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.

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  • Revelations, by Emily Kozhina

    Revelations, by Emily Kozhina

    A few days ago, the Creative Writing department went to the DeYoung Museum to visit
    the Revelations: Art from the African American South exhibit. A large majority of the art was done with few resources, since African Americans didn’t have much, but still wanted to express themselves and their thoughts through what they did have. Sculpture materials ranged from metal, to tree roots, to cow skeletons, and delicate canvases were replaced with blocks of wood.

    Every piece had kept a part of its creator, whether it be uneven stitches done by tired hands, or a shaky pencil line, smudged by a dragging arm. To be reminded that people made these pieces, to see something that couldn’t be remade, was refreshing.

    There was one significant moment described to me that I believe will be hard to erase
    from memory. My class group was kneeling on the floor, legs weak, eyes looking up at the quilts pinned onto the walls around us, different fabrics unevenly stitched together. Our docent told us of a woman who once visited this exhibit. The moment the woman had walked into this room, she grew emotional looking at the quilts. When asked why, she explained how when she was a small child, she helped her grandmother and aunts stitch these, and to see them in a museum was a vision she never could have imagined.

    I pondered after the telling of this story, and looked at the quilts. I saw jagged lines and
    uneven squares, and however humanely beautiful I found its imperfections, I didn’t feel myself well with tears. The differences between the woman and I were certainly clear. We grew up with different lives, families, memories. It wasn’t surprising when two people reacted to something differently. However, the more I thought, the more I understood the woman. I still didn’t feel any nostalgia or anything of the sort, but the very thought of these quilts affecting someone in that personal way touched me. I left knowing that there will be more guests who through seeing some piece in this exhibit, they will feel their past reaching out to them in a place much more familiar than they first believed.

    Emily Kozhina, class of 2020

  • Soundtracks, by Huck Shelf

    Soundtracks, by Huck Shelf

    Recently, I attended the Soundtracks exhibit at SFMOMA along with the rest of the Creative Writing department. The show brings together works of art by a variety of artists that work with sounds and music. While CW makes it a habit to regularly go off-campus to see different art and cultural events, we went to this particular exhibit because we had been doing a unit based around music and writing.

    The centerpiece of the exhibit is a video installation called The Visitors by Ragnar Kjartansson, which lasted about forty-five minutes. In this piece, a band, scattered throughout different rooms in a Hudson Valley mansion (each shown on a different, life-sized screen), play a long interconnected piece of music, made up of three or four repeated phrases. As the song comes to an end, a cannon fires and the musicians join together and make their way outside the out where they continue to sing as they walk offscreen. I felt that thematically and conceptually, this work was very interesting, but I would’ve appreciated a slightly less repetitive musical procession.

    There were other surrounding exhibits, all playing off of the idea of sound in modern art. One particularly interesting piece was a cloud of red wires. There were headphones hanging on the wall next to it, and anybody walking into this room put a pair on and turned it on. As you walked around the cloud, different industrial sounds would play. This made it seem like the cloud was a sort of conduit to some mechanical entity, or even just to technology.

    The field trips are one of the coolest aspects of Creative Writing. We are exposed to art we wouldn’t otherwise see, and are able to experience it and discuss it in our tight community, Even if this particular exhibit didn’t grab me as much as some have, it was still an interesting art installation and a positive experience.

  • CW Alum Emma Eisler Works on Her Chainsaw Skills in Yellowstone National Park

  • Writing Buddy Collaboration by Hannah W Duane

    Writing Buddy Collaboration by Hannah W Duane

    On August 29, all thirty members of the Creative Writing department took a long, hot bus ride out to the Minnesota Street Project art museum. Here, we saw the collaborations of Griffin McPartland and Paul Urich. Over a number of years, Urich sent McPartland his drawings, asking McPartland to write on them. At first he declined, not wanting to disrupt his friend’s art. However eventually McPartland decided to comply with the request, and together they created a number of pieces. These pencil or ballpoint pen sketches each had what McPartland calls a short story over them. These stores were very short, a fragment or sentence in length, and not visibly connected to the images. Most were funny, and many complex or puns with multiple meanings. This exhibit inspired our three-week independent buddy collaboration.

