Stomping Ground

A stomping ground is a familiar territory, a hangout, a homage. And that's exactly how we want you to feel when you read this collection. We want the words to ring true, to make you feel like you are at home.

Some background on how this collection came to press...

The Creative Writing in the Community is a course at Ball State University. An immersive, service learning opportunity, English 409 students meet with young writers in the community to teach creative writing techniques and to write and create a collaborative text. These young community partners are in various schools throughout the greater Muncie community, including Burris Laboratory School, Daleville Elementary, Longfellow Elementary School, Royerton Elementary School, and Storer Elementary.

The objectives of the project and course include the enrichment of the creative writing major, through:
· engagement in the local community;
· through the scholarly study of a creative genre (memoir);
· through relevant essays about creative narrative nonfiction writing pedagogy;
· Through scholarly study about community engagement models; and
· through the use of critical and creative examinations of the student's own and collaborative work created for the class
The end product of these objectives results in a published anthology and celebration of the writing generated by both the university student and the young community writers in the greater Muncie community.
This semester, the students also engaged in the book publishing process, learning design, layout, and editing. We have created a new press for the course, 409 Press. And it is our hope that each year, additional volumes will be added.
Our essential and guiding element was that it is an honor to be trusted with someone's story. And our role was to honor our young community writer's voices so the rest of the world can hear the poignant, humorous, and brilliant wisdom that only young writers possess.
A discovery my Ball State students and I made during this semester is that young writers haven't learned to filter. They don't yet know what society teaches us about not sharing or revealing too much about ourselves. You ask them a question, and they will answer it with brutal honestly. You ask them to create, and they will conjure worlds and images we can't imagine. You ask them to tell you a story, and they will paint every sensory detail with their words.

It's beautiful. It's the thing we writers try to do. It's the thing we writing instructors want all of our students to do. Yet, with little coaching and little time for revision, our young community writers were able to achieve this. Ball State students only met with their individual writers for five or six short writing sessions, so the Ball State students had to quickly gain their young community writing partner's trust and design and deliver a prompt that the writers couldn't wait to write to.

And then we had the task of selecting and editing their work and revealing their published work in a final community ceremony.

The book's theme is based around a beautiful metaphor designed by Niki Wilkes, a student in the course. I can't wait for you to read more about how our writers learned to break ground, dig deep, and find treasure. Not only will you read works from the young community writers, but also responses and reflections from the Ball State Creative writing students who participated in the course.