Young Arizona Writers' Workshop

Young Arizona Writers' Workshop

YAWW provides intensive workshops in fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction, allowing young creative writers to practice and refine their craft.

The Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing is pleased to offer local high school students this opportunity to invest in words and creativity. These workshops take place at the University of Arizona every other summer; the next YAWW will take place during the last ten days of May 2025.

Upcoming YAWW Dates:

June 1-10, 2025

June 7-16, 2027

About the Program

Young Arizona Writers' Workshop is an intensive creative writing camp for high school students, grades 9-12, hosted at the University of Arizona.

Featuring topics in fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction, the Young Arizona Writers' Workshop allows young creative writers to practice and refine their craft, to draft and revise their creations, and to learn about the ways in which these works get published in the world.

During Week 1, the time is balanced between discussing students' works and providing them time to do creative research for their work. Students will work on generating new stories, poems, essays, and personal narratives through free-writes, reading, writing prompts and assignments, and writing from outstanding models. We will spend time working with the UA Poetry Center, the Letterpress Lab, the Learning Games Initiative Research Archive & Video Game Library, and the many libraries and collections of strange and beautiful phenomena housed on campus. Students will also visit with editors from the national journal Sonora Review, the University of Arizona Press, Spork Press, the online journals DIAGRAM and Identity Theory, and many more publishers.

Week 2 will focus on revision, performance, and publication, culminating in a public reading of student work. Students will also get to publish their work in a booklet alongside their peers' writing. Family and friends will be invited to celebrate this achievement.

Registration Requirements

Below, you will find all the important information regarding program registration:

  • No previous experience is required, though a lively interest in reading and writing is expected.
  • Price: $450, 10% Discount for UA Employees. We may have some full and partial scholarships available to those with financial need.
  • Application Instructions posted to the YAWW website: February 2025
  • Applications Open: March 1, 2025
  • Deadline for 2025 registration: April 1, 2025

For more information, please email sharonne@arizona.edu or call 520-621-9771.

Note that none of the registration fee qualifies as a tax-deductible donation.

Sample Daily Schedule

Daily activities will consist of reading and small group discussions, small creative writing workshops focusing on students' drafts, alone time to think and create, conversations with makers and publishers of art and writing both on and off campus, and a series of immersions in some of the resources available at the University of Arizona.

9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Fiction workshop

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM Time to write

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM Letterpress Lab immersion

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM Lunch on Campus

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM Poetry workshop

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM Generative writing/project time or small reading groups

3:00 PM – 4:00 PM Nonfiction workshop

Scholarships

Scholarship availability information will be available in Spring 2025.