About

The Reynolds Young Writers Workshop at Denison University is a 10-day residential creative writing program for rising high school juniors and seniors, held each June on Denison's campus in Granville, Ohio. Founded in 1995 and endowed by playwright Jonathan R. Reynolds, the program has run continuously for over 30 years and admits up to 48 students annually from a national applicant pool.

Morning workshops meet daily in small groups of no more than 12, each led by a Denison faculty member, covering fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Students workshop their own drafts, study craft, and build revision skills in a genre of their choosing. Afternoons bring craft talks and sessions with visiting writers, individual manuscript consultations with faculty, and optional activities including hiking Denison's 350-acre bio-reserve, yoga, and excursions to the Columbus Museum of Art. Evening readings by faculty are followed by structured writing time led by teaching associates, who live in the residence hall alongside students. The week culminates in a public reading by participants.

Admission requires a creative writing sample of up to 10 pages in any genre, a short recommendation from an English teacher or counselor, and a few short-answer questions. There is no application fee. The program is need-blind, and financial assistance through the Reynolds Endowment is described as generous. The all-inclusive program fee — covering tuition, housing, and meals for the full 10 days — is $1,700, which is low for a residential writing program of this duration.

The Reynolds Workshop is one of the longer-running dedicated creative writing residencies for high school students in the country, and its small cohort and faculty-to-student ratio give it an intimacy that larger programs cannot match. The Reynolds Young Writers Workshop is a serious, high-quality workshop for committed high school writers eager to sharpen their craft.