Author: SOTA Creative Writing

  • Lit Crits? Terrifying! by Zosia Mosur

    Even before I’d entered the Creative Writing program at RASOTA, I had been made aware of the infamous “lit crits,” or literary critiques. I was told how challenging and high stakes they were, my fellow Creative Writers talking about pulling all-nighters and laboring for hours when writing them. Which is why I became anxious when…

  • Critique and Conversation by Oona Haskovec

    Literary Critiques have always been a large aspect of Creative Writing. And while many of our students dread the so-called “Lit Crit Week,” I have found a method that alleviates that trepidation, at least for me. After choosing a piece of writing to analyze, instead of holing up alone in my room and painstakingly trying…

  • Odd Contemplation by Chloe Schoenfeld

    I’m not used to being the older person who knows how things work. However, sophomore year has started and I’ve been paired with a (lovely) freshman as the older writing buddy. Now I know my way around. I am able to feel more comfortable and confident with my classes, friends, and writing. I feel that…

  • A Magical Field Trip by Claudia Porter

    There are a variety of wonderful and educational field trips that you will get the privilege to take part in if you are in Creative Writing. One of these field trips, my personal favorite, so far is the writing buddy date.  I remember being extremely nervous and confused on my first day of Creative Writing.…

  • A Voyage Through The Gardens by Celeste Alisse

    Each school year, towards the beginning of community weeks, the entire Creative Writing department journeys to the Botanical Gardens. There, we prance around the rambunctious geese, who leave presents of poop in the grass. Clinging to each other, we narrowly avoid the poop, cackling to ourselves about how silly we must look. But looking silly…

  • Magical Realism in Playwriting by Raquel Silberman

    Ever since beginning our playwriting unit, I have wondered the ways in which I can incorporate magical realism into my plays. I could not help but notice that most of my plays I’ve written, weeks into the unit, have had something missing. Every prompt I wrote seemed bland and unexciting. After finishing our fiction and…

  • Poetry Negative to Poetry Positive by Emilie Mayer

    Similar to the saying, “You are what you eat,” the creative writer often reflects the literature that they consume. Over the past year, I have not read an impressive or even adequate amount of poetry. As a senior in Ruth Asawa School of the Arts’ Creative Writing Department, I am tasked with creating a thesis.…

  • Playwriting with Haiku Forms by Pascal Lockwood-Villa

    Starting this month, we students at Ruth Asawa School Of The Arts Creative Writing department are working on a six-week unit in playwriting, thanks to our current artist-in-residence Hasti Jafari. In this unit, we are being taught a plethora of new playwriting strategies; I found it appropriate to talk about some of my favorite learning…

  • My Personal Muse by Leela Sriram

    As I am nearing the end of senior year and finalizing my senior thesis, I have started thinking about how I find inspiration in creating a large body of creative work. While this is an awkward time to think about the muse of my thesis, I have discovered that my little interests such as birds,…

  • Touching Emotions by Sophie Fastaia

    On the last two days of January, Speak (Easy), our poetry show began. A week before the show, we had chosen and workshopped the poems that we were to read to an audience of about three hundred. I remember on a Friday when we spent the whole two hours allotted memorizing our poems in pairs.…