Feels Like Trouble: Provocations on Writing, Teaching & Power

In this paradigm-shifting collection of essays, award-winning writer and acclaimed writing coach Helen Betya Rubinstein troubles the pieties at the heart of writing and publishing to ask: How else could this be?

From a viral indictment of copyediting to a widely taught essay on reimagining the writing workshop, Rubinstein's iconoclastic takes reliably instigate controversy and conversation. Feels Like Trouble builds on these provocations, drawing on experiences in creative writing programs, one-on-one coaching sessions, and publishers' meeting rooms to ask how we might reorient our practices away from harm. Whether speculating on the relationship between "good grammar" and "good 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.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: University of New Orleans Press
Published: 10/20/2026
ISBN: 9781608014033
Pages: 292