10 minute read
Finding Their Voices
Chelsea Nwankwo (‘23) reads an excerpt from one of her manuscripts during a workshop in her Creative Writing Capstone class prior to the Arts and Humanities Research Capstone Symposium in May. Workshops such as these are considered vital to the development of student writers in the class, according to the course instructors Brian Isbell and James Katowich.
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Every ASMSA student is required to complete a capstone project during their junior year. The capstone program is designed to provide students meaningful research opportunities that include substantial experiences that reflect their passions as well as a depth of learning.
When Kacie Koen (’23) came to ASMSA, the possibility of becoming a playwright wasn’t on her radar. She originally had thoughts of pursuing a more “practical” career — becoming a lawyer. After sitting in an information session about the Creative Writing Capstone, she decided to pursue her interest in writing.
“Originally, I did not expect to find opportunities this rich on the artistic side of the humanities program at ASMSA,” Koen said. “I decided to take the creative writing class because I wanted to deepen my understanding of writing as a practice, and I wanted to learn how to better my craft. Now speaking at the end of my capstone experience, joining the Creative Writing Capstone was a choice I am grateful that I made. I have grown tenfold in my creative ability, and I have grown close with my peers in my class.
“I have learned not only how to better my technical skills, but my creative mindset also grew. I learned how to see the world as an artistic medium, and as a playwright, I am now able to use the true stories of the world around me to help make resonating pieces of literature.”
Brian Isbell and James Katowich co-teach the Creative Writing Capstone. Both have a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing — leading Isbell to point out that one would be hard-pressed to find another high school creative writing class with two MFA instructors. Both instructors offered creative writing courses as electives before the capstone was created.
Having two instructors with their terminal degrees in creative writing allowed them to design the capstone to resemble their graduate writing programs.
“When he and I first designed the capstone class, we envisioned a compressed version of the best parts
of the graduate writing programs we knew: supportive mentorship, a community of fellow young writers, and a nurturing space to create something new,” Katowich said.
Their students spend two full semesters undertaking a deep dive into the process of planning, creating and revising a significant body of original written work, Katowich said. The first semester is taught collaboratively with multiple readings from various genres ranging from poetry, fiction, drama, screenplays and creative non-fiction, Isbell said.
At the end of the fall semester, the instructors split the group into genres. Katowich works with students interested in drama, creative non-fiction and screenwriting. Isbell works with student poets and fiction writers. Depending on the genre, students are expected to complete 30 to 60 pages of manuscript, Isbell said, but some students complete up to 120 pages of original writing, Katowich added.
Students participate in workshop days, during which they share parts of their manuscripts with the class. They receive feedback from both the instructors and their peers. They are critiqued and praised in roughly equal measure, Katowich said.
“As a result of this process and the added time and focus, our students’ writing projects have become more ambitious and their sense of themselves as writers has deepened,” Katowich said.
Receiving that kind of feedback from both instructors and peers is critical to their development, Isbell said.
“The students grow over the course in multiple ways from close analysis of their own writings to those of their peers, in addition to the reading material during the first and second semester,” Isbell said. “They improve and revise; their style improves, and sometimes they find their voices on the page — they’re the ones who ‘revise, revise, revise’ ad infinitum until they just let it fly, if it will.
“It also exposes them to the rigors of writing in a collegiate environment. There comes a point in revision where one says, ‘I’ve exhausted it, for now.’”
Koen won first place overall in the Arts and Literature category of the 2022 Arts and Humanities Research Capstone Symposium in May for her work “Withered Away.” She credited the workshops for providing her vital feedback for her play.
“My capstone’s periodic workshops helped me realize faults in my plays that were not initially obvious to me while writing,” Koen
Kacie Koen (‘23), speaking about the reaction an excerpt from an original play she wrote in the Creative Writing Capstone received during the Arts and Humanities Research Capstone Symposium
Ben Romero (‘22), speaking about the recognition he earned by competing in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards in which he won a Gold Key for his original poetry as well as the Poetry Out Loud competition in which he placed first in ASMSA’s contest and qualified for the state competition for a second year in a row
said. “Many of the crucial edits that I made to my current feature-length play are dedicated to these workshops. Although at times they were nerve-wracking, I feel like as a writer I have learned how to communicate ideas on revision well through those workshops.”
