2023 Summer Creative Writing Intensives Photo Recap

It was a wild and wonderful Summer Creative Writing Intensive season with a sell-out crowd of amazing young writers enjoying laughter, community, literary adventures on and off-campus, Frisbee (of course!), and plenty of time for writing. Take a look at just some of what we did this summer. And don’t forget to read a sampling of this summer’s amazing student writing in the 2023 Writers Circle Journal, launching in September.

Morning Inspirations

Monday morning image inspirations.
Catch! It's Wiffle-ball "Add-a-Line." (See the little yellow ball over intern Ashley's head?)
Texting arguments. (We also do music prompts, but that's kind of hard to show in a photograph.)

Getting Started

Who is that person in the photograph? Write....
What are their circumstances? Their aspirations?
Old yearbooks are full of lives lived or forgotten.
Find someone that speaks to you...
...and begin.

Our Instructors Point the Way

Mike Bell teaching Crafting Imaginary Worlds: Sci-Fi/Fantasy (Week 1)
Libby Cudmore teaching Fun-Sized: Flash, Micro, and List Stories (Week 1)
Cat Doty teaching Exploring Poetry (Week 1 and 2)
Judith Lindbergh teaching Elements of Fiction (every week)
Michelle Cameron teaching Elements of Fiction (every week)
Mike Allegra teaching Horror and Dark Matters (Week 2)
Livvy Krakower teaching Writing Without Rules (Week 2)
Mike Allegra teaching Writing the Funny: Humor in Writing (Week 3)
Rebecca Kilroy teaching Retellings: Fairy Tales, Folktales, Myths & More (Week 3)
Colby Cedar Smith teaching Poetry as Narrative (Week 3)

Concentrating Inside and Out

Plotting and More Plotting

Listening, Questions, and Laughter

Freewrite and Focus

Freewrite means getting comfortable anywhere you like to write. On a desk...
Under a tree....
On a bench...
Or TWO on a bench!
On another desk...
Freewrite is the quietest time of day. We love the sound of those tapping keys.
Sometimes, our own writing surprises us!

Afternoon Group Writing Fun

Our fabulous interns lead Monday afternoon group writing and bonding activities.
Here, intern Prisha shares her group's "product review" of one of the weird objects we brought in. (Don't be fooled by her youthful appearance. That young woman is a rising junior at Yale!)
Intern Ellis and his group plans their "Literary Color Wars" rant.
Sharing the group's writing madness. (We like madness around here, as long as it's only on the page!)
Intern Jordan leads his peer critique group where the teens share and comment on each other's writing and the adults stay out of the way.
Ellis leads another Monday group write, this time "Write yourself out of danger!" Was it a desert island? Or were you stranded on the Moon?

Frisbee!

Intern Anjali gets the game going.
Great catch!
Ashley and Tim get into the game.
Scrum time.
And another great catch!
Ah, the old rivalry. Rebecca is visited by her arch rival Jake. It's like old times!

Wednesday Literary Adventures

At the Brooklyn Museum of Art, we explored the artwork and the storage rooms, but what we really wanted was to...
plan a heist!
We tried to blend it.
But it was kind of difficult!
After we made our plans, we got together to write...
rehearse...
and perform our dramatic heists, all of which ended up being rather comedic.
No artwork was damaged or stolen in the making of our skits, we promise!
Our on-campus adventure was a Time Travel Quest, starting with selecting props and costumes.
Our breakout groups planned characters which would be identified by the particular props passed to each group for a single scene in the larger story.
Character planning board.
Another character planning board.
We spread out across campus to explore our story's many settings.
Then we came back together to share all the ideas.
Finally, we got together to write.
And by the end of the day, the performance was on!
Thank you, co-director Michelle, for the fabulous blankets--no, togas!
At Wild West City, there was a mountain man.
There were horses.
Back at the ranch, we presented our own interpretations.

Reading and Sharing

We began our readings, as has been our tradition, in the spacious “Gathering Hall”.

But we soon realized that it would be more intimate, and less intimidating, in the smaller classroom.

Weekly Full Group Shots

Week 1
Week 2
Week 3

As we say every summer for the past eleven years, the Intensives would not have been possible without our truly incredible instructors and staff:

Our AMAZING INTERNS

Hannah (Weeks 1, 2 & 3!)
Bela (Week 1)
Ellis (Weeks 1, 2 & 3!)
Anika (Week 1)
Prisha (Weeks 1 & 2)
Anjali (Weeks 2 & 3)
Ashley (Weeks 2 & 3)
Jordan (Weeks 2 & 3)

Our TALENTED TEACHERS

Libby Cudmore taught Fun-Sized: Flash, Micro, and List Stories in Week 1.
Mike Bell taught Crafting Imaginary Worlds: Sci-Fi/Fantasy in Week 1.
Cat Doty taught Exploring Poetry in Weeks 1 and 2.
Livvy Krakower taught Writing without Rules in Week 2.
Mike Allegra taught Horror and Dark Matters in Week 2 and Writing the Funny: Humor in Writing in Week 3.
Rebecca Kilroy taught Retellings: Fairy Tales, Folktales, Myths & More in Week 3.
Judith Lindbergh taught Elements of Fiction all three weeks.
Michelle Cameron taught Elements of Fiction all three weeks.

Our UNDAUNTED DIRECTORS

Judith Lindbergh & Michelle Cameron

And REBECCA

who not only continued her role as Chaos Coordinator (“Program Coordinator,” for official purposes) and kept us steady and on task for the third year in a row, but she taught a fantastic class in Retellings in Week 3, and took up the Frisbee challenge one last time when arch-rival and former intern Jake visited us on the last day of the program. She even managed to find some time to write during her down-time!

All this awesomeness happened at Drew University, Madison, NJ

JOIN US in 2024!

Add your name to our email list to hear the minute we open registration.

See you next summer!

WHAT THEY LOVED BEST:

The kids actually like writing!

Just the sheer time spent being able to work on our individual pieces. Not only do I have a lot done on my story but also feel inspired to write more consistently!

The sparks of creativity and the structure that allowed me to write as much as possible.

I loved getting feedback on my work so I know what I have to improve upon.

Making friends and laughing.

Learning how to share my writing. I don't enjoy doing this, but I felt more comfortable as the week progressed.

WHAT THEY LEARNED:

I learned how to incorporate prompts and sensory specifics into my writing in Elements of Fiction.

I learned the importance of every word and sentence in your work in Flash and Micro Fiction.

We discussed important mood/world building, characters, and figurative language, in Sci-Fi/Fantasy.

I've never written Flash Fiction so this was a wonderful introduction to the genre! I loved how we worked on multiple different pieces, and how we were given a variety of creative and fun prompts throughout the class.

I learned a lot about different mythologies and the underlying storylines that unite or divide them in Retelling Myth and Fairy Tale, and it was just such a blast.

I loved responding to silly prompts in Humor Writing and seeing where that led us.The many possibilities of how a story could go were always amusing and I loved this chance to exercise my creative abilities.

Mr. Mike is hilarious and his Horror class was wonderful.

Cat is an amazing, passionate teacher and a great listener. I learned a lot about form during that Poetry class. She’s very sweet and supportive and let my heart bleed out into the page.

I learned in No Rules Writing how to take observations, or "steal" from reality, and turn them into insightful pieces.

I learned in Exploring Poetry that poetry can be weird and first drafts of poetry don't have to be good. This workshop really helped me discover a love for poetry!