Students are often told to produce something “original,” “novel,” or “innovative” in their academic writing—yet these expectations can feel daunting. Faced with longstanding scholarly conversations and the rigor of research, “originality” can feel like a demand to invent something entirely unprecedented. But what if academic creativity doesn’t require starting from scratch? What if, instead, it lies in reinterpreting, rethinking, and reimagining what’s already there?
Inspired by our very own Jordan Fraser Angel, this year’s theme, Inventive Interventions, explores this idea. We invite you to see academic writing not as a solitary act of invention but as a form of participation: stepping into an existing conversation with a fresh perspective, another possible question, or a surprising connection. By reframing academic writing as a space for creativity, we hope to show that interventions can be both rigorous and generative—grounded in the insights of others and yet alive with personal curiosity and voice.
This issue builds toward that vision through a deliberately structured progression. We begin with close-reading papers that reinterpret a subject—be it a text, a work of art, or any object that sparks questions—by attending to their subtleties and offering the writer’s unique angle. Next, we move into papers engaging with a specific theory or two, demonstrating how writers rethink their chosen topic with these theoretical frameworks in mind. The third section presents papers in dialogue with more expansive scholarly conversations as writers create their own shelves of curiosities within existing libraries of scholarly thought. We conclude with a section focused on reimagining academic creativity, featuring two pieces by Writing Center Fellows—including our very own Lucia Brown—that shed light on how to engage with open-ended assignments that especially foster student innovation. Throughout this issue, you’ll find models for all kinds of students—first-years in Writing Seminars, students in the HUM Sequence, juniors beginning Independent Work, STEM majors working on scientific research—because the Writing Lexicon truly spans across courses, disciplines, and class years alike.
Tortoise is unique in that we aim to emphasize the writing process as much as its “finished” product. Working closely with each writer, we intentionally crafted excerpts from their larger papers to highlight specific strengths, which are accompanied by commentaries from both the writers and the editors they collaborated with. These commentaries provide insight into each author’s writing process—their challenges, discoveries, takeaways—as well as the editor’s perspective, which draws on their own experience as a Writing Center Fellow and student. Our journal is both an anthology of exemplary student writing and a pedagogical resource to return to whenever a glimpse into another writer’s process might spark inspiration for your own. We hope this issue will inspire you to experiment with your own inventive interventions!
