Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning American novelist and short story writer Adam Johnson will deliver a short talk on the state of creative writing in the academy today from the perspective of a skeptic-turned-teacher. He will discuss his experiences as both a former student and current professor of creative writing, and he will highlight some of the contemporary challenges facing the discipline. One of the few rapidly growing areas of study in the Humanities today, creative writing as a field remains misunderstood by many, both inside and outside of the academy, and this presentation is an opportunity to shed light on the state of the discipline today. The talk will be followed by an extended Q&A hosted by James Shea, an assistant professor in the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing at HKBU.