Abstract

The rise of digital publishing and the ebook has opened up an array of possibilities for the writer working with innovation in mind. Creative Writing and the Radical uses an examination of how experimental writers in the past have explored the possibilities of multimodal writing to theorise the nature of writing fiction in the future. It is clear that experimental writers rehearsed for technological advances long before they were invented.  Through an in-depth study of writers and their motivations, challenges and solutions, the author explores the shifts creative writing teachers and students will need to make in order to adapt to a new era of fiction writing and reading. 

Nigel Krauth’s Creative Writing and the Radical is itself a radical intervention in creative writing studies. Krauth gives an incisive account of the history of experimental fiction, and argues cogently for a multimodal, non-linear and technological approach to creative writing. This landmark book brings the creative writing classroom into the digital and multimedia era.

Nigel Krauth’s exploration of radical writing from the perspective of both writer and teacher afloat in the multimodal age is extraordinarily valuable — at once wide-ranging, historically and theoretically savvy, provocative, instructive, inspiring, and accessible. A must read for anyone interested in the challenges, opportunities, and attractions involved in composing the contemporary.

Would-be 19th-century visual artists rejoiced in the Salon des Refuses – the site where they could display work rejected by the establishment. Would-be 21st-century writers can rejoice in Nigel Krauth’s Creative Writing and the Radical, a celebration of the ‘resurrection of the author’ as off-the-wall creator.

Nigel Krauth is Professor of Creative Writing at Griffith University in Australia. He has published four novels, and co-authored a number of books for Young Adults. He is General Editor of TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses.