Bruise 2024).

Marshall Moore is Course Leader and Senior Lecturer in the School of Communication at Falmouth University, UK. He is the author of several novels and collections of short fiction, the most recent being Inhospitable (2018). With Xu Xi, he is the co-editor of the anthology The Queen of Statue Square: New Short Fiction from Hong Kong (2015). He holds a PhD in creative writing from Aberystwyth University, UK, and his current research focuses on the disconnects between the publishing industry and the academy, and on the mythology and lore that surround creative practice and pedagogy.

Sam Meekings is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Northwestern University in Qatar. He is the author of Under Fishbone Clouds (2011, called 'a poetic evocation of the country and its people' by the New York Times), The Book of Crows (2012), and The Afterlives of Dr Gachet (2018). He has a PhD in creative writing from Lancaster University, UK, and has taught writing at NYU (Global Campus) and the University of Chichester, UK. He researches issues of identity in grief narratives, and the practices and processes of digital storytelling.