Story by Emily Schauer
Illustration by Chloe Howell
One of the many great things the University of Idaho has to offer is a wide range of clubs pertaining to all kinds of interests. Something that may be more unique than many suspect is the Creative Writing Circle. From October 18th to the 20th of this year, Tori Rowles, Dylan Reynolds, and Jade Todd—all Writing Center employees and students who run the Creative Writing Circle—traveled to The National Conference for Peer Tutoring in Writing in Tacoma to present their findings on how to invite creative writing into the Writing Center. I got the opportunity to speak with Rowles and Reynolds, which allowed me to learn more about this event.
The National Conference for Peer Tutoring in Writing, or the NCPTW, is one of the largest conferences for Writing Centers in the country. Rowles said that there were likely around 200 Centers represented at the conference, from states including Pennsylvania, Texas, Florida, New York, Utah, Nebraska, and more. Out of those, Rowles and the others were among the few who presented on Creative Writing circles within an academic writing environment. Although the concept of creative writing circles doesn’t originate in Moscow, or at UI,
…it is incredible that out of the many Centers present, UI was the only one that discussed how to implement creative writing into an academic writing-dominated space.
Rowles, Reynolds and Todd started their presentation by working to define “creative writing” against “academic writing,” then moved to explain the practices that currently exist around working with creative writing and its importance to not only the Writing Center, but the student body as a whole. They discussed the graduate literary journal, Fugue and Thistle, which is Fugue’s undergraduate counterpart. They also introduced the Creative Writing Circle, discussing why it had been established, the effects it has had on the Writing Center and the benefits of facilitating a student-led community for creative writing. Within that discussion, they talked about the efforts that had been taken to keep it going: from taking it out of retirement in years past, to advertising through flyers and a website, to the establishment of the Discord server and how that has increased the number of people to work with and engagement outside of when the Circle meets. The panel they gave was what is known as a Roundtable, meaning instead of simply a lecture-style presentation, theirs was part presentation and part discussion. Also, Rowles said they wanted to leave discussion open to the audience to find out what others were doing at their Writing Centers and universities; whether others have done anything similar before and any potential questions about the process and experience of inviting creative writing into the Writing Center. Fortunately, and surprisingly, the turn-out was higher than expected. Given that their presentation was on the last day of the conference, after many people had gone home, it was expected that attendance would be low. However, Rowles said that they had a productive conversation regarding creative writing in an academic writing setting, and some people even asked for their information and wanted to exchange resources—something Rowles said she hadn’t seen before in other events she had attended.
In a college town such as Moscow, writing often goes underappreciated, overshadowed by football games and festivals and other big, crowd-drawing events. Rowles, Reynolds and Todd proved that advocating for creative writing within the Writing Center and the student body in general is very important. Artificial intelligence is rapidly growing in popularity in many aspects of day-to-day life, and it had its place among the presentation topics at the NCPTW to highlight this trend. Reynolds said that it is important to challenge higher education institutions to better understand and appeal to creative drive within their student population. By incorporating creative writing into the Writing Center—a resource made for students and used by many—it opens doors to students in the hopes of promoting a diverse student body that feels confident in and proud of their creative accomplishments.