CREATIVE WRITING

at the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts in San Francisco

Welcome! CW develops the art and craft of creative writing through instruction, collaboration, and respect. This blog showcases STUDENT WRITING and how to APPLY to Creative Writing.

Category: Uncategorized

  • A Not So Familiar Tradition by Skye Preston

    Year after year, Creative Writing’s Community Weeks culminate in a camping trip to Kirby Cove. Freshman year, the upperclassmen spoke so fondly of the trip that I was more than eager to experience it for myself. And of course, Kirby didn’t disappoint. The sense of community, the stories around the campfire, and the view of…

  • I HATE Yellow by Aurelia Preskill

    If you had told me a week before Spirit Day that I would be cheering on a hamster ball fight between our director, Emily, and one of our seniors, clad head to toe in my least favorite color and essentially drowning in body glitter, I would have never believed you. Yet, that is exactly what…

  • Where is Your Fulfillment? by Marley Manalo

    We started a new tradition in Creative Writing this year, and to be quite honest I wasn’t so sure of it at first. When you reach a certain grade in CW we have to complete a certain project that challenges us and teaches something new to the class. Freshman year: Figure out what the hell…

  • A Love Letter to Costco by Raquel Silberman

    On March 24, 2025, our Creative Writing class took a field trip to Costco. It all started with a problem: what happened to all our snacks? As it turns out, we ate them. Every last one. This wasn’t the first time we had run out of snacks. Creative writing is serious work—almost equivalent to playing…

  • I Think I Will Swallow This Penny by Zosia Mosur

    Time is well spent if time is spent wacky. One poetry prompt we had wore the wacky hat especially well. Created by CA Conrad, it goes as follows: “Wash a penny, rinse it, slip it under your tongue and walk out the door. Copper is the metal of Aphrodite, never ever forget this, never, don’t…

  • The Smell of Hot Bark by Gabriel Flores Benard

    Under the tutelage of our new Creative Writing director, Emily Wolahan, Creative Writing began a new, and my last, poetry unit. Unfortunately, the poetry unit had to start while San Francisco experienced one of the worst heat waves I can remember. Ninety-four degrees in San Francisco? Thank you, global warming, it’s always fun to receive…

  • Eternal Assignments by Claudia Porter

    Creative writing has given me many new friends and relationships. Since the beginning of the year, we have been doing community building activities almost every single day. We are currently in our film poem unit, making short videos and experimenting with props, camera angles and cinematography while incorporating what we already know about writing into…

  • Letting The Mind Run by Sophie Fastaia

    Since the beginning of the year, our whole department has implemented a daily practice into our routines, freewriting for thirty minutes a day. We are currently in our fiction unit, reading short stories and having fruitful discussions about the embedded meaning within a piece of work. In the past, fiction was intimidating, as I’ve struggled…

  • Art Feeds Art by Raquel Silberman

    One of my favorite benefits of being in Creative Writing is how in love with art Heather Woodward is. Often class will be positively derailed for a trip to the SFMoMA or the De Young Museum. Just the other week we joined a virtual event hosted by MoAD: “Art As We See It | Indigo…

  • The Writing Process by Filip Zubatov

    In Creative Writing, we have recently begun our fiction unit with an encouraging teacher, Christian Wilburn. We started the unit with perhaps the most important part of writing, the process. The past year and a half I spent in Creative Writing, my work has been inconsistent. Sometimes I would write pieces that I would be…