STEP THREE: Prepare for your first braided essay
Imagining a Poethical Classroom by Erica J. Kaufman Adviser: Professor Wayne Koestenbaum This dissertation begins at the crossroads of three fields—creative writing, contemporary poetics, and composition studies—and attempts to unite what is normally kept separate: the teaching of freshman composition and contemporary poetry. It is rooted, then, in the following anomalies: few students (unless they are English majors) encounter contemporary poetry; and few living poets (who often earn their livings as adjuncts, teaching composition) ever engage in a conversation about composition pedagogy. Fewer still teach the kind of poetry they write. Through a qualitative study of student writing in composition courses, this project investigates how encouraging students to engage with this form of experimental poetry results in unsurpassed growth in critical writing and thinking skills, as well as a shift in how students own and value language. I take poet and theorist Joan Retallack’s idea of “...
Drawing on sociocultural perspectives, this case study investigated ways that youth write, read, and critique poetry in an online affinity space. Specifically, it used a thematic analysis of interviews, a linguistic analysis of online feedback mechanisms, and poetic analysis to gain insight into how four young adults engaged with poetry in Figment. Findings indicate that adolescents adopted the identity of poets, followed role models for creative inspiration, and participated in the peer review process. In addition, there was a difference between conceptualization and the reality of the constructive feedback. This study broadens scholarly understanding about adolescent online poetic literacy, with the potential to inform teaching praxis. Our group, which we have named Fierce For One Another, is sharing one of our many braided essays – Limned. We have many braided essays; enough to fill a beautiful woven book of feminine voice and experience. We did this through a process of discovery. Referred to as a "braided essay," this work juxtaposes a story of place, a story of a research topic, and personal stories in a braided fashion, bringing emotion and feeling to each page. Tajja Isen is the author of the essay collection SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDSand the forthcoming memoir TOUGH LOVE. She is the former editor-in-chief of Catapult Magazine and is currently the interim editor-in-chief of . She is also a contributing writer for , where she writes a column on arts and culture.
To register for “Beyond the Braided Essay,” donate to (suggested donation $60 USD / 56 EUR, please donate more if you can!) then fill out the . Incorporating digital media into creative writing classes is both an exciting and daunting concept for many teachers. Researchers have pointed to the increasing demand for such courses as definitions of what can be considered "creative writing" continue to expand beyond the page. However, there are still comparatively few established methods for introducing new technologies into the creative writing classroom, and for some teachers it remains an intimidating challenge. Writer and teacher Christina Clancy (166) states that, as storytelling continues to evolve, "I didn't want to be left behind. And I didn't want my students to be left behind, either. Or, rather, I worried my students were already "there" … I wanted to embrace multimodal forms of writing, but I lacked confidence." Creative Writing in the Digital Age: Theory, Practice, and Pedagogy offers many potential jumping-off points for creative writing instructors who are considering how to integrate digital media into their pedagogy in a meaningful way. The authors of the 14 essays in the collection describe and reflect on projects that instructors are invited to experiment with in their own classes. Ample practical details and examples are provided for the reader to replicate the projects if they choose, mostly without the need for extensive technical knowledge. The essays cover an impressive range of media and software that can be combined with more traditional literary studies, ranging from posts on social media such as Twitter and Facebook to digital storytelling or video lectures made with iMovie and Windows Media Maker, to interactive fiction programmed with Inform 7 and Twine. Such projects are clearly described, with valuable suggestions about how to implement them and useful resources at the end of each essay. In “Beyond the Braided Essay: Reworking our Sources in Creative Nonfiction” participants will learn different ways of incorporating external sources—research, cultural objects, reportage, literary texts—into personal nonfiction. The aim will be to think of more surprising and dynamic ways to build out the essay than the classic section break or braided structure.
What Is a Braided Essay in Writing? - Writers Digest
This case study describes the creation of a digital multimodal poem by Mara, a preservice English Education teacher at a large state namesake university located in the Southeastern United States. Drawing on sociocultural perspectives broadly and New Literacies Studies specifically (Gee, 2012; Lankshear & Knobel, 2003; The New London Group, 1996), this study uses multimodal discourse analysis (Jewitt, 2006; Lemke, 1998; O’Halloran, 2009) as a tool to analyze how one preservice teacher’s multimodal composition affected her concept of new literacies. To investigate what Mara learned through the multimodal composing process, the authors analyze three sources of data: a) Mara’s multimodal composition, b) Mara’s written reflection about her composing practices written immediately after she had created her multimodal composition, and c) a ninety-minute interview with Mara using photo-elicitation techniques. Findings indicate that multimodal composing practices can potentially take advantag...
“The Babysitter” by Anton DiSclafani: Writing the Braided Essay
In this article, the authors engage the theoretical lens of multimodality in rethinking the practices and processes of composing in classrooms. Specifically, they focus on how learning new composing practices led some fifth-grade students to author new literate identities-what they call authorial stances-in their classroom community. Their analysis adds to the current research on the production and analysis of multimodal texts through an analysis of the interrelationships between multimodal composing processes and the development of literate identities. They found that by extending the composing process beyond print modalities students' composing shifted in significant ways to reflect the circulating nature of literacies and texts and increased the modes of participation and engagement within the classroom curriculum. These findings are based on an ethnographic study of a multimodal storytelling project in a fifth-grade urban classroom. Downloaded from Vasudevan et al.
How to Write a Braided Essay: Easy Steps & Examples - Wr1ter
Fitzgerald bolsters her discussion with lots of examples of braided structure from both fiction and nonfiction: “I most often see the braided form in books, rather than short pieces, because it’s harder to recognize the shape (which relies on repetition) in a short piece.” Finally, she includes a list of books, mostly fiction, that participants in one of her writing workshops suggested might be examples of braided structure.