PROGRAMS

This page offers information about prestigious writing programs for teens. Scroll down to view summer workshops, journalism camps, and online courses.

SUMMER WRITING PROGRAMS FOR TEENS

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92Y Young Writers Workshop

92Y’s Young Writers Workshop offers two rigorous workshops for driven, intellectually curious young people who want to explore and develop their writing in a supportive, focused environment in the middle of New York City. Young writers ages 12–14 meet for two-hour sessions to read across genres, discover what it’s like to read like a writer, and use what they’ve learned to tell their own stories. Writers ages 15–18 will explore a variety of voices, forms and styles; develop their form and craft through analysis and creative prompts; talk deeply and critically about their own work; and give smart and useful feedback on exercises and assignments. Each week will focus on a different genre (poetry, fiction, and nonfiction).

Alfred University Creative Writing Institute Virtual Camp

This four-day virtual summer writing program introduces rising high school sophomores, juniors and seniors to different genres, including poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction. Students read and discuss the work of established authors and participate in writing-intensive exercises and workshop sessions led by Alfred University faculty members. Each student will receive a certificate of completion as well as an anthology representing writing from all students attending the Creative Writing Institute Virtual Camp.

Bard College at Simon’s Rock Young Writers Workshop

The Young Writers Workshop is a three-week program for high school students. Unlike conventional workshops in expository and creative writing, Simon’s Rock’s focuses on using informal, playful, expressive writing as a way to strengthen skills of language and thinking. Out of these informal writing activities, using techniques of peer response, students develop more polished pieces, ranging from personal narratives to stories, poems, and exploratory essays.

Barnard College Young Women’s Leadership Institute (Writing & Literature Track)

Barnard’s three-week Young Women Writers Institute encourages students to develop trailblazing qualities and pushes them in new directions as they explore leadership through a feminist lens. Students will spend their mornings learning from Barnard instructors in courses such as “Writing Harlem: Identity, Image, and Ideology in the Capital of Black America,” “Dystopia in the Margins” and more, on the same campus where writers like Greta Gerwig, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jhumpa Lahiri got their start. Afternoons will be spent in intensives focused on developing a writing portfolio, getting published, and careers for writers.

Emerson College Creative Writers Workshop

Emerson’s Creative Writers Workshop is a five-week studio program for rising high school sophomores, juniors and seniors to develop their writing skills in a variety of media, including fiction, poetry, screenwriting, graphic novels and magazine writing. Participants attend college-level writing classes exploring these genres and write and present their own work, creating a final portfolio of their writing, contributing to the workshop’s anthology and presenting a reading for family and friends.

Fir Acres Writing Workshop

At Fir Acres Writing Workshop, sixty high school students from across the country come together for two weeks to write and join a community of writers on the beautiful wooded campus of Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. In daily workshops, participants study great writing and produce their own under the guidance of dynamic, thoughtful, published faculty. At night, participants gather to socialize, meet and hear from distinguished visiting writers, and work on their own poetry, fiction, and creative prose. The Workshop’s mission is to provide a high-caliber, pre-collegiate, creative educational experience to bright, inventive, and passionate high school students.

Interlochen Summer Arts Programs

Each summer, aspiring young writers from all over the world come to Interlochen to hone their craft. They will study and create poetry, fiction and plays, working under the apprenticeship of professional writers and alongside other students who share their passion for writing. Students can apply to the three-week creative writing program or one-week programs in novel writing or performance writing and spoken word poetry.

Iowa Young Writers’ Studio

Students at the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio’s Summer Residential Program spend two weeks living the writing life in Iowa City, Iowa, a mecca for creative writers. Students take core courses in fiction writing, poetry writing, or creative writing (which includes some combination of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction) with teachers who are students or graduates of the renowned Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Students in the Summer Residential Program share their writing with teachers and peers, receive constructive critique, participate in writing exercises and activities, and attend readings and literary events. A key goal of the Summer Residential Program is to bring adolescent writers together to appreciate and celebrate all that they have in common, and to welcome them into the larger community of writers in Iowa City and beyond.

