Every day, many GA students walk into the Writing Center to receive help on English essays and history research papers.
“The Writing Center is a great resource for students to get help on their writing,” Noelle Petersohn ‘26 said. “It’s super helpful.”
The Writing Center is commonly used as a resource for academic and analytical writing, particularly for freshman and sophomore students. However, in the past, the scope of the Writing Center was largely limited to these forms of writing.
“It’s very disappointing that people only come to the Writing Center for analytical writing,” Vincent Zhou ‘26 said. “There are so many more things that the staff are trained on and it would be great if we could put that to use.”
Further, the majority of students at GA do not do creative writing often, and if they do, they certainly do not go to the Writing Center for help. This year, the Writing Center is attempting to do a “rebranding” of sorts and expand their purview to include creative and fictional writing.
“Mr. Keefe, the new director of the Writing Center, had the idea of expanding the focus of the Writing Center to include creative writing so that we could truly be a hub for all kinds of writing, not just analytical,” Dr. Claire Barwise, Upper School English Teacher and Assistant Director of the Writing Center, said.
Specifically, the Writing Center will host writing workshops and forums that occur multiple times throughout the school year. So far, the Writing Center has hosted one forum, which focused on writing 100 word mini memoirs. During lunch and flex, students had an opportunity to collaborate with their peers and teachers in order to draft these stories. Students were then able to submit these memoirs to a New York Times national writing competition.
Looking forward, the Writing Center will continue to host lunch and flex forums with the goal of incorporating creative writing into the GA community.
“I’m looking forward to the Writing Center forums,” Ashley Wang ‘26 said. “We will have to see how the rest of the year goes, but I’m hopeful it will broaden the horizons of many students who may be interested in creative writing.”
In addition to the creative writing forums, the Writing Center may also host forums surrounding Document Based Question (DBQ) writing and other topics that are relevant in the classroom and beyond.
Whether the Writing Center is hosting creative writing forums, DBQ lessons, or something else, the goal remains the same: to include new forms of writing and expression in the daily lives of students and faculty.
“Writing can help us process experiences, find our individual voices, see the world and ourselves differently, and so much more,” Dr. Barwise said. “My hope is that being able to read and hear each other’s work will help us connect with each other and create an even more vibrant, diverse, and supportive culture here at GA.”