In this interview Dr. Bruce Ballenger and I discuss his career, his many textbooks on writing, his recent collaboration on an extensive study of the revision processes of advanced writers, and the challenges of balancing a career with a foot in multiple academic fields (i.e. composition and rhetoric and creative writing). Dr. Ballenger retired from teaching at Boise State University in the spring of 2018.

Despite claims that Creative Writing and Composition don’t speak to one another, this article finds that composition does borrow fictional craft elements and artistic tools. Moreover, these devices and tools show up in composition pedagogy in two ways: explicitly or implicitly. Many of the tools found come from fiction writers and poets, while some are from creative non-fiction writers. The article searches through 17 years of journal articles to show how artistic tools are discussed, used, and how teachers adopt or theorize them for writing students. What the essay proposes is a greater independence of the student writer as a harvester and user of rhetorical tools and to have students go past mere techniques into a more conscious use of the tools available to them outside of what the teachers offer, since there could be, and surely are, more options for analytical and artistic creation and criticism.