By Lindsay Paul

After a COVID-19-induced hiatus, the Writopia Lab in the Bay Area has reopened its doors to new students at its Sunset District campus.

The educational writing program, which also has locations in New York and Washington D.C., reopened its two San Francisco locations – in the Sunset and Dogpatch neighborhoods – in January of this year.

With Shanille Martin and Alexia Nader at the helm of the organization – whose Sunset location is on Irving Street at 17th Avenue – students between the ages of 4 to 18 are invited to ideate with professional writers, collaborate with peers and produce creative and collegiate-level writing at the after-school programs.

Martin explained that workshops are kept small, between three to eight students each, to preserve the vulnerability of the writing experience and to offer enriching feedback.

“Confidence is a part of what we do,” Martin said.

Students are invited to work on any project they choose during the workshop, whether that be school essays, a poetry collection or even their own novel. Martin said that Writopia Labs are meant to be a safe space for students to express themselves and gain autonomy over their own writing.

Workshops run for 90 minutes and are guided by professional, local writers with backgrounds in education. The sessions involve game-based activities to spark imagination, followed by independent writing time and an opportunity for each student to share their work at the end of class.

Izabella and Elizabeth Kasperski are 8- and 9-year-old sisters enrolled in the creative writing workshops. They described the environment of the Sunset Commons campus as “really fun.” They added that there is lots of collaboration, vocabulary games and opportunities to learn about new stories that encourage them to write in their free time.

Finley Harmes, a 13-year-old student attending weekly creative writing sessions at the lab, explained the program is different from the writing they do at school because it allows them to work on stories that they actually want to create and “helps me focus on the skill I’m trying to build.”

Harmes has already written a novel with the support of their Writopia instructors and peers.

“(The lab has) really allowed me to reach out, because they’re really useful and always have tips around my writing,” Harmes said.

Workshops are divided by age and include language-play sessions for children under the age of 6, creative writing for students under the age of 16 and college writing sessions for older high-school students preparing college applications.

Maile Koidin is one of the students in the college writing program and has a long history with Writopia. She first heard of the program in elementary school where she participated in Writopia’s creative writing workshops. Now at age 16, she has returned to Writopia for the first trimester after their hiatus to develop her skills in the college writing workshop.

Koidin explained that the college writing sessions have helped her feel less intimidated about writing her application essays and have been a lot more fun than she expected. She said the workshops are “very open, but we learn the structure which helps me figure out what I’m trying to tell colleges. Starting it now takes a lot of the stress away.”

At a moment when A.I. is drafting academic essays and many are finding technology is rendering writing skills obsolete, Martin suggests that Writopia workshops support the physical act of writing and allow young students to find inspiration in their own communities.

“Yes, A.I. can write everything that we need it to, but it cannot encapsulate the emotions that go into creative writing and the personal voice and personal stories that exist,” Martin said.

“Writopia is a growing community that supports you to write about how you feel,” Elizabeth Kaperski said. “I really want to keep feeling that way.”

Learn more at writopialab.org/regions/sf-bay-area.