Ben Romero (’22) found himself gravitating toward poetry while taking the creative writing course last year. He said he found writing poetry “because it was the place I could put all my disjunctive ideas and get away with it” unlike with prose. An Instagram post from a friend also led him to compete in the Poetry Out Loud competition.
Poetry Out Loud allows students to recite a certain number of poems. They are graded on accuracy as well as presentation. Romero placed second in the state last year and qualified for the state competition again this year. His favorites to recite were poems by Wanda Coleman and Octavio Paz.
This spring, he also entered five of his original poems in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards sponsored by the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers. He received a Gold Key, the top regional award in the competition. He was surprised to learn he had earned the recognition.
“Genuinely, I was shocked because what I try to pursue in writing doesn’t really align itself with award recognition,” Romero said. “I set up all these artistic goals throughout the year, and they all fell through. So when I got that award, after being rejected so many times, it felt good to know somewhere people liked and enjoyed my work enough to recognize it.”
Romero said the recognition encouraged him to continue the direction he was taking with his poetry, which comes from random, clashing ideas that he latches onto and allows him to expand his thoughts.
“It convinces me that I might be heading somewhere artistically,” he said. “It allows for me to express myself the way I want to and create independently. Not everyone is going to like what I do. Other students should enter these kinds of competitions because it’s great to throw yourself into dangerous territory.
“It’s great to feel the fear that comes with exposing yourself in some capacity; it’s great to mutilate all the preconceived notions you have of yourself to find new sensations and sides of your person. The greatest thing that you can hope for is your work to emotionally resonate; when it hits right, your deepest passions can shine through like a diamond chain in sunlight.”
ASMSA instructor James Katowich offers feedback to a student after they shared an excerpt of one of their manuscripts during a workshop in the Creative Writing Capstone course. Feedback from the instructors as well as their fellow students provides the young writers with information that helps them correct possible flaws in their pieces.
Koen said she had that same kind of feeling during the Arts and Humanities Symposium. Seeing the audience reaction as a portion of her play was read by voice actors was eye-opening.
“During the Humanities Symposium, I felt that I finally could see the fruits of my labor,” Koen said. “There is no feeling quite like seeing your work bring an emotional reaction to many people packed into a room just to see it performed. It was ethereal. I was grateful to see my work influenced so many people in the audience, and I was honored by the number of people asking to read my entire work.”
Koen is spending several weeks of her summer break participating in two of the nation’s most prestigious writing camps. She will attend the playwriting workshops in the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio at the University of Iowa and the Sewanee Young Writers’ Conference at Sewanee, The University of the South.
Koen was surprised that she was accepted into either of the programs much less both of them during the same summer. She had to submit a writing sample of an original play as well as essays about theatre as a craft and a statement of purpose for the Iowa program and similar materials for Sewanee.
“Before these acceptances, I doubted myself as a writer. I wanted that outside validation that many other writers are given later in their careers, but I was not at that stage in my journey yet. Sewanee was the first acceptance/award that confirmed my validity as an artist. The confidence gained in myself and my creative ability was the most impactful award I could have ever been given,” Koen said.
Koen received a grant from the ASMSA Foundation’s Residential Student Excellence Fund to help pay the fees for both workshops.
Isbell would like to see more students enter submissions to regional and national awards programs for their writing. He also wants to see the school’s Poetry Out Loud competition —which Katowich officially organized this year with an event during Hot Springs’ Wednesday Night Poetry at a local coffee shop — continue to expand and engage as many students as possible, including those who aren’t in the Creative Writing Capstone.
“If they are serious about becoming dedicated writers, it is absolutely necessary [to continue the Creative Writing Capstone],” Isbell said. “We teach them to stop thinking as readers and start thinking as writers. Every word, every line, every sentence matters to the essential process of becoming a better writer, no matter the genre.
“The capstone also includes a good deal of in-class writing; this aspect is intentional — most students find it difficult to find a ‘writing space’ and a disciplined schedule which is so very important. Even those who aren’t that serious about becoming writers in their long-term goals benefit from the exposure of reading like a writer, transcending their appreciation of language, making for better writers no matter the field of inquiry they pursue.”
Katowich said that every humanities course is about the study of human societies and culture, nearly always using language as either a subject or tool of analysis.
“Students are gaining more thorough and complex understandings of what it means to be human and how language reflects and affects us,” Katowich said. “In a creative writing class, our students are effectively ‘answering back’ to those classes, raising their own voices and taking part in the larger conversation about what it means to be human in the early 21st century.”
