The Creative Writing Program finds natural and favorable context amid the fine and performing arts; like our peers in Music and Visual Arts, we offer dynamic studio instruction. A writing studio, as opposed to a workshop, places emphasis on literary technique and process and practice. The Writing Studio is an active place devoted to isolating and performing the operative decisions in any poem or story or play that we study. We cultivate a laboratory atmosphere, where students can produce new work using generative prompts and exercises designed to bypass inhibition, to internalize the fundamentals, and to strengthen resourcefulness.
Our community is a special one, close and supportive, and collaborative particularly in the efforts necessary to operate and edit The Blue Pencil Online, a literary magazine of exceptional high school writing worldwide, a signature achievement at Walnut Hill. The faculty-student ratio is kept deliberately low in Creative Writing, and under the mentoring guidance of our faculty–prominent working poets, editors, writers, and playwrights whose books and other works are published and performed widely–our students routinely surprise themselves by their developing artistry. Their literary products are substantial, recognized frequently by the very top youth writing awards in the country, which is a testament to our abiding focus: to build sustainable practices for young writers.