Laura Tetreault, Assistant Director

As one of the Assistant Directors of the University Writing Center, I had the privilege of working closely this semester with our staff and consultants to help develop some new projects. We are hoping to use the new, more centrally located space on the first floor of the Ekstrom Library to host some exciting events in the spring semester, with the goal of working with more writers and strengthening campus conversations about writing.

We are hoping in particular to strengthen the Writing Center’s contributions to the creative writing community here at UofL. We enjoying working with many writers completing academic or professional projects, but some may not know that we can also work with any writers doing creative writing—whether for classes or for personal projects. Although I believe that any strict separation between “academic” and “creative” is a false one, I am also invested in expanding the Writing Center’s presence as a welcoming space for creative writers. Many of our consultants this year have expertise in creative writing and are eager to work with students on fiction, poetry, nonfiction, screenwriting, or any other genre.

One of the upcoming projects connecting the Writing Center with creative writing will be a series of three writing workshops aimed at any undergraduate writers. Each workshop will be themed around a specific topic or genre of writing, and we hope for these to be highly participatory. In addition to learning about the overall topic of each workshop, writers will produce work during the sessions through interactive brainstorming and drafting activities. We plan for these to be helpful to writers working on a variety of projects, whether those are for personal, professional, or academic purposes.

The Writing Center is already a space for writers across campus working on a wide variety of projects. We are also thinking of other ways to make our new location a space to bring writers together, build community, and celebrate the creative work that many of our students do every day. With these goals in mind, we are hoping to host events such as a student open mic night.

We are also continuing our already successful graduate student and junior faculty writing groups this spring. Please refer to our website for more information if you are a graduate student or faculty member who would like to participate in a group that provides support, accountability, and feedback for any kind of writing project.

To stay up to date on these and other upcoming projects, please return to this space in the spring for more specific details and feel free to follow us on Twitter at @UofLWritingCtr. We wish all of our readers a restful winter break and a happy holiday season!

• Working in the Writing Center