Pen and Sword: Legal and Ethical Issues in the Creative Writing Profession

Who owns a story? What is your responsibility to yourself as a writer to your publisher, to your reader, and to the story’s community and subjects?

As writers, we encounter questions of ethical and legal concerns throughout our writing lives. Some of these questions fall within the realm of personal right and belief, and we make our decisions accordingly. Some fall within the realm of the community’s collective sense of responsibility and norm, and we make our decisions in relation to them. Some of these questions, such as copyright and protection of personality, fall within the realm of the public legal system, and our decisions are often proscribed.

How each writer navigates these questions inevitably differs. What is essential is that each writer learns how to constructively think through these questions, enter into these essential discussions, and become well-informed legally. In this course, you will begin to engage with the most common ethical and legal questions through lectures, discussions, and visiting authors who will speak about their relevant experiences.