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

  • 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.…

  • A Cure for Writer’s Block by Gabriel Flores Benard

    Creative Writing recently went on a trip to the Botanical Gardens. Although the frigid winds and potential threats of torrents loomed over our shoulders, the Creative Writing class went to see the magnolias bloom. I dislike the rain, and I constantly noticed the clouds above. Puffy clouds peppered the skies as we left, clumps of…

  • Sluggish, But Fast by Filip Zubatov

    I am stalking the clock persistently, like a killer to its prey. The hand’s fingers are frozen, but I wait. My eyes never shift from the clock, for the fingers would sprint away. I would stand helpless, like a deer on the road, trapped in the headlights of a car. Why aren’t you making more…

  • Literary Ditches by Natasha Leung

    At the beginning of my first year in creative writing, the seniors gave the fresh peeps a lesson on what might be the most important assignment in the class: literary critiques. We got a lesson about what literary devices were, and how we would have to write an essay about them, but I focused more…

  • To Speak Easy or to Speak Easier? by Isabella Hansen

    Since I am a senior in Creative Writing, I should be a pro at public speaking and performances. Unfortunately, before our annual poetry show, “Speak easy,” I felt nerves twist inside my stomach. Since the pandemic occurred, I have only been able to participate in two poetry shows on the main stage. While one would…

  • City Boy Thesis by Jude Wong

    Every year each senior creates their own thesis, which might be a play, long-form fiction, or a collection of poems based around a single theme. I began writing last September, working to create content within or at least somewhat related to my theme— the city of San Francisco. I chose to write poetry because I…

  • From May to May: the Senior Thesis Writing Project (with Video Showcase) by Gemma Collins

    Since I stepped into room 227 on my first day in Creative Writing, I’ve known about the senior thesis project. I read long spreadsheets of deadlines and watched the upper-level students disappear into mysterious workshops. For the past three years, it’s been looming over me—and last summer, I finally sat down and began. Beginning a…