Creative Writing

The Creative Writing program, developed by professional writers, is intensive and highly challenging to ensure talent development and productivity for emerging writers. For two years, students concentrate on sound writing techniques in fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and screenwriting. The goal of the Creative Writing Department is to recruit and mentor the finest young writers in South Carolina. How? By offering them a creative, supportive atmosphere and a course of study supervised by practicing, published writers.

Throughout the school year, students benefit from interaction with distinguished visiting writers like Oscar-winning screenwriter John Patrick Shanley, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jorie Graham, critically-acclaimed short story writer Charles Baxter, and best-selling novelist Curtis Sittenfeld. Click here for a list of recent visiting writers.

Students perform public readings of their work twice yearly and have the opportunity to be published in the school-sponsored literary magazine, Litmus.

Governor’s School creative writers have received some of the most distinguished writing honors in the nation, including Scholastic Portfolio Gold Awards, and first place in the Bennington Young Writers Competition, the Archibald Rutledge Scholarship, the Southern Voices Competition and the Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize for Young Writers from the Kenyon Review.