Writing and Health Care

Janelle Adsit’s research offers valuable insights into the field of creative writing studies, particularly by highlighting its intersections with writing therapy, art therapy, narrative medicine, and related areas. Her work reveals the unique contributions that writing can make toward personal growth and physical and mental well-being—a dimension that is increasingly prioritized by Chinese researchers in creative writing. Adsit’s research challenges the notion of writing as an exclusive domain of “Romantic genius,” instead presenting it as a potential inherent in all individuals. From her findings, we can infer that the communal and urban practices of creative writing serve as transformative literary actions, fostering creativity and facilitating meaningful social engagement. * Weidong Liu, School of Humanities, Wenzhou University, China *In Writing and Healthcare: Creative and Critical Approaches, Janelle Adsit offers helpful resources for those not only in writing or health professions, but also those allied across family and community health, health humanities, arts in medicine, global public health, and more—using critical and thoughtful pedagogies to address health’s wholistic nature alongside the urgency to address global health inequities. Learners and teachers along a spectrum will benefit from this book, allowing sincere dialogue to occur across disciplines, geographies, institutions, and communities, toward more inclusive understandings of healing and its related professions. * Robin M. McCrary, Associate Teaching Professor, Syracuse University, USA *

Janelle Adsit is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, USA. She is editor of the anthology Critical Creative Writing; co-author of Writing Intersectional Identities; and author of Toward an Inclusive Creative Writing (Bloomsbury, 2019). She also has written a book of poems titled Unremitting Entrance (2015). In the community and with her local Hospice, Adsit co-facilitates writing workshops that address stress, pain, and grief. As an extension of these workshops, Adsit’s research is located within the fields of Arts in Health and Narrative Medicine.