Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Literary Communities: Writers' Practices And Networks, Catherine Cole, Anitra Nelson

Catherine Cole

This paper discusses a new direction for research on creative writing: exploring the formative contexts within which writers develop, receive recognition and are celebrated, our approach centres on literary networks and activities that characterize well-recognised literary communities. By studying the UNESCO Cities of Literature network, our research aims to identify and analyse key formative experiences for contemporary creative writers, although in this paper we simply refer to one of those cities — Melbourne. We hypothesize that the notion of a ‘community of practice’ has potential to be a constructive way to interrogate writers’ practices within literary communities to inform arts …