Manolis, Argie. Writing the Community: Service Learning in Creative Writing. Leahy, Anna, Ed. Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom.

This is an interesting chapter that might help writing instructors discover how to get their students to think more in terms of audience, as well as how writing influences a community (which is about the same thing, I guess). Manolis states, "As an MFA candidate, I learned that becoming a writer with a capital W meant mastering the craft of a particular genre. In workshop, we focused on craft, rarely discussing what work our poems or stories might do in the world ... When I began to teach creative writing as a graduate student, I discovered how complicated it was to discuss audience and purpose in class" (141).

Manolis decided to have the writers talk to senior citizens in a nursing home and to help them write their stories, then read them back to them. It's an interesting project -- one that might work well in a multi-genre class, or something I might incorporate in my current intro to CRW class, because it helps students understand theme and source. A focus on craft without also considering audience can cause "a disengagement with the audience or readers of the work and, with it, a confusion about the purpose of the work and (the teacher's) responsibility as a writer" (143).