Keywords in Creative Writing

by Wendy Bishop, David Starkey

Wendy Bishop and David Starkey have created a remarkable resource volume for creative writing students and other writers just getting started. In two- to ten-page discussions, these authors introduce forty-one central concepts in the fields of creative writing and writing instruction, with discussions that are accessible yet grounded in scholarship and years of experience. Keywords in Creative Writing provides a brief but comprehensive introduction to the field of creative writing through its landmark terms, exploring concerns as abstract as postmodernism and identity politics alongside very practical interests of beginning writers, like contests, agents, and royalties. This approach makes the book ideal for the college classroom as well as the writer’s bookshelf, and unique in the field, combining the pragmatic accessibility of popular writer’s handbooks, with a wider, more scholarly vision of theory and research.

Genres: Writing

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 2006

Reviews

[Laurel Perez · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will not tell you that this is a book that should be read cover to cover carefully, but I will tell you that skimming through for keywords that you or a CW student might like to know more about is worthwhile. Some of the keywords in this book seem to be for a very, and I mean very wide audience, while others make such perfect sense. I appreciated this kind of dictionary that I could flip through and learn a few things. I know that this will be a text I may copy for students in the future.