SF Creative Writing Institute
Teen Creative Writing Summer Camp
Sign up for our week-long camp!
When: August 12-16, 2024 @ 12pm-5pm
Where: Harvey Milk Center for the Arts @ SF Creative Writing Institute
Why: Because you've been looking for a place to work on creative writing in a fun and welcoming community with other teens. And you love writing stories and poems!
Registration is limited!
Join us this summer! This summer is specially designed for teens age 13-17.
In this one week-workshop style summer camp, young writers will write stories, novel excerpts, nonfiction, and poems in a fun, inclusive environment.
Our goal is self-expression. Having fun with writing is the goal.
The workshop will culminate in a final reading and chapbook-style zine produced by the class. There will be an optional reading on the mic and final showcase that parents can attend on the last day.
This camp will be held at Harvey Milk Center for the Arts at Duboce Park in San Francisco. It is self-contained. We work with beginners all the way up to professional writers. We believe that the best stories come from the community.
If you're a teen, this camp is for you if...
- You find yourself making up stories and want to tell them.
- You love writing poetry, short fiction, or true stories.
- You would like expert feedback from a professional writer with a background as a college professor
If you're a parent, here's how creative writing helps your teen...
College Prep
Creative Writing feeds directly into academic skills.
Write Like You Talk
Writing like you talk will help you find your own unique voice and write from that place.
Building Skills
This camp helps build higher order thinking skills through storytelling and poetry.
Getting Feedback
Great writers learn by testing their ideas and reading their work out loud to an audience.
Technology & Arts
We will use computers to type up our work, and design a finished "chapbook" of our best work. This will include software and layout, and design skills.
Convenient Location
Located inside the Harvey Milk Center for the Arts.
Take muni to Duboce Park or easy white zone for drop-off in front.
Writing is a Process
We believe that trusting the writing process is the important part to creating great art.
Self Esteem
Being able to express yourself in writing, builds self-esteem.
Here's a little more about us.
San Francisco Creative Writing Institute started quietly by a college English instructor named Alexandra Kostoulas.
She loved teaching college English so she started teaching a workshop in San Francisco in 2012 called Method Writing--a community based creative writing program based on the work of one of her original mentors in Creative Writing--Jack Grapes.
She thought she would just teach it one time. People kept wanting to come back and take the workshop from her over and over again, again. After they kept coming back, they would ask her if she knew of any other teachers or courses like hers where they could deepen their craft.
In 2015, she formed the SF Creative Writing Institute and hired her friend and colleague, fiction writer Nick Mamatas and poet Hollie Hardy and the rest is history,
In 2017, our founder became a parent and decided, in 2023, to bring SF Creative Writing Institute to start working with K-12 students so we collaborated with the SF Rec and Park in their summer program through the Harvey Milk Center and Young People's Teen Musical Theater and in 2024 we began working with after school-enrichment programs at an elementary school in SFUSD.
Today SF Creative Writing Institute programing, events and workshops reaches about 600 people a year.
Our writers come from all walks of life, are all ages. Some have started as beginners. Others come to us as professionals looking to expand or change genres.
We believe that everyone has the creative spark inside them. Everyone can find their voice. Everyone can tell their story.
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