A Creative Writing Workshop
for High School Teachers
Dates: June 29-July 3, 2013
The Program
Designed for high school teachers who love to write, the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop for Teachers combines the generative spirit of the Kenyon summer writing workshops with a new focus on classroom practices meant to encourage student creative writing. Our five-day intensive program is part writers’ retreat and part professional development, exposing teachers to a range of prompts and strategies meant to inspire their own work as well as the work of future students. Come to reconnect with your own inner writer—the one often lost beneath piles of grading!—and leave with new work and new techniques for incorporating creative writing and contemporary literature into your classroom teaching. Class is limited to 12 participants.
Professional Development
Participant teachers will approach creative writing as a teaching tool capable of inspiring diverse student populations to create and interpret complex texts. Together, we’ll discuss strategies for inspiring, coaching, and evaluating all phases of the writing process, from initial inspiration to the sharing of student work. Topics covered include poetry, short stories, personal narratives, creative nonfiction, emulative assignments, and process writing, as well as interactive models for student collaboration, peer editing, and revision. Along the way, there will be multiple opportunities to exchange best practices for the teaching of creative writing, and to discuss potential adaptations for our own specific student populations.
The Kenyon Connection
Throughout the week, we’ll take advantage of the history and resources of The Kenyon Review by engaging with recent work published in the print and online versions of the magazine and discussing ways to incorporate contemporary literature into our own classrooms. Though individual school and state requirements vary, Kenyon will provide all participating educators with transcripts and course descriptions to be used in meeting any continuing professional development requirements.
Workshop Leader
Emily Moore teaches English at Stuyvesant High School in New York City, where she has taught the Poetry Workshop course for the past eleven years. Her own writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry Daily, Kenyon Review Online, Newsweek, and the sixth edition of Poetry: A Pocket Anthology. In 2012, she earned her PhD in English from the CUNY Graduate Center, where she focused on genre, poetics, and Shakespeare’s later plays. When she is not teaching or writing, she is one third of the all-girl, country camp trio Ménage à Twang.
Accommodations
Kenyon College apartments will serve as our accommodations. Each apartment is air-conditioned, and has four private bedrooms with locking doors, a bathroom, and shared living space with kitchen. If you need to be on a ground floor due to health issues, please let us know. We will make every effort to meet your needs. Several laundry facilities are available on campus.
The Community
Since John Crowe Ransom first edited The Kenyon Review in 1939, Kenyon College has been a national center for the literary arts, attracting celebrated writers and encouraging the work of younger poets, essayists, fictions writers, and playwrights. Robert Lowell, Randall Jarrell, Peter Taylor, E.L. Doctorow, and William Gass, among others, all studied or taught at Kenyon.
The campus of Kenyon College, with its striking Gothic architecture, shady lawns, and gravel pathways, reflects its status as the oldest private college in Ohio. Writers Workshop participants enjoy the historic charm of the Village of Gambier while living in campus housing with ample space to work and access to the latest computer technology. Kenyon recreational facilities will also be open to participants. Within the village, you’ll find a bookstore, small grocery store, hair salon, women’s clothing retailer, post office, and several restaurants. Please note that living on the Kenyon campus entails a good deal of walking. If walking or using the stairs poses problems, please call the program office.
Kenyon College is located in Knox County, a rural county of rolling farmland, deciduous forests, and small cities in central Ohio.
Dining
Breakfast and dinner are provided, while lunch is on your own. There are several options for lunch in Gambier: Wiggin Street Coffee Shop offers soups, sandwiches, coffee, and tea; the Kenyon Inn and the Village Inn serve sit-down luncheons, while the Gambier deli and neighborhood grocery provide a wide variety of choices. Mount Vernon and the surrounding area offer more options.
Outdoor Recreation
Kenyon is nestled in the rolling hills of the Kokosing River Valley, which offers opportunities for hiking, canoeing, and exploring nature. The College supports the Brown Family Environmental Center, and students frequent the Kokosing Gap Trail, a beautiful, paved 14-mile trail built on a former Pennsylvania Railroad bed, which is considered one of the largest volunteer-maintained bicycling trails in the nation.
Tuition & Cancellation
The cost of The Kenyon Review Writers Workshop for Teachers is $1,495, which includes tuition, a room, and breakfast and dinner. If you are accepted you will be asked to complete an enrollment form and return it within two weeks of your acceptance with a nonrefundable deposit of $500. The balance of your tuition is due on May 15, 2013.
If you cancel your enrollment before May 15, you will forfeit your $500 deposit. If you cancel after May 15, we keep the $500 deposit and a $250 cancellation fee, but return the remaining balance paid. There will be no refund of tuition after arrival date, June 29, and no refund in the event of early departure.
For more information please contact us at writers@kenyonreview.org
