What Is Cosmic Writers?
Our Mission
To use writing education to empower youth to become creative and critical thinkers.
Our Story
Cosmic Writers emerged during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic. In April of 2020, school was beginning to wind down for the year, and summer camps were getting cancelled. The summer stretched ahead: long months where kids would have few opportunities to keep their minds active or interact with others their age. So Cosmic Writers Executive Director Rowana Miller, then a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania, applied for a grant from Penn’s Kelly Writers House to develop and run the first season of Word Camp, with the goal of creating an engaging online community during a difficult summer.
But when she spread the word about Word Camp to families and educators, they didn’t just say, “This is a great pandemic opportunity.” Instead, they said, “This is a great opportunity.”
As we found out, most kids didn’t have access to high-quality creative writing education. The majority of existing programs were either expensive or based in-person in major cities, leaving huge numbers of young writers — particularly those from underserved communities — without opportunities to develop their skills. So instead of ending Word Camp as in-person camps began to open up again in summer 2021, we asked ourselves: How can we provide creative writing education to every child who needs it?
The answer was Cosmic Writers. In 2022, we became an independent nonprofit that offers multiple pathways for children to experience our creative writing programs. In addition to Word Camp, which remains our flagship program, we now offer one-on-one writing mentorships and residencies to bring creative writing directly to kids, and curriculum and professional development to support educators in incorporating these experiences in their classrooms.
Then, as we grew, we started noticing that Cosmic Writers’ impact went beyond access to creative writing education. Over and over, we watched our participants’ literacy skills skyrocket. We looked into the research and did some of our own, and we learned that creative writing is an extraordinary tool for teaching core writing skills: narrative is as effective as essay-writing at honing students’ abilities to structure their ideas logically, or utilize transitions, or write at length. And when students have the freedom to develop these skills while writing about content that’s exciting to them, they’re self-motivated to become strong writers.
Now, Cosmic Writers’ focus is harnessing the power of creative writing to teach the kinds of literacy skills necessary for children to become innovative thinkers, effective communicators, and confident storytellers. And we think that’s world-changing.
Cosmic in the News
Learn more about us by reading these articles!
Celebrate Up-and-Coming Storytellers at Cosmic Writers’ 4th Anniversary Young Writer Showcase by Laura Bell, published in The Village Voice, January 9th, 2026
Creative Writing as a Tool for Combating Classroom Censorship by Rowana Miller, guest article for Publishers Weekly, December 9th, 2024
Running Library Creative Writing Workshops that Bring Out Kids’ Inner Writers by Rowana Miller, guest post on the American Library Association / Association for Library Service to Children blog, November 15th, 2024
The Unexpected Entrepreneurs by Dave Zeitlin, published in the Penn Gazette, September/October 2024
Meet Philadelphia’s Cosmic Writers by Courtney Duchene, published in the Philadelphia Citizen, July 10th, 2023
Cosmic Writers brings free creative writing education to school-aged children by Louisa Shepherd, published in Penn Today, May 31st, 2022
Penn 10: Manoj Simha by Arielle Stanger, published in 34th Street, May 13th, 2022
SEPTA stations get makeover for reading campaign by Jack Tomczuk, published in Metro Philadelphia, April 6th, 2022
Creative Writing for All by Lauren Rebecca Thacker, published in OMNIA, January 27th, 2022
College senior launches nonprofit creative writing program by Sejin Park, published in The Daily Pennsylvanian, January 26th, 2022
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