By Seema Tailor Staff Writer
The Writers Institute at Susquehanna has been hailed by many as one of the best undergraduate writing programs in the country. The institute fosters a unique environment of collaboration and teamwork between students and staff, and it serves as a hub for students and professors to gather and collaborate on work and to improve writing skills and techniques.
The institute also offers programs and publications that distinguish from other university writing programs.
One of these programs is the Raji-Syman Visiting Writers Series, which provides support and funding to four literary magazines: Rivercraft, Essay, The Susquehanna Review and the Apprentice Writer. The series also hosts six well known writers, editors or agents to campus to talk about their work.
The Writer’s Institute also orchestrates a senior reading and chapbook series to highlight the achievements of each senior class of writers.
Glen Retief, the current director of the writer’s institute and associate professor of English and creative writing, plays a significant role in developing writers within the institute. Retief teaches a course on creative non-fiction. In the course, he covers three types of writing: memoir, personal essay and literary journalism.
Both the memoir and the personal essay teaches students to draw examples from their lives and make a story that reflects on their real-life experiences. Literary journalism teaches students to investigate the world as writers and construct a piece that studies a sub-population in society, written with journalistic and creative writing techniques.
Additionally, in his classes Retief talks about voice, how the writer sounds on the page, personality and structure. He emphasizes structure as a means to improve the story and writing about the action first and coming back later with the background information.
Retief noted that the student perspective within the institute is important, as students work closely, not only with the professors to edit and workshop their writing, but also with each other. This helps them become better writers and thinkers.
In addition to fostering a “community of writers,” Retief teaches his classes as discussion-driven instead of lecture style.
