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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about

Once upon a time, cats were lonely, so they wanted someone whose only purpose in existence was to love and cherish cats. Thus, the Creative Writers were born. Out of the glowing bundle of soft and squishy warmness and fluff was a stack of Post-It notes that absolutely adored cats. Cats named that stack Midori, and that was that.

  • Art&Film 1/20 – Pather Panchali

    Friday, January 20th at Randall Museum (199 Museum Way) will be:

    Sayajit Ray’s PATHER PANCHALI (1955, India)

    The debut film from India’s most famous director was made with few funds and loads of talent and faith. It takes two children in rural India through their childhoods and into adolescence, capturing the atmosphere and rhythms of daily life with exquisite detail. Another genuine masterpiece you’ll be glad you didn’t miss.

    WHY WE CHOSE THIS FILM:
    This is the first film of the famous Apu Trilogy, but it also holds up on its own. The characters, mother, father, grandmother and neighbors, rich and poor, are brilliantly etched. You feel you are visiting India and are vividly a part of the images, the rituals, the texture of daily life and this bonds you to the the characters. It is an old fashioned “story film” as good as they come.

    ABOUT THE DIRECTOR:
    Ray studied painting and art history at the University of Calcutta. He started his career as an illustrator; one of the books he illustrated,     Pather Panchali, left a deep impression on him. He dreamed of filming it but in 1940’s India being a film maker was an unattainable dream. In 1950 he visited London and while there saw a film by Vittorio De Sica called The Bicycle Thief. This classic neo-realist film was filmed on location with non-actors, and on a tiny budget. Ray was so moved and excited, he returned to India and tried to raise money for his film. Unsuccessful, he nonetheless began filming with friends on weekends with the encouragement of a French film maker, Jean Renoir, who was in India making a film. To fund the film, he spent his salary and sold all his possessions. He was in despair, almost at the point of abandoning the project, when the Bengal government stepped in and gave him money to finish it.

    The story of the making of this film is an inspiration to all desperate young filmmakers. In 1955, Pather Panchali was shown at the Cannes Festival and caused a sensation. It introduced Indian cinema to the West and won the Jury prize. Encouraged, Ray went on to complete the trilogy with Aparajito and The World of Apu. He continued making masterful humanist films about India for the next thirty years, and was given an honorary Academy Award the year of his death in 1992.

  • Auditions Tomorrow!

    The seniors are auditioning Creative Writers for our Poetry Cafe tomorrow! We will probably go in order of seniority, so Freshies, bring a book (or whatever else us CDubs do for fun).

    Remember to bring three copies of your three best poems!

  • Paul Dunbar’s “Sympathy”

    From Poets‘ Poem-A-Day, the inspiration for Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

    Sympathy

    I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
    When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
    When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
    And the river flows like a stream of glass;
    When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
    And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
    I know what the caged bird feels!

    I know why the caged bird beats its wing 
    Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
    For he must fly back to his perch and cling
    When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
    And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
    And they pulse again with a keener sting—
    I know why he beats his wing!

    I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, 
    When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
    When he beats his bars and he would be free;
    It is not a carol of joy or glee,
    But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
    But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
    I know why the caged bird sings!

    –Paul Lawrence Dunbar

  • Berkeley event with Michelle Tea

    Michelle Tea, a regular guest artist for the Creative Writing Department, will be a part of a literary event tonight, in Berkeley.

    7:30pm
    Lyrics & Dirges
    featuring Michelle Tea, Michele Serros, Sam Sax, Artnoose & Annah Anti-Palindrome
    curated by Tomas Moniz
    2349 Shattuck Avenue
    Berkeley

    free admission, refreshments served

  • Jarett Kobek @ City Lights

    Tonight, at CIty LIghts Bookstore, you can hear

    “Jarett Kobek musing on the existential psychedelia of Mohammed Atta…”

    Wednesday, January 18, 2012, 7:00 P.M., City Lights Bookstore, San Francisco, CA

  • Narrative Magazine Winter 2012 Story Contest

    Winter 2012 Story Contest

    OUR WINTER CONTEST is open to all fiction and nonfiction writers. We’re looking for short shorts, short stories, essays, memoirs, photo essays, graphic stories, all forms of literary nonfiction, and excerpts from longer works of both fiction and nonfiction. Entries must be previously unpublished, no longer than 15,000 words, and must not have been previously chosen as a winner, finalist, or honorable mention in another contest.

