Carl Vandermeulen is a generalist whose teaching has included journalism, photography, publication design, literature, teacher education, composition, rhetoric, and creative writing. Similarly, his writing ranged from Photography for Student Publications to studies of literature, rhetoric, communications, and teaching. He did not plan to write a book on creative writing pedagogy, but after he was caught off-guard by a poetry class that he had expected to go well, he had to understand why the opposite occurred. That research led to an article, and then to a survey of 150 CW teachers and interviews with dozens of respondents that provided much of the material for this book.