    My writing buddy and I decided we would text each other photographs we took each day, and write a short response. I wrote mine in prose poetry, responding to the image but not necessarily addressing its content, while my writing buddy opted to pose questions in response to the photograph or write “stream of consciousness opinion pieces.” We traded nine images, ranging from humorous (I received a photograph of someone putting a trombone over another person’s head) to tranquil (a sunset over Twin Peaks). We kept our responses informal and did not share them with each other. Occasionally, we asked questions about the photos received, but most of the time just wrote pieces loosely based on the content shared and did not worry about what exactly the photo represented. For the conclusion of the project, we printed out all of the photographs and then inscribed our written responses over or next to them. We ended up with eighteen pieces, each from a different day and with different mood and presented them to the class by laying them out on tables and asking our classmates to walk around and look at them.

    I very much enjoyed taking part in this collaboration. It was a pleasant exercise to every day be looking for something beautiful or interesting visually in my surroundings, however towards the end I did struggle to find something I deemed interesting enough to photograph (we’re creative writers, not photographers…). Some of the photos I received were easier to write from than others, but it was exciting to each day get a window into what another person found interesting.

    Hannah W Duane, class of 2021

  • Two Past Lunas by Luna Alcorcha

    Two Past Lunas by Luna Alcorcha

    I can easily remember when I was the ages six, seven, eight, and nine. It is not an unimaginable time ago, yet it seems like I live in an entirely different world than the one I lived in barely a year ago. My memories of my own immaturity and early learning have not been neglected. I still appreciate the simplicity of the Junie B. Jones book series, playdates that my parents had to schedule, eating an ice cream with 65 grams of sugar without having checked the label, and along with the young minimalist lifestyle came an easy and dignifying human decency. When I was six, I never had to intently watch what I said and to an adult, nothing that came out of my mouth seemed offensive because I was a harmless, adorable youngster with quintessential big cheeks and frizzy curls. No longer are my cheeks rotund, but now have morphed inward to create an elongated facial structure. I have to precisely pick my words or face critical consequences if I don’t. Honest words are not seen as cute and entertaining if you’re not under ten; now, candor comments help to create an ill-mannered persona.

     

    It sounds shortsighted, but I haven’t realized or really given myself the time to clearly acknowledge how much I have changed as an individual, until today. This consciousness changing insight came to me at the movie theater when I was left seated alongside two six to eight year old girls who giggled at the scene when the girl and boy kissed. I heard their squealing and whispers, then when I looked over I wanted to laugh at how they both tried so hard to cover one another’s eyes. That is when I was able to recall the emotions I once shared with those girls. I can understand what scared them so much about watching a kiss performed by two actors who get paid for it. I know that whenever I watched any romantic exchange at seven years old, I felt immediately guilty for having witnessed something so “dirty” and “adult”.  So many things that made me excited or riled me up at that age don’t anymore, they just come across as insignificant. I miss the privilege of not overthinking simple interactions and ideas. I find it funny how things that are so present and important now, were not even relevant three years ago when I was giggling with my friend about make-out sessions and filming infomercials with our dogs.

     

    My time and experiences are in high school now. A bedtime is nonexistent when loads of homework must get done. Your grades have much importance, more than in years prior. Still, I am enjoying my time here with its change of pace and I know it will go by  fast. As someone that has so much more to be taught, I wonder if the seniors of Creative Writing look at those of us younger than them and miss these years or if they can see right through us because we are so predictable and egocentric. Thanks to being seated next to two past Lunas, I learned that I need to show compassion to small boys and girls because whether I can remember it or not, I once felt very miniscule next to all these big people.

    Luna Alcorcha, class of 2021

  • First Impressions by Lauren Ainslie

    High School is scary, everyone knows that. My experience was no exception.

    It’s the 26th of August, and I’m about ready to wet myself. The school is huge, the hallways make no sense, and I think I spotted someone with tiger face-paint. Welcome to Sota. But the thing that scares me most is my department. Will they be nice? Will they think I suck? Will I somehow manage to trip in the doorway? Millions of questions and scenarios are running through my head, because I have no idea what to expect. I walk in, (managing not to trip) and all of my expectations are shattered.

