The Creative Writing Workshops. In our the creative writing workshops, we bring complete respect for everyone involved, we bring a full belief in the ability of everyone to work together and create authentic original writing, and we bring a strategy of discovery, using initial comfortable exercises to stimulate writing that is low-risk, then individualizing and deepening the work as we go.  We encourage supportive response and discussion and pay attention to developing skills and significant themes.  In the prisons we are able to leave each time with a mutually agreed upon assignment, and the result forms the basis of reading and discussion at the next session.  At the end of the workshop cycle, we have a reading attended by peers in the facility and by outside guests (youth writers are often able to bring the reading to the University of Michigan). 

By participating in the workshop, the participants gain skills in working together, in listening carefully and offering constructive feedback, in trusting their own stories and histories and imagination, in taking responsibility for their own work, and in speaking articulately before an audience.  The attention and praise of the audience, as well as the week by week growth in their ability to write and share, add to each participant’s sense of her own possibilities.