Early in my career I spent several years teaching Creative Writing at the middle school level, and I loved it.

Don’t get me wrong: I love teaching Creative Writing at all levels from elementary school to published adults — and yes, I have and do teach it to all those age categories — because teaching Creative Writing is my jam almost as much as writing books is. (And some days, more so.)

Look, middle school is a rough time of life for pretty much everyone, even the kids who don’t show it. (Sometimes, especially them.) At that stage of development, a lot of us feel things really deeply. We absorb things readily, sometimes indiscriminately. We process the world around us through an intensified lens and at varying, different speeds. Life can be lived in the polar extremes.

This makes us, at that stage of life, primed for creative expression. Our minds and personalities have not yet grown out of the world of emotional metaphor, even if cognitively we struggle with abstractions.

Honestly, what better time to begin Creative Writing classes?

I’m thrilled to report there are still a few spots open in Writespace’s Up and Coming Writers of the World series, which begins on Sunday, February 5th and goes through April. This low-stress, ungraded, three-month series is geared toward middle school students and will be conducted on Zoom, so as long as you have an internet connection, you can take it from anywhere!

Here’s the format: on a Sunday afternoon at the start of each month, an author and teacher will guide students through an introductory class on a given genre (listed below), and then over the next four weeks, the students will work one-on-one with a mentor from the Creative Writing program at Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts on their writing. There will be a reading at the end of the series.

Behold the schedule:
* February 5th — Introduction to Fiction, taught by Angélique Jamail (That’s me!!)
* March 5th — Introduction to Playwriting, taught by Kathryn Peterson (She’s great!!)
* April 2nd — Introduction to Poetry, taught by Angélique Jamail (Yay for National Poetry Month!!)

If you know any middle school-aged kids who have an interest in writing, consider signing them up for this program. It makes a great gift, and it’s also a way to tell those kids, in this very difficult landscape we call the world, I see you. You and your art and your ideas have value. Writespace’s classes are among the most affordable of any high-level instruction you can get, and they offer scholarships.

Click this link to register, but do it soon! We’ll see you there.