    The room is very grey, which surprised me because I thought it would be full of color. There are black tables arranged in a square surrounding the rug, and they are filled with smiling faces, the faces of the rest of my department. There is a door leading out to a balcony overlooking the field and the wall on my right is entirely covered by whiteboards. A clock that has all the numerals replaced by various birds chimes softly. I nervously sit down. This was the part of Creative Writing I was most curious about, the part where I figure out what we actually do. The only thing I’ve heard from other students is that they think we sit in a dark room all day, write sad, angsty poetry, and hiss at sunlight. So far everything else I had suspected about CW was wrong, so hoped this was too. Thankfully, it was. The windows were open, there was no hissing as far as I could tell, and our summer requirements didn’t specify any sad poetry. My nervousness was starting to wear off, and I’m glad it did, because that moment was the beginning to one of the best months I’ve ever had.

    There were writing prompts, poetry assignments, and an endless amount of name games. The first week went by in a blur of excitement, revelations, and frequent field trips. The reality of SotA Creative Writing was better than any fantasy I could have dreamed up. The other freshman in my department are amazing friends, my older writing-buddy showed me the ropes of this school, and my writing has improved immensely in the past five weeks. I can tell that everyone in the department deserves and wants to be there, and that active atmosphere is what makes my creativity blossom. I am so lucky to be involved in such a forgiving and cultivating group of artists. We are a family. If you give the assignments your all and print on time, anything is possible.

    High School isn’t that scary anymore.

    Lauren Ainslie, class of 2021

  • CW ’09 Alum Tanea Lunsford Returns

    CW alum Tanea Lunsford (class of 2009) returned to SotA this week to teach a class on “Writing Magic” using examples and exercises from science fiction writer Octavia Butler!

  • Freshman-Sophomore Tea

    Earlier this month the Sophomore CW class invited the Freshmen to an afternoon teach to welcome them to the department!

  • Literary Arts Summer Workshop

    This summer eight of the new CW freshmen were able to take part in our annual summer workshop. They spent 6 days writing and workshopping around the city including visits to the waterfront, Golden Gate park, Belden Alley, and local artist Ronald Chase’s studio!

  • On Our Trip To New Orleans Louisiana, by Liam Miyar-Mullan

    Nowadays when I sit down to write anything, I can only tell a true story and more specifically one that has happened to me. And it is this that I’ve learned most importantly this year, that, for me, the best way to write a good story is to experience it. For that reason I am excited that the whole of the Creative Writing department will be going to New Orleans, Louisiana next month. It is important that a writer draws inspiration from certain aspects of the world and has something good to say about it or else it’s useless and the best way to practice this is by going into a different city or place and writing from what you see and learn there.

    We have been talking a lot in class about this as preparation for the trip and in designing our itinerary, which has academic agendas like learning more about the literary history of the city, but also has other more random seeming adventures like boating in a swamp. And when I’ve sat here and thought about it I do think the most creative work I’ll be able to produce will be from these random excursions. It is a writer’s job to transcribe the weirdness of the world and to put it in a little text which I do think is a very hard job but it is suddenly made much easier when you find yourself in a much newer place and somewhere as crazy and Hellish as a damp Louisiana swamp!

    I think it is important that we take this trip to New Orleans not only to learn about writers who have worked there but also so we can write about the boozers and ghosts and the broad majestic Mississippi river that are found in that part of the country. It isn’t stressed enough I don’t think how important it is that a writer gets out of his or her house and takes a look at something and uses it to write about. I went to Spain this summer which I find to be a very crazy and weird place (as is New Orleans!) and have in response written about 80 percent of this year’s work about the hills and villages of that area.

    I did not realize how important it was to travel as a writer until I decided that it was just about impossible for me to sit at my desk and write a story completely pulled from the banks of my mind, because there’s nothing about a clean classroom that inspires me in any way or triggers any sort of crazy story like a big wooden steamboat might. And so I do think it is important to spend time reading the classics and the great writers of the history of the world but I also think it is equally important to find something new to look at and to use the world’s funniness as an inspiration for your writing and so I am pleased to be boarding a little plane this March and going down to the dirtiest swamps and rivers of Louisiana!

    Liam Miyar-Mullan, class of 2018