Scriptorium: Creating an Open-Access Creative Writing Journal in Brazil

Abstract

Since 2012, Creative Writing has been an official concentration within the Graduate Program in Letters at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS) in Porto Alegre, Brazil. PUCRS is still the only institution offering Creative Writing courses across all levels (undergraduate, MA, PhD, workshops, non-credit courses) in the country. Within this context, we created Scriptorium, our first Creative Writing Studies journal. Linked to the Graduate Program in Letters and EDIPUCRS (the university press), Scriptorium publishes articles on the creative process, literary translation, Creative Writing pedagogy, as well as fiction and poetry. In our editorial team, we have faculty members, graduate, and undergraduate students. Every article is peer-reviewed, and the journal is open access and published online. The present paper aims to offer an account of the creation of our journal, drawing from my experience as editor. I will share our publishing process, the challenges in the dialogue between Creative Writing and Academia in Brazil, and our views for the future of this kind of publication, hoping that our experience can prove useful to other researchers and institutions wanting to publish similar open access journals.