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The CSSSA Creative Writing Program offers highly personalized and interactive workshops for approximately seventy gifted and motivated young writers. A faculty of four professional writers guides and instructs students in the techniques of fiction, poetry, and screen and play writing. The curriculum has seven basic components:
Core Class
The Core Class is a departmental writing workshop that meets four mornings per week. In this class Creative Writers develop the skills and tools needed for all genres of writing. They learn techniques of character development, plot, dialogue, narrative, voice and setting. Poetic forms, experimental writing and elements of screen and play writing are also practiced.
Focus Section
Each Creative Writer chooses a Focus Section which meets four afternoons each week. These workshops are designed to provide in-depth study of a particular genre of writing. Focus Sections on Poetry and the Poetic Voice, Visions of Childhood (short story), the Art of Making Scenes (scriptwriting) and Elements of Fiction are offered.
Independent Collaborative Project
All Creative Writing students are required to design and carry out an independent collaborative project involving a student from one of the other departments at the school. The collaborative encourages the exploration and merging of two disciplines, enabling the writer to experience the creative processes of another artist. The writer will recruit an actor, animator, dancer, musician, filmmaker or visual artist, and together they will develop and present a work, which could be anything from a film to an art exhibit to a performance event, in the latter half of the summer session. Sometimes these projects are finished to a high degree of professionalism, and sometimes they are interesting works-in-progress. The aim is not to create a masterpiece, but to examine artistic collaboration.
Discussions and Presentations
Published writers and select panels are invited to CSSSA for discussions and presentations. Some of the guests who visited the Creative Writing Department in recent years include California Poet Laureate Al Young, Novelists Maria Dhavana Headley, The Year of Yes, and Iris Rainier Dart, Beaches and other novels; screenwriters Pam Wallace, an Academy Award winner for the screenplay for Witness, and Mike Shiffer, who wrote the screenplays for Colors and Crimson Tide; renowned poets Lewis MacAdams and Mario Ellis Hill; and Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and playwright Jules Feiffer. CSSSA Creative Writers have the rare opportunity to participate in lively discussions regarding the lives and creative strategies of nationally recognized writers.
Writers Stage
On Saturday mornings at the end of Weeks I, II and III of the session, the Creative Writing and Theatre departments gather for Writers Stage. This weekly event is an opportunity for students to share the works created during the prior week in Core Class and Focus Sections. Faculty members describe the writing exercises, their purposes, and the problems and discoveries made by the writers. The works presented usually concern techniques that have challenged many writers.
Individualized Master Class
The Individualized Master Class provides each writer the weekly opportunity to discuss a work- in-progress with a faculty member. The Master Class is very similar to an MFA creative thesis conference. Faculty members mentor students one-on-one through the inception, revision and completion of an original piece of writing. Creative Writing students remain with their faculty mentors throughout the four-week session.
Literary Anthology
Creative Writing students gain experience planning, editing and publishing a collection of original work. The annual Literary Anthology is distributed on the final day of the session.
