Iowa Young Writers' Studio

octaviablake
Thu, 02 Apr 2015 15:54:25 +0000

@sfijm23 I’m just going to put this here, but if we get asked to leave I would be fine with moving to another thread.
Sewanee was a great experience, and unlike any other academic summer program I had done before. It’s a small community, around 60 or so kids, and everyone basically hangs out in a big group.

One thing you should be prepared for is the freedom. Workshop is for several hours in the morning, readings are at night, and there are several other mandatory activities. Other than that, however, you’re on your own. It’s up to you to wake up on time, attend meals, get your work done, and stay entertained. Some kids took advantage of the gorgeous campus (seriously, it’s breathtaking) and went on walks during their free hours. Once, a group of us took a late night hike down a steep hill to a hidden waterfall, went swimming, and made our way back with no supervision. While most of us ate in the dining hall, there were some people who went to the (very small) town every day for lunch, others survived off bookstore snacks, and a few chose the hummus-and-olive sandwiches at the student-run coffee house, Sterlings (probably one of my favorite places on earth). There would be counselor-run activities, but it was the responsibility of the individual to figure out the time and place. Workshop was mandatory, obviously, but if you overslept, it was nobody’s fault but your own. I guess the point I’m trying to make is that Sewanee will be whatever you make of it. Personally, I liked the independence. It was one of the first times I felt like a real adult, as juvenile as that sounds.

Also, if you’re a rising sophomore like I was, be ready to be one of the youngest there. The vast majority of the attendees were rising juniors and seniors. However, there isn’t much of an age divide at all, and everyone is accepting. The kids are all sweet, talented, and pretty laid back. A good amount of them were from the South, but there were several from the West Coast and New England. We spend hours writing and reading in the dorm courtyard while somebody played Hedwig’s Theme on a pink ukulele. The kids were all individuals; there was no sense of conformity. It was easy to make friends.

I absolutely adored my workshop. Each class is taught by a professional, most of them with MFAs and many with published books. The groups are small (I think mine had nine people). In my fiction workshop, we spent most of our time actually writing, rather than sitting around and discussing technique. We had short prompts, long prompts, and one final story that is excerpted and read aloud at the end of camp. There is also a lot of time dedicated to short stories. If you’ve never been critiqued before (I hadn’t), don’t worry. Basically, everyone in the group reads your work and comments on it in class while you stay silent and observe. It’s not half as scary as it seems, and it’s actually a quite enriching experience.

Wow, this turned out a lot longer than I originally planned. I hope this helped you and anybody else curious about the program. Feel free to let me know if you have any more questions.