Community Outreach Programs

Since the MFA degree program was established at ASU in 1984, the Creative Writing Program has followed a tradition of reaching out to the surrounding community, the state, and beyond. Extending the focus of personal creative work to the local, national, and international community of writers—our faculty, staff, and students have been involved in projects in valley elementary schools, high schools, reservations, libraries, detention centers, Alzheimer’s units, and hospitals. This tradition of outreach at ASU dates back to the days of the Arizona Territorial Normal School, when producing original literary work was encouraged in student and faculty publications. From the 1906 journal known as The Tempe Normal Student to the weekly 1932 Phoenix radio program that featured original poetry and prose from the college, and on through the Sixties and Eighties with publication of The Prospector, Catalyst, and the award-winning Hayden’s Ferry Review literary magazines—ASU creative writers have been reaching out to the community. Indeed, Creative Writing has sought to make the community the fourth wall of the ASU classroom, that expanding room in which we all live.

The ASU Writers’ Community

The Community Writers’ Workshop works as a critical literary cooperative. The Creative Writing Program invites all members of the community at large into the university classroom for participation in a non-graded and free seminar. Graduate students in the MFA program are selected to facilitate the often spirited discussions. Members of the seminar are required to bring original writing, and to expect to work in giving a reasonable and critically constructive reaction to the writing of others; members can expect to receive the same critical reaction to their own work from others in the seminar.

The program propounds a University-as-community ideal, expecting reasonable, mature work but without the traditional strictures of grading and research. ASU graduate students gain an opportunity to design and teach in an alternative university classroom setting, preparing them for such realistic job venues as literary centers, libraries, and community programs.

The ASU Writers’ Community began in 1985 as a response to various community interests, and it has provided work for scores of graduate students. Normally reconstituted each semester, it sometimes runs in the summer. Graduate students may sign up for internship credit for teaching the course.

The Young Writers at Work Program

Young Writers at Work projects are found in primary and secondary classrooms, libraries, and community centers in our immediate community and beyond. These workshops are often one or two week residencies, wherein our graduate students teach in settings where the participants are not likely themselves to become writers. The program sends our MFA candidates from their own classrooms to the classrooms of others, where an understanding of writing is not based on theory or privilege, but on the real world, with the real considerations of age, ability, interest, and life experience. The program began in 1985 in the Phoenix Public Libraries, and our first partners were The Friends of the Library. Many venues have followed, with community partners never hard to find. Some partners provide funds for the graduate students.

The ASU Alzheimer’s and Palliative Care Models

Creative Writing graduate students are often sent out into specific communities. In this successful program, which has included several sites in locked dementia units, students work with residents in an effort to go beyond therapy. Art, discovery, respect, kindness, and good writing can be found and produced in surprising settings. Graduate students and ASU staff work in teams in real life situations, eliciting conversation, story, writing. In hospital settings, they produce works of literary art on the spot, rendering the story or poem as a “literary broadside” to be given immediately to the patient-partner. These projects tackle notions of individuality and diversity in people, places, and medical conditions. Such projects establish the ASU Creative Writing Program as a community leader in fostering an arts-without-boundaries sensibility.

Funding for these projects varies, but generous grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, from Motorola Great Communities, and currently, from the Mayo Clinic Hospital Humanities in Medicine Program have helped us continue the good work.