A roundtable panel at the Associated Writing Programs Conference (now the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP)), led to the edited collection Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom: The Authority Project in which several contributors wrote about the theoretical and practical matters of teaching creative writing at college and graduate levels.

That book was a foundation for new growth in creative writing scholarship that has made our discipline stronger and more vibrant. Ten years ago, Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom (Leahy, 2005) launched the New Writing Viewpoints series, a bold and welcome move by Multilingual Matters that rode a wave of interest and discussion about creative writing, teaching and higher education. Other publishers, citing a rule of thumb that edited collections don't sell as well as single-author books, dismissed the manuscript because of its strength: a variety of perspectives and voices. Although my intention for that book was, as Stephanie Vanderslice writes in its afterword, to stake 'a vital claim for creative writing's place on the American academic landscape' (2005: 214), the book and series has spurred the emergence of what many scholars now call creative writing studies. The risk we all took 10 years ago paid off. Although that book and this new one have a clear American focus, they are both part of national and global discussions and changes in creative writing and higher education.

This new book takes the concept of an edited collection to its extreme, pushing the possibilities of scholarship and collaboration. All authors in this book are proof that creative writing matters and can be rewarding over the long haul, and that there exist many ways to do what we do as writers and as teachers.