Key West Literary Seminar Launches New High School Program

The Key West Literary Seminar announces the Young Writers Studio, a five-day writing program for local high school students that will take place June 25-29 in Key West. Applications are now available at kwls.org/young-writers and are due March 20.

The new program is open to students in Monroe County who will be starting their sophomore, junior, or senior years in fall 2018. Students who are homeschooled or have unconventional educational backgrounds are also encouraged to apply. The program is free for selected applicants, thanks in part to a grant from Knight Foundation’s Knight Arts Challenge, which funds the best ideas for bringing people together through the arts.

Participating students will spend five days exploring Key West and learning about authors who have lived and worked on the island through writing exercises, excursions, journaling, and classroom work. Daily writing workshops will be taught by acclaimed writer Victor LaValle, a member of the writing faculty at Columbia University, whose most recent novel, The Changeling, was selected as one of the ten best books of 2017 by USA Today and Time magazine.

“We want to give local high school students an opportunity to discover their home in the Keys as writers,” says Arlo Haskell, executive director of the Key West Literary Seminar and a 1996 Key West High School graduate. “The Keys are unique, and many of the writers who lived here left behind resources that can be used to strengthen writing skills and develop critical thinking.”

Modeled after national programs such as Bard College’s Young Writers Workshop, the Young Writers Studio curriculum was developed by Virginia-based educator Kate Peters, with input from current and former Key West High School students and faculty. Other instructors will include Nick Vagnoni, a poet and Key West High School graduate who teaches writing at Florida International University.

Regarded as one of the country’s leading nonprofit literary organizations, the Key West Literary Seminar has brought world-renowned writers to its annual Key West conference for nearly forty years and has collaborated with Key West High School in recent years to bring writers such as Jamaica Kincaid, George Saunders, and Junot Díaz together with local students. The Young Writers Studio is the Seminar’s first program specifically for high school students.

More information about the Young Writers Studio and the application can be found at kwls.org/young-writers.