S231. The Unbearable Too-Whiteness of Workshop

Room 515 B, LA Convention Center, Meeting Room Level
Saturday, April 2, 2016
1:30 pm to 2:45 pm

 

Continuing the discussion raised by Junot Díaz, who rightfully lambasted the whiteness of creative writing faculty, this diverse panel of teachers/writers addresses the implications of the traditional workshop’s cultural reproduction of whiteness and offers specific pedagogical approaches to disrupt dynamics entrenched by the very power structures in which the traditional workshop invests. The session’s goal is to critique norms with an eye toward progress, community, and workshop solidarity.


Participants

Moderator:

Joshua Robbins is the author of Praise Nothing. He is assistant professor of English and creative writing at the University of the Incarnate Word.

V.V. Ganeshananthan's debut novel, Love Marriage, was long-listed for the Orange Prize and named one of Washington Post Book World's Best of 2008. She is on the MFA faculty at the University of Minnesota.

F. Douglas Brown is the 2013 Cave Canem Poetry Prize recipient for Zero to Three. An educator for nearly twenty years, he teaches English at Loyola High School of Los Angeles, an all-boys Jesuit school. He is both a Cave Canem and Kundiman fellow.

Laura McCullough's books of poetry include Jersey Mercy, Rigger Death & Hoist Another, Panic, Speech Acts, and two hybrid creative nonfiction chapbooks. She has published several essays and memoirs. She is the editor of A Sense of Regard: Essays on Poetry and Race and The Room and the World: Essays on Stephen Dunn.

#AWP24

February 7–10, 2024
Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City Convention Center