Don’t Write Alone | Writing Life

Why PhDs Need to Study Creative Writing

To reach audiences outside the ivory tower of academia, one must care about the storytelling as much as the sociology.

Don’t Look Up,

Inside Edition

other experts,

New York Times

The Latinos of Asia: How Filipino Americans Break the Rules of RaceGQColorlinesLos Angeles Times,New York Times, The AtlanticThe New Yorker

sentencesstorytelling

andandandNew York Times.The Stacks

Distinctionat all

The Latinos of AsiaWould a Filipino college student be able to understand this? Better yet, would my parents be able to understand this?

Creative writing has freed me. Memoirs were my blueprints to help navigate systems of power. Fiction helped me reimagine my future when the present felt unbearable. Poems shepherded me to—and through—unknowable things. Ultimately, creative writing has made me a better sociologist; the tools it offers me—dialogue, sensory detail, rhythm, pace, the speculative—means I can render the beautifully messy contradictions of the human condition, especially for those who are systematically dehumanized. Like Kate Dibiansky, I’ve found that research can save lives, so long as the rhetoric in which it’s packaged resonates with those who need to hear it the most.