Workshops + Residencies
Workshops and residencies offer the opportunity for schools, community organizations, and students of all ages to partner with UC writers on custom-built, collaborative writing adventures, from poetry to personal narrative, craft talks to one-on-one writing instruction.
OHIO JUSTICE & POLICY CENTER PARTNERSHIP
Working with the Ohio Justice & Policy Center, a non-profit law firm that offers free legal assistance to Ohioans and works toward a redemptive criminal legal system, UC grad students, faculty, staff, and alums help individuals who are incarcerated or formerly incarcerated craft personal narratives that tell their stories in their own words. OJPC will share these stories as part of their marketing and development materials as well as in a publication led by OJPC clients which will go out to an audience of donors, supporters, former clients, activists, and attorneys. In the words of one OJPC attorney, this is an opportunity “to support people who have already put in a huge amount of work, over a long period of time, to show how much more they are than the mistakes of their younger selves.”
HIRSCH RECREATION CENTER RESIDENCIES
In this collaborative project, primary students in the Hirsch Recreation Center's after-school program take part in a series of four-week trauma-informed creative writing residencies led by UC writers Katie Frankel and Hassaan Mirza. UC writers and Hirsch staff share knowledge about trauma-informed teaching and creative writing instruction to design residencies that develop students’ writing abilities alongside their socio-emotional skills. Student writers showcase their work for invited guests at the end of the semester.
CINCINNATI SCHOOL FOR CREATIVE AND PERFORMING ARTS CRAFT WORKSHOPS
Creative writing students at the Cincinnati School for Creative and Performing Arts read and discuss works by UC writers and participate in creative craft workshops. Real talk Q&A sessions about the writing life bring the creative craft into dialogue with student experience.This year’s writers are Taylor Byas, Marianne Chan, Afsheen Farhadi, Hassaan Mirza, and Natalie Villacorta working with the emerging writers of SCPA Creative Writing faculty Dr. Carla Sarr.
CLIFTON AREA NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOL CURRICULAR MODULES
Professor Jay Twomey and Elliston Curator Michael Peterson spent July of 2021 with the CANS Summer Scholars Program, building lessons for Peter Pan, figurative language, and metaphor-based poetry-writing around this classic text. Michael returned in the Fall to work with the new Fourth Grade students, coordinating hands-on environmental writing activities and visual-concrete poetry writing in collaboration with English Language Arts & Social Studies teacher Tanisha Taylor.