Back again this summer, Wittenberg is pleased to announce the second annual Champion City Write Now (CCWN) camp for high school-aged creative writers. This time, thanks to the support of the Springfield Foundation, a second week has been added specifically for junior high writers.
CCWN, an immersive writing program, was awarded $5,000 through the Springfield Foundation for operational expenses, including marketing materials, program supplies, and student supplies. The additional funding also allowed for an extension to the one-week program to ensure more local budding writers could participate. Open to students in the Clark County area, CCWN will welcome rising students in grades 10 through 12 starting Monday, June 17 to Friday, June 21, with the second week open to rising students in grades seven through nine, starting Monday, June 24 to Friday, June 28.
Led by CCWN’s team of instructors, attendees will participate in four days of workshops from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., to learn about four different genres of writing, including fiction, poetry, narrative nonfiction, and graphics to create stories, poems, essays, and comics.
The writers’ camp will conclude with a final evening of celebration and showcasing as campers will read their best work at a public event. All participants will also publish their selected pieces in the printed CCWN Anthology.
“Our vision for Champion City Write Now at Witt is to provide a literary community for young and adolescent writers in the Clark County area,” said CCWN director Erin Hill, senior professor of practice at Wittenberg. “If you like to write, no matter the genre, Champion City Write Now is where you will find your people. We want to help you connect with each other.”
The Champion City Write Now instructors are all published authors. Hill teaches in both the education and English departments at Wittenberg and earned her MA from New York University. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in The Sun, Oh Reader, The Belladonna Comedy, The Brevity Blog, The Under Review, and Words and Sports Quarterly.
Andy Graff, associate professor of English and director of the creative writing program at Wittenberg, is the author of the 2021 novel Raft of Stars and the 2024 novel True North. After a tour of duty in Afghanistan, he earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and his fiction and essays have appeared in Image and Dappled Things.
Marlo Starr, assistant professor English at Wittenberg and a recent Ohio Arts Council grant recipient, earned her Ph.D. in English from Emory University and an MFA in poetry from Johns Hopkins University. Her poems have appeared in The Threepenny Review, Ghost City Review, Napkin Poetry Review, and elsewhere.
Nora Hickey has worked as an instructor at Colorado State University, Santa Fe University of Art and Design, and the Columbus College of Art and Design, and holds an MFA in poetry from the University of New Mexico. Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in Guernica, Electric Literature, Narrative, the Massachusetts Review, and other journals.
Applications opened in January 2024, and all local area students were encouraged to apply. Students in Clark County are given priority application review. The cost for this year's camp is $100. Eligible students may apply for a partial need-based fee reduction. Applicants submitted a short writing sample of their best original work in their preferred genre (fiction, poetry, nonfiction, graphic work/comics) to be considered for the workshop. Applications were due by April 30, 2024, however there are still spots available for both weeks, and interested students are encouraged to apply.
Only one entry per student is necessary, and only a single author writing sample is required. All accepted students must pay a $50 nonrefundable deposit upon acceptance. Participants are responsible for their own transportation to and from campus each day.
For more information on the summer workshop, go to https://www.wittenberg.edu/academics/education/champion-city-write-now. Other questions may be sent to Hill at hille3@wittenberg.edu.
