Professor to publish international creative writing textbook

COLUMBUS, Miss. — Dr. Kendall Dunkelberg, director of creative writing at Mississippi University for Women, is set to publish the introductory college textbook, “A Writer’s Craft: multi-genre creative writing,” with London-based Palgrave Macmillan.

The book is scheduled to be released in August in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, India and other English-speaking countries around the globe.

“I never expected it to have this wide distribution,” said Dunkelberg of the time when he developed the textbook from notes he wrote for his creative writing class. “I had grown dissatisfied with the textbooks I had been using, and felt it was time to go out on my own.” Sensing a need for an affordable and evenhanded cross-genre textbook, he gave the manuscript to colleagues at other universities, who encouraged him to try to publish.

“It has been interesting working with a publisher in London and a production company in India,” added Dunkelberg. “One of the first requests by the publisher was to give the book a more international approach.” Though the spelling and style remain American, some cultural references and terms were replaced with ones that are more familiar to English and international readers.

The textbook begins with several chapters that invite students to explore techniques in creative writing that are used by writers in all genres, such as creativity, language, image, character and point of view. It then gradually moves into chapters focused on the genres of creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry and drama, ending with a chapter on new forms of digital literature that recombine these genres.

Now that the editing process is nearly complete, Dunkelberg will move forward with plans to develop a companion website with additional resources and discussions for students and teachers. He has presented creative writing pedagogy papers at the annual Association of Writers and Writing Program conference and frequently writes about teaching creative writing on his blog, kendalldunkelberg.com.

Dunkelberg has taught composition, literature and creative writing at The W for 23 years. He directs the low-residency MFA program, the undergraduate creative writing concentration and the Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium. He has published three books of poetry “Barrier Island Suite,” “Time Capsules” and “Landscapes and Architectures,” as well as a translation of the Belgian poet, Paul Snoek, “Hercules, Richelieu, and Nostradamus.”

He is a 2016 Artist Fellowship recipient from the Mississippi Arts Commission and has received two Fulbright grants to study and teach in Belgium and a Mellon Fellowship for his graduate studies in comparative literature at the University of Texas at Austin. “A Writer’s Craft” is his first textbook and is available at he.palgrave.com and at bookstores and online.