We are in one of the most politically tumultuous times in decades. People are struggling to make sense of the daily news. One of the best tools for education, issue engagement, and advocacy is creative writing. Making a generalized political issue a personal one by zooming in on individual experience using artful language and narrative moves social issues out of the intellectual realm into the emotional realm for a reader. Moving readers emotionally through artful writing can be much more powerful in changing hearts and minds than stating the facts. In this lecture, we’ll discuss how we can use our creative writing to advocate for social or political issues, explore examples of best practices, and engage in dialogue with the audience.

Mieke Eerkens’ writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, Catapult, Los Angeles Review of Books, PANK, Guernica, and Creative Nonfiction, among others. All Ships Follow Me, a book about her parents’ experiences in WWII that uses personal narrative to illustrate the issue of transgenerational war trauma, was released in 2019 by Picador/Macmillan. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from the University of Iowa, and she has taught for the University of Iowa, UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, and Leiden University. She is working on a memoir about her younger years traveling with the circus.