Reading and Writing for Change - by Amelia Walker (Hardcover)

About the Book

An exploration of how creative writers and readers can recognize and resist processes of power in works of literature and their own writing to redress social injustices.

Book Synopsis

How can creative writers and readers be active agents in fighting social injustices?

With many writers oblivious to how their writing may actually uphold the very problems they seek to undo, this book both assists writers to identify the unrecognized connections between creative writing and processes of power, and equips them with the knowledge to produce works that project kindness and change. Beginning with an exploration of literature's connections with power and focusing on social voice, representation and whose stories are told, the book moves on to emphasize how stories are told, highlighting the political implications in textual presentation and prevalent standards for judging literary merit. Considering how power operates in, through and around stories at the level of form, structure, and narrative order but also through grammar, style, and figurative language, author Amelia Walker outlines strategies for analyzing texts that draw on theories from Indigenous studies, literary criticism, philosophy, cultural studies, education, journalism, and creative writing theory.

Featuring writing and reading activities that translate important theories into practical craft tools, Reading and Writing for Change builds ideas for writers and readers seeking to unbalance the dynamic between literature and power in support of change and to disrupt the status quo and imagine life differently.

Review Quotes

Amelia Walker's Reading and Writing for Change is a mercurial exploration of 'ethically viable writing.' The book draws on the relationship between walking and writing as exploratory methodology in order to approach radical ideas and advance boundary-breaking theories, looping back to a critique of canon formation. Walker's writing lifts the work toward a unifying ethical vision, a dream, but a dream simultaneously wrenched and weighted by its political embodiment. An authentic, urgent and essential voice for our times.
Dominique Hecq, International Poetry Studies Institute, Australia

In this timely and thought-provoking book, Amelia Walker problematises and disrupts western cultural assumptions about creative practice, persuasively arguing that it is only by embracing a more open and diverse understanding of what "creative writing" might mean that socially and politically engaged writers may begin to effect change.
Oz Hardwick, Professor of Creative Writing, Leeds Trinity University, UK

Rigorously methodical, & indispensably pertinent: Amelia Walker's Reading & Writing for Change is for any socially conscious writer seeking yet for their creative production to do somethingbeyond the merely decorative or decorous. Walker's exemplary book prods us back toward the (lifelong) conversations any serious writer will be having (with themselves), & offers new conceptual tools to help us answer more compellingly the questions, 'what am I doing?' & 'why am I doing it?'
Dan Disney, author of accelerations & inertias

About the Author

Amelia Walker lectures in Creative Writing at the University of South Australia, on Kaurna Yerta, Australia. Her research engages poetry and related creative practices to raise subjugated knowledges and provide new insights into social, cultural, political, and ecological challenges of our times. Her fifth poetry collection is forthcoming in 2023.