Place and the Writer

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 theauthor 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.

Creative writing viewed as part of the higher education sector is often considered to be one of the newer disciplines, though those of us who work in the field trace a lineage back at least to Aristotle. It is true, though, that only in recent decades has a major corpus of writing has emerged about this discipline; and truer yet that the majority of that literature reads the creative writing discipline from a Euro-American perspective. This new volume returns to an enduring concern in the sector – that of lore – with an obvious attempt to break the patterns of colonisation, and ensure intersectionality of voice and perspective. Contributors to this volume include key scholars from across the globe, who richly evoke, engage and critique the meanings of ‘lore’ in their various contexts, in some cases puncturing the ‘truths’ that thread through our discourses, in other cases extending and enriching understandings. What they show is the diversity of tradition, thinking, language, narrative structures, and identities; while at the same time confirming what Graeme Harper terms the ‘kinship in creative writing’. In all our differences, as Ross Gibson suggests, we creative writing teachers and scholars can still harmonize around the central tune being hummed by this difficult, compelling, lovely discipline.

• 1. Foreword by Marshall Moore and Sam Meekings2. Introduction by Graeme Harper (University of Oakland, USA)3. Toward a Unified Field: The Complications of Lore and Global Context by Stephanie Vanderslice (University of Central Arkansas, USA)4. Ukubhukuda: 1 Not Sinking in Language but Swimming by Bronwyn Law-Viljoen and Phillippa Yaa de Villiers (University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa)5. Workshopping to Better Writing and Understanding by Dai Fan and Li Ling (Sun Yat-Sen University, China)6. Protagonizing the L2: the Case for “Life Writing” in Creative Writing (SL) Contexts by Dan Disney (Sogang University, Korea)7. From the Shadow of a Myth to an Academic Subject: Teaching Writing from a Cognitive Base by Nora Ekstrom (University of Jyväskylä, Finland)8. Scenes of Judgement: Teaching Narrative Form in Literary Memoir by Jonathan Taylor (University of Leicester, UK)9. Tuition and the Individual Talent by Ross Gibson (University of Canberra, Australia)10. Creative Portfolios: Adapting AWP Goals for EFL Creative Writing Courses in Japan by Holly Thompson (Yokohama City University, Japan)11. Through the Looking Glass and Back Again: Writing Reflectively in Creative Writing by Maria Taylor (De Montfort University, UK)12. Teacher Lore and Pedagogy in Creative Writing Courses in Poland:A Brief History and Practices That Work by Hanna Sieja-Skrzypulec (Jagiellonian University, Poland)13. Historical and Pedagogical Dimension of Creative Writing in Greece: From Conventional to Open and Distance-Learning Education by Triantafyllos Kotopoulos (University of Western Macedonia), Sophie Iakovidou (Democritus University of Thrace), and Iordanis Koumasidis (Hellenic Open University) 14. An American Walks into a Bar (with her British Creative Writing Students) by Lania Knight (University of Gloucestershire, UK)15. Teaching Chinese-Language Creative Writing in Hong Kong: Three Case Studies by James Shea (Hong Kong Baptist University) 16. Playing Catch-Up: Finding a Voice for Creative Writing in Brazil by Bernardo Bueno (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil)17. Teaching Creative Writing in a Threatened Language by Rúnar Vignisson (University of Iceland)