Creative nonfiction is an important and integral part of the writing curriculum in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric. From helping students reflect on their experience and deepen their thinking, to encouraging them to engage the community and compose as public writers, creative nonfiction offers our students a uniquely vibrant, personal mode of writing that is engaged with developing a self-aware writer who actively explores the relationship between creativity and rhetoric. The PWR, leading the University of Colorado’s embrace of this “fourth genre,” is committed to developing this mode of writing as a conceptual and aesthetic form that is integral to writing on campus.
Hindsight
Hindsight began in 2013 as Journal Twenty Twenty. Originally created by students publishing their own Creative Nonfiction, then using blind review to publish work from other CU students, in its early years the journal was the only one in the country satisfying all these criteria:
- We publish only Creative Nonfiction—in all its forms, from Memoir to Portraiture, New Journalism to Critical Ethnography, Travel Writing to Humor and Satire, even Creative Nonfiction Comics and other Hybrid forms.
- All Editorial, Artwork, Layout and Design, Digital Production, and Journal Business is done by undergraduates.
- We began and continue publishing in Print.
- We began as an exclusively undergraduate-content magazine. (We now publish everyone from anywhere—excepting current CU teaching faculty.) And we continue to first-read all writing as anonymous submissions.
With our transition in 2021 to Hindsight, the journal is now a respected worldwide Creative Nonfiction publication, and we are growing online. In 2022, we launched a second title in conjunction with Mission Zero devoted to Climate Change, Changing Skies. And we now regularly appear at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs annual conferences, tabling both titles at the Bookfair.
Staff remain mostly undergraduates at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Interested students in all majors and at all levels can learn, without prior experience, how to publish a journal in print and online. Take the Digital Publishing Practicum (WRTG 3090-001) or an Internship (WRTG 2930 or 3930) to join the Hindsight staff, for 1, 2, or 3 Credit Hours. In learning to solicit good submissions, and then edit, publish, market, and advertise powerful Creative Nonfiction, students develop critical skills that translate to multiple majors, a variety of career paths, and strong resumes. Our multimodal journal extension online adds further to the digital literacy and rhetorical knowledge necessary to publish in print. Students can see our website and may reach current student Staff and Faculty Advisors through our social media or email to Faculty Advisor Dr. Jay Ellis.
Creative Nonfiction Events
