Smith Precollege Summer Programs – Creative Writing Workshop Recently Updated

Smith Precollege Creative Writing Workshop is a two-week program for high school students with strong interests in creative writing. With few writing programs that cater exclusively to students in high school, this program allows you to explore your writing in a creative and supportive environment. You will foster your love of writing in a variety of mediums.

All of our classes apply the design model to writing: Rather than trying to craft perfect texts, we teach an open, multidraft process that embraces the unpredictable that occurs when we stop trying to control our writing. So while you will learn how to edit your own and others’ work, our primary goal is for you to learn a powerful, flexible approach that eliminates writer’s block and gives you access to your full creativity.

High school students from around the world gather in person or virtually to hone their writing skills in a highly creative, but nonjudgmental, environment. There is something empowering about hearing your own lines being read in a supportive way that gives you a chance to let your full voice out. The equation is simple: you, your talent and what you want to write about. The sum total: Magic!

Instructors are published writers who have been trained in this methodology and who provide a supportive, strengths-based classroom environment. In addition to individual feedback from your instructors, you will also become part of an international writing community, as the program accepts students from all over the world.

Example course titles include:

• Making Poems
• You Are a Story: Crafting Real Life Into Fiction
• Writing Fantasy
• Intro to Screenwriting
• Playwriting

During the on-campus program, in the evenings, students can take part in activities such as open mic night and improv, or attend workshops on publishing, finding an agent and creating an author website.

At the end of the program, you will have the start of an online writing portfolio, an anthology with writing samples from all of the students and professional contacts in the literary world.