What Is Cosmic Writers?
To provide high-quality creative writing education for kids in grades K–12.
We help kids to develop strong communication skills, creative thinking skills, and love of words from the time they learn to write.
To provide engaging, accessible writing opportunities to kids from all locations and socioeconomic backgrounds.
Our hybrid structure makes our programs accessible to students in districts without local extracurricular opportunities, and our curricula are designed to be flexible to the needs and backgrounds of many different types of students.
To provide well-paying part-time jobs to college students pursuing arts and writing.
All our instructors are college students who serve as role models to our kids. Meanwhile, our remote and/or short-term paid opportunities make it possible for these students to take on additional unpaid or underpaid internships in their chosen fields.
Our Mission
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 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 expanded it. Our workshops continued to fill up, and our campers continued to amaze us with their writing. At that point, we had enough space for 120 campers, but we knew that there were many more kids who would benefit from programming like ours. So we asked ourselves: How can we provide creative writing education to every child who needs it?
The answer was Cosmic Writers. We’re now a registered nonprofit in Pennsylvania, offering multiple pathways for children to experience our creative writing programs. In addition to Word Camp, which remains our flagship program, we now work with schools, libraries, and community organizations across the country to provide programming to the youth they serve.
We believe that creative writing is one of the single most powerful tools for bringing out the best in students. Creative writing boosts children’s literacy, communication, problem-solving, innovation, and leadership skills. It empowers children to become not only strong writers but strong thinkers. And we think that’s world-changing.
Cosmic in the News
Learn more about us by reading these articles!
Ben and Me (Redux): An Out-and-About Shout-Out! by Esther Hershenhorn, published in Teaching Authors June 17th, 2022
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