Creative Writing Aimed for Scholastic Writing Competition

Instructor: Miss Mary Kim

A four-year poetry and story judge for National Scholastic Writing Awards, Mary C. Kim has helped students in the past two academic years win 3 Gold Keys, 1 Silver Key, and 1 Honorable Mention in critical essay, journalism, short story, and flash fiction. A creative writing teacher for 15 years, she will train students to build creative writing skills across 10 weeks.

Featured on NPR’s Snap Judgment, Mary C. Kim has published in The New York Times Magazine and literary journals, winning 2 poem commissions from Ohio State University’s Multicultural Center. Her book, Karma Suture, garnered Honorable Mention in the 2007 Writers’ Digest International Self-Published Books Contest. Her children's book, Super Korean New Years with Grandma, has been published by the multi-cultural non-profit TBR Books.

Course Description

Deep analysis of classic/prize-winning stories enables us to learn from the anatomy and techniques of excellent stories. This literary analysis will help with honors/AP literature classes.

· Invention and brainstorming strategies to generate story ideas. A weekly writer’s journal will be required to store and build ideas.

· Story Structure and Outlining to make your story writing efficient. Our goal is to complete, revise, and edit a short story by the end of our 10-week session.

· Writing Workshops build literary and analytical skills. By critiquing others’ work, we learn how to and gain strategies needed to improve our own work.

· Contest Submission Strategies will occur in our first/last sessions together. For California-based students, the National Scholastics Writing Awards deadline is in early December.

We cannot guarantee that your creative writing will win awards but will help you build skills towards them.