Books on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Creative Writing

Adsit, Janelle, ed. Critical Creative Writing: Essential Readings on the Writer's Craft. Bloomsbury, 2019.

Adsit, Janelle. Toward an Inclusive Creative Writing. Bloomsbury, 2017. 

Adsit, Janelle, and Renée Byrd. Writing Intersectional Identities: Keywords for Creative Writers. Bloomsbury, 2019. 
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Alexander, Will. Singing in Magnetic Hoofbeat: Essays, Prose Texts, Interviews, and a Lecture, 1997-2007. Edited by Taylor Brady. Essay Press, 2012.

Ben-Oni, Rosebud, ed. On Poetics, Identity, and Latinidad: CantoMundo Poets Speak Out. Essay Press. 2017.

Black, Sheila and Bartlett. Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability. Cinco Puntos Press, 2011.

Crushway, Phil and Michael Warr, eds. Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin. Norton, 2016.

Danticat, Edwidge. Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work. Princeton UP, 2010. 

Hill, Gabrielle L’Hirondelle and McCall, Sophie. The Land We Are: Artists and Writers Unsettle the Politics of Reconciliation. ARP, 2015.

Gordimer, Nadine. Writing and Being. Harvard UP, 1995. 

Jones, Omi Osun Joni L., Lisa L. Moore, Sharon Bridgeforth, eds. Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic: Art, Activism, Academia, and the Austin Project. University of Texas Press, 2010.

Lee, Sherry Quan, ed. How Dare We! Write: A Multicultural Creative Writing Discourse. Modern History Press, 2007.

McCullough, Laura, ed. A Sense of Regard: Essays on Poetry and Race. U of Georgia P, 2015.

Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Vintage, 1992.

Muller, Lauren, and June Jordan. June Jordan's Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint. Taylor & Francis, 1995. 

Mura, David. A Stranger's Journey: Race, Identity, and Narrative Craft in Writing. U of Georgia P, 2018.

Oliver, Stephanie Stokes. Black Ink: Literary Legends on the Peril, Power, and Pleasure of Reading and Writing. Ink 37 (2018).

Philip, M. NourbeSe. Frontiers: Essays and Writings on Racism and Culture. Mercury P, 1992.

Rankine, Claudia, Beth Loffreda, and Max King Cap, eds. The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind. Fence, 2015.

Wang, Dorothy. Thinking Its Presence: Form, Race, and Subjectivity in Asian American Poetry. Stanford University Press, 2014.

Verduyn, Christl, ed. Literary Pluralities. Broadview Press, 1998.

Ward, Cynthia, and Nisi Shawl. Writing the Other: A Practical Conversation. Aqueduct, 2005.

Ziff, Bruce, ed. Borrowed Power: Essays on Cultural Appropriation. Rutgers UP, 1997.



A Few Essays
Ali, Kazim. “Addressing Structural Racism in Creative Writing Programs.” Writer’s Chronicle. October 2016.

Cooley, Nicole. “Literary Legacies and Critical Transformations: Teaching Creative Writing in the Public Urban University.” Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture, 2003.

Derricotte, Toi. “Baring/Bearing Anger: Race in the Creative Writing Classroom.” Writers Chronicle. October/November 1995.

Hegamin, Tonya. “Inclusion and Diversity: A Manifesto and Interview.” Journal of Creative Writing Studies 1.1. 2016.

Lim, Shirley Geok-lin. “Lore, Practice, and Social Identity in Creative Writing Pedagogy: Speaking with a Yellow Voice?” Pedagogy 10.1. (Winter 2010).

Mura, David. “Ferguson, Whiteness as Default, and the Teaching of Creative Writing.” Writers Chronicle (October/November 2016). 

Mura, David. “White Writing Teachers (or David Foster Wallace vs. James Baldwin).” Journal of Creative Writing Studies 1.1. (2016).

Naga, Noor, and Robert McGill. "Negotiating Cultural Difference in Creative Writing Workshops: Close Reading Translations and Interpretive Diversity." Pedagogy  18.1 (January 2018): 69-86.

Rankine, Claudia. “In Our Way: Racism in Creative Writing.” Writer’s Chronicle. October/November 2016. Web.

Teleky, Richard. “‘Entering the Silence: Voice, Ethnicity, and the Pedagogy of Creative Writing.” MELUS 26.1. Spring 2001.

​Xi, Xu. “Three Commandments for Writing about Race.” Brevity 53. Fall 2016.


See also bibliographies available at: De-Canon: A Visibility Project and Conscious Style Guide


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For Undergraduate Students

For Program Faculty

More Readings in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

The following books address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in ways that are immediately relevant to the creative writing classroom. 

• Adams, Maurianne, et al., Readings for Diversity and Social Justice.
• Ahmed, Sara. On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Duke University Press, 2012.​

• Anderson, Carol. White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide.
• Ani, Marimba. Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior.
• Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States.
• Brown, Michael K. et al. Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society.
• Case, Kim A., ed. Deconstructing Privilege: Teaching and Learning as Allies in the Classroom. 
• Case, Kim A. Intersectional Pedagogy: Complicating Identity and Social Justice. 
• Chaves, Alicia Fedelina, and Susan Diana Longerbeam. Teaching Across Cultural Strengths: A Guide to Balancing Integrated and Individuated Cultural Frameworks in College Teaching. Stylus, 2016.
• DeGruy-Leary, Joy. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.
• DiAngelo, Robin. White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism.
• DiAngelo, Robin. What Does It Mean to be White? Developing White Racial Literacy. 
• Doane, Ashley W. and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, eds. White Out: The Continuing Significance of Racism.
• Feagin, Joe, Hernan Vera and Nikitah Imani. The Agony of Education: Black Students in White Colleges and Universities.
• Grande, Sandy. Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought. Rowman and Littlefield, 2004.
• Kailin, Julie. Antiracist Education: From Theory to Practice.
• Kivel, Paul. Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Equity.
• Lipsitz, George. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness.
• Lubiano, Wahneema. The House that Race Built.
• Perea, Juan, ed. Immigrants Out! The New Nativism and the Anti-Immigrant Impulse in the United States.
• Rifkin, Mark. ​Settler Common Sense.
• Sensoy, Ozlem, and Robin DiAngelo. Is Everyone Really Equal?
• Steele, Claude. Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do.
• Sue, Derald Wing. Microaggressions in Every Day Life.
• Sue, Derald Wing. Race Talk: Conspiracy of Silence.
• Takaki, Ron. A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America.​

"[S]ocial justice is both a process and a goal. The goal of social justice is full and equal participation of all groups in a society that is mutually shaped to meet their needs. Social justice includes a vision of society in which the distribution of resources is equitable and all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure.

We envision a society in which individuals are both self-determining (able to develop their full capacities) and interdependent (capable of interacting democratically with others).

Social justice involves social actors who have a sense of their own agency as well as a sense of social responsibility toward and with others, their society, and the broader world in which we live. These conditions we wish not only for our own society but also for every society in our interdependent global community."
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-Lee Anne Bell, "What Is Social Justice?"

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Online Resources

 artEquity

Racial Equity Tools
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Showing up for Racial Justice Advocates Resource Page

Teaching Tolerance

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Creative Writing Organizations