Creative Writing

The Spring newsletter for Creative Writing is dedicated to graduating Senior Kathleen Cole, who has had astonishing success in the past few months with her writing and college plans. Kathleen was chosen as a finalist in Fiction in the YoungArts national arts contest and spent a week in Miami in January attending workshops with other young writers and artists. As a result of her time there, she was awarded a $1,500 cash grant in recognition of her outstanding potential in the field of short fiction. Additionally, the national awards in the Scholastic Art and Writing competition were announced in March, and Kathleen was awarded a national gold medal -- given to the top 5 percent of creative youth in the country -- for her work in poetry. In June she will be traveling to New York City to accept her award in a ceremony at Carnegie Hall. As if that weren't recognition enough, Kathleen is also the winner of the Bennington Young Writers Competition for 10th, 11th and 12th grade students. Her winning poem can be downloaded in PDF format here: http://tinyurl.com/KathleenCole 

On the same day that Kathleen found out about her Bennington prize, she also received a call from the University of Chicago, admitting her into the incoming class and offering her a $50,000 grant renewable for all four years of her college career. This, added to the offers from the University of Richmond (which offered Kathleen a full, four-year tuition remission) and Davidson University (which awarded Kathleen the prestigious Patricia Cornwall Scholarship for outstanding promise in writing, worth a total of $10,000) has made her college decision unusually difficult. Ultimately, however, Kathleen has decided to accept the University of Chicago's offer and will be traveling to Illinois this summer to start school in the fall.

In other college news, all four of the graduating seniors in Creative Writing have been accepted to the colleges of their choice and are planning to attend the University of Chicago, Perdue University, Converse College and Winthrop University, respectively. We wish them the best of luck and are proud to have the Fine Arts Center represented in such a diverse range of schools.
This summer, Creative Writing underclassmen will keep busy in their field. Sophomore Adina Lasser and Juniors Willard Ramsey and Ashley Israel have all been accepted into highly competitive summer writing programs and have all been offered substantial scholarships to attend. Adina and Willard will both be students at Kenyon College's Young Writers Summer Program in Gambier, Ohio. Ashley, who attended the Kenyon program last summer, will be going to the highly selective Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College, where she will be a part of the Young Writer's Workshop.

Instructor Sarah Blackman, her husband, John, and their daughter, Helen, are expecting a second girl to join their family. The Little Stranger (as she is currently called) is due Aug. 2.