Creative Writing: Embracing Unfamiliar Knowledge

Abstract

What can someone learn, if anything, by reading or writing fiction? If people can gain new knowledge by imagining, of what does that knowledge consist, and how can we characterize it? This reflection on SLSA creative writing sessions approaches these questions by considering the kinds of discussions that can emerge when writers read their work to literary scholars, scientists, and artists. To show how writers differ in their appeals to diverse readers’ sensory imaginations, the essay refers to stories by Jorge Luis Borges, Junot Díaz, and Lauren Groff. The author argues that if artists and scholars can approach each other’s work as alternate but legitimate knowledge-building processes, we may be better equipped to meet the many twenty-first-century challenges we face.