Fir Acres Writing Workshop
Are you a strong writer who would like to spend an intensive two-weeks of your summer honing your craft with other exceptional teens? Check out Fir Acres Writing Workshop based at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR. Students gather to write, share work and socialize at this selective program that is sure to supercharge your skills and round out your resume for college admissions.
At Fir Acres Writing Workshop, sixty high school students from across the country come together for two weeks to write and join a community of writers on the beautiful, wooded campus of Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. In daily Workshops, participants study great writing and produce their own under the guidance of dynamic, thoughtful, published faculty. At night, participants gather to socialize, meet and hear from distinguished visiting writers, and work on their own poetry, fiction, and creative prose. The mission at Fir Acres is to provide a high-caliber, pre-collegiate, creative educational experience to bright, inventive, and passionate high school students.
How do I get started? Click here.
How do I expand this narrative arc?
Didn’t get into Fir Acres? Spend the summer at another one of the nation’s premier writing programs at the Iowa Young Writer’s Studio
Submit your work to one of the many online publications, like The Maze, Elan Literary Magazine, Hanging Loose Press and more.
See our post about putting on a Poetry Slam in your town.
Start an online poetry (or literary) journal at your school.
Try writing for dramatic performance in the Princeton 10-minute Playwriting Competition
Take your love for poetry public with Poetry Out Loud
For a less time-consuming project, Transcribe handwritten documents by Shakespeare’s contemporaries with Shakespeare’s World
IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT SUMMER PROGRAMS: College admissions officers are very adept at identifying “resume padders”: expensive, one-off programs paid for by your parents which do not mesh with your narrative arc. Therefore, make sure any summer program or course you consider falls into one (or more) of these four buckets:
Highly selective/competitive
Totally unique + linked to your narrative arc
Evidence of adulthood (long hours, multi-year commitment or simply hard work)
A jumping off point or expansion for an authentic narrative arc.
If none of the above apply, a program could still have value to you if it allows you to test a potential interest. However, if it does not end up being a jumping off point for further interests, then you may not want to mention it in your high school resume