Feels Like Trouble: Provocations on Writing, Teaching & Power

By: Rubinstein, Helen Betya

In a paradigm-shifting collection of essays, veteran professor and acclaimed writing coach Helen Betya Rubinstein troubles the pieties at the heart of writing courses and publishing institutions to ask: How else could this be?

Rubinstein's iconoclastic takes on writing and teaching--including a viral indictment of copyediting and a widely taught essay on reimagining the creative writing classroom--have spurred conversation for years. Feels Like Trouble builds on these provocations, drawing on experiences in publishers' meeting rooms, professors' offices, and creative writing programs to ask how we might reorient these practices away from harm. Whether speculating on the relationship between "bad grammar" and "bad taste," casting a critical eye on the ubiquitous "compliment sandwich," or demonstrating how the shared experience of an MFA program reverberates differently across twelve classmates' lives, these playful and useful essays will challenge readers' assumptions about what "good writing" means, and reinvigorate any writer, teacher, or editor's practice.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1608014037
• ISBN13: 9781608014033
• Release Date: October 2026
• Publisher: University of New Orleans Press
• Length: 300 Pages