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Program Structure

Over five intensive days, you will explore the art and craft of writing through a combination of workshops, discussions, and creative exercises.

What You Will Do

  • Participate in daily interactive writing labs focused on various elements of literary development.
  • Develop techniques in narrative arc and structure.
  • Explore character psychology.
  • Analyze lyrical patterns across different media.
  • Engage in collaborative discussions and peer feedback.

Program Highlight

An experiential learning session at Louvre Abu Dhabi, where students will explore visual literacy and the relationship between art, narrative, and meaning.

What You Will Gain

By the end of the program, you will:

  • Distinguish tensions between form and content.
  • Gain the awareness necessary to account for the reader.
  • Analyze character psychology and apply it to your own writing.
  • Recognize literary themes across different media and formats.
  • Demonstrate your unique literary voice through original work.
  • Apply key literary techniques in your writing.
  • Develop confidence in expressing ideas clearly and creatively.
  • Produce original written work for your portfolio.
  • Gain exposure to university-level expectations and learning.

Who Should Apply?

This program is designed for students who:

  • Are aged 15–18 (entering Grades 10–12)
  • Have an interest in writing, literature, or communication
  • Are motivated to experience university-level learning
  • Are curious, creative, and open to new ideas

Students from the UAE are especially encouraged to apply.

Faculty

Gregory Pardlo

Program Head, Literature and Creative Writing; Professor of Literature and Creative Writing

Gregory Pardlo is a graduate of Rutgers University-Camden. He received an MFA from NYU as a New York Times Fellow in Poetry, an MFA in nonfiction from Columbia University as a Teaching Fellow, and an MPhil from the CUNY Graduate Center. Pardlo is the author of Digest, winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; Totem, winner of the 2007 American Poetry Review / Honickman Prize; and translator from the Danish of Niels Lyngsø’s, Pencil of Rays and Spiked Mace. Air Traffic, a memoir in essays, was published by Knopf in 2018. His most recent book, Spectral Evidence, was long listed for the 2024 National Book Award in poetry. His poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Playboy, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, The Nation, The New York Times, Ploughshares, Tin House, and two editions of Best American Poetry, as well as many anthologies, including the Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry. He is the recipient of fellowships from the New York Public Library's Cullman Center, the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and a fellowship for translation from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has received other fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, MacDowell, the Lotos Club Foundation, and Cave Canem. Pardlo is Poetry Editor of Virginia Quarterly Review and advising editor for Callaloo, a journal of African diaspora arts and letters.