In this article, I discuss how I pair the close reading of choice, high-interest, young adult literature (YAL) with the creative writing of young adult stories in a preservice English teacher preparation programme. This paired reading and writing is used to have preservice teachers (PSTs) engage with identities, communities, and stories of their prospective students to better prepare to teach reading in secondary contexts. At the same time it is used to engage students in creative writing of their own stories to learn to live and experience the writing they can ask students to do that is reflective of their own identities, communities, and the stories that need to be told. Two creative writing tasks are shared to show how creative writing attends to the needs of close writing and builds skills in PSTs even as they see the potential for writing to be more than what is traditionally expected.