    Prior winners and finalists in Narrative contests have gone on to win other contests and to be published in prize collections, including the Pushcart Prize, Best New Stories from the South, the Atlantic prize, and others. View some recent awards won by our writers.

    As always, we are looking for works with a strong narrative drive, with characters we can respond to as human beings, and with effects of language, situation, and insight that are intense and total. We look for works that have the ambition of enlarging our view of ourselves and the world.

    We welcome and look forward to reading your pages.
    Awards: First Prize is $2,500, Second Prize is $1,000, Third Prize is $500, and ten finalists will receive $100 each. All entries will be considered for publication.
    Submission Fee: There is a $20 fee for each entry. And with your entry, you’ll receive three months of complimentary access to Narrative Backstage.
    All contest entries are eligible for the $4,000 Narrative Prize for 2012 and for acceptance as a Story of the Week.
    Timing: The contest deadline is March 31, 2012, at midnight, Pacific daylight time.
    Judging: The contest will be judged by the editors of the magazine. Winners and finalists will be announced to the public by April 30, 2012. All writers who enter will be notified by email of the judges’ decisions. The judges reserve the option to declare a tie in the selection of winners and to award only as many winners and finalists as are appropriate to the quality of work represented in the magazine.
    Submission Guidelines: Please read our Submission Guidelines for manuscript formatting and other information.
    Other Submission Categories: In addition to our contest, please review our other Submission Categories for areas that may interest you.

  • Spring Creative Writing Class

    Picture 79

    Click here for the application.

  • Art&Film: This Is England 1/13

    FRIDAY JANUARY 13- CINE/CLUB DOLBY Screening Room
    100 Potrero at Division Refreshments 6:30 Film program 7pm

    CARTOON
    Short film: Peter Fischli & David Weiss’ THE WAY THINGS GO

    Shane Meadow’s THIS IS ENGLAND (2006, UK)
    We start the year with a powerhouse of a film—and something different from our usual fare. This film takes us into the world of England’s skinheads and neo-nazis to examine the way young people can be so easily influenced by their peers. This film has an authenticity about it that can’t be matched.
    PARENTAL WARNING: Violence, some nudity and mild sex scenes.
    (It’s about teenagers)

    (Link to Rotten Tomatoes)

     

    WHY WE CHOSE THIS FILM:
    This film is blessed with powerful performances and an absolutely authentic atmosphere of the English Midlands, 1983. It can’t help but affect you. The hero, a teenage boy who is bullied at school and harassed at home, is befriended by a group of skin-heads who initiate him into their company. As some of the members are pulled in a darker direction, being a part of the group brings a lot more than he bargained for.

     

    ABOUT THE DIRECTOR:
    Shane Meadow’s is one of the finest directors in England. His films, Dead Man’s Shoes, Twenty-Four Seven, and Somers Town are all sturdy achievements, but he is practically unknown in America, and that’s a real shame. His films have great moral character and concentrate on the ways that young people are badly influenced and damaged by the worse elements in their society. Meadows knows the world of This Is England well, having himself been involved in petty crime in his youth. He works with young actors especially well. No one else could have made this film.

    ART SATURDAY, JANUARY 14
    Meet at Metreon on the park side facing the waterfall. We’ll be sitting on the wall waiting for you! Please RSVP so we can plan the picnic.
    11: We’ll visit the new gallery shows along Geary St.
    12:30 Picnic Yerba Buena Gardens
    Film: METREON – 2:25 MY WEEK WITH MARILYN

  • Poetry Cafe Show!

    The time for our annual January Poetry Cafe has come once again! As usual, the seniors are running the show, from venue to auditions and all the in-between. There are two evenings, each with its own arsenal of poems: Friday, January 27 (at 7:30) is being held on the Mainstage at School of the Arts. Saturday, January 28 (at 7:30) is being held at the Greenhouse Cafe

    on West Portal. Please come and bring friends! Who won’t want to spend their weekend with cultured and opinionated teenagers, right?

    -Reba

  • Word for Word

    From Heather:

    Students, do not forget that we are going to Word for Word’s Food Stories this Thursday evening. Details below.

    ALSO, I need to know if you are able to view the CW google calendar. I am updating it frequently and you all should be able to access it and be receiving notification reminders.

    THURSDAY JANUARY 12–WORD FOR WORD Z space -Theater Artaud
    Florida between Mariposa and 17th.
    T.C. Boyle’s comic story     Sorry Figu, and Alice McDermott’s Enough.
    Meet in lobby at 6:30 for the performance at 7pm. Latecomers cannot be guaranteed seats.