Juniper Online Institute for Young Writers

Over the course of on or two weeks at Juniper, high school students find access to the writer’s life. Students will share their work and engage with their writing community from morning Craft Sessions to the afternoon Writing Labs, early-evening readings, and Writer’s Life talks. Juniper’s online curriculum is synchronous, dynamic, and participatory.

Kenyon Review Young Writer Workshop

Young Writers is an intensive two-week workshop for intellectually curious, motivated high-school students who are eager to develop their creative and critical abilities with language—to become better, more productive writers and more insightful thinkers. Writers discover what they want to say—their ideas, images, narrative direction—in the act of writing (and rewriting). At Young Writers, students write to explore ideas, then develop those ideas through further writing. Because good writers are also avid readers, students read short stories, poems, and essays to discuss, write about, and use as inspiration for their own work.

New England Young Writers’ Conference

The New England Young Writers’ Conference (NEYWC) at Bread Loaf is a four day writing-focused workshop for high school students in New England and from around the country. The long weekend is packed with writing seminars, workshops, readings, and opportunities to meet fellow young writers.

Putney Summer Arts

This four-week program offers a variety of classes across all forms of art. Workshops are designed for students at all levels of experience and focus on each student’s individual trajectory. Students select two workshops as their main focus, and each workshop meets for three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon. In writing workshops, students will work across genres to explore how are characters formed, what makes them work, what’s at stake, what choices and risks might they take. They’ll also think about how to make meaning of place, using the environment and the landscape of memory in their explorations.

Sarah Lawrence College Writer’s Village

Students in Writer’s Village will participate in two daily writing workshops: fiction and poetry, each led by members of Sarah Lawrence’s celebrated writing faculty or other published authors who have taught at the college level. Readings, craft talks, and generative sessions are also part of the program and are designed to supplement learning in the classroom. Students work together alongside their instructors to improve each other’s writing, explore their passions and deepen their appreciation of craft. Together, students produce an anthology of pieces written in the program and create a literary community that will last into the future.

Sewanee Young Writers’ Conference

This two-week program offers specialized workshops in fiction, poetry, playwriting, and creative nonfiction to students in grades 10–12. In workshop, students will read and discuss the works of great authors and try to apply their lessons, free-write and write from prompts, and, above all, read and respond to the work of their peers. Young writers arrive with varying levels of experience, but nearly all of them leave with a portfolio of which they can be proud.

Susquehanna University Summer Writers Workshop

An exciting weeklong experience, this workshop provides America’s most talented high school writers with the opportunity to work in intensive, small-group workshops led by nationally recognized authors. Classes are limited to 15 students to ensure close supervision and individual conferencing.

ADDITIONAL SUMMER PROGRAMS

Additionally, here are some specific schools/organizations that may offer summer writing programs for high school students (check individual sites for the most current information; scroll down for programs specifically focused on journalism):

OVERSEAS PROGRAMS

SUMMER PROGRAMS IN JOURNALISM

ONLINE PROGRAMS

Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program

The Adroit Journal’s Summer Mentorship Program is an entirely free and online program that pairs experienced writers with high school and secondary students (students in grades 9-12) interested in learning more about the creative writing processes of drafting, redrafting and editing. The 2020 program will cater to the literary genres of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. The aim of the mentorship program is not formalized instruction, but rather an individualized, flexible, and often informal correspondence. Poetry mentorship students will share weekly work with mentors and peers, while prose mentorship students will share biweekly work with mentors and peers.

Iowa Young Writers’ Studio

The Iowa Young Writers’ Studio offers online courses for high school students independently of the summer residential program in creative writing, fiction writing and poetry writing. All courses will be taught by graduates of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The courses will run twice a year for six weeks (January–February and June–August). The online courses will require approximately three hours of engagement per week, which will include writing assignments, reading assigned materials, critiquing classmates’ writing, and participating in online discussions. The courses are asynchronous, meaning that students can complete the weekly assignments and post in the discussion forums on their own schedule in their free time. Students who complete the course and meet all requirements will receive one college credit from the University of Iowa.

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