creative writing in berlin

The Reader Insider – Top Places To Write In Berlin

Words by Dan Ayres

Whilst Berlin is undoubtedly a fantastic place to be a writer, there is one thing we can all agree on – distractions abound! From the constant lure of the city’s many lakes to the techno music pumping incessantly from your next door neighbours, it can be hard to find the right space to stay focused on your writing. Luckily, the city also has a whole host of great spots for you to hunker down with your pen, paper or laptop and finally bash out those priceless words!

But what makes for a great place to write? It can mean different things for different writers. Stephen King’s relentless fingers were spurred on by the anthems of AC/DC in his early days. Roald Dahl preferred a shed, a comfy armchair and an infinite supply of cigarettes. J.K. Rowling famously penned Potter in the cosy cafes of Edinburgh, whilst Cyril Connolly stipulated that the enemy of art was the pram in the hall!

To help you out, we Reader Berliners thought we’d share our favourite places for when working from home just doesn’t cut the mustard.

Sophie’s Cellar – Another Country

Kreuzberg’s Another Country bookshop is already a much loved treasure by the international writing community in Berlin, what with its abundance of English language books, regular reading nights such as Queer Stories (currently on hiatus) and the Friday night dinner parties that draw a lively crowd week after week. But did you know the basement is open and waiting for you to come and write during the week? This cool and quiet space surrounded by books is the perfect little island away from the hustle and bustle of the city, and it’s easier to lose track of time here than perhaps anywhere else in Berlin. Before you know it, you’ll have bashed out four chapters, at which point you can head upstairs for a beer and a chat with the enigmatic owner Sophie Raphaeline.

The Stabi – Potsdamer Platz

The Staatsbibliothek , affectionately known as ‘The Stabi’, is not only a great place to write, but a quintessential Berlin experience in itself. A favourite haunt of Reader founder Victoria, together with its sister site over at Unter Den Linden, The Stabi forms one of the biggest libraries in the whole of Europe. What makes the Potsdamer Platz location stand out, however, is the innovative modernist architecture. Part of the ‘Kulturforum’ collection of buildings built on the West side of the wall, The Stabi still retains something of a retro pre-Wende vibe, nowhere more so than in the canteen, where the grumpy mitarbeiters serve up classics like bulletten and piccolo bottles of rotkäppchen for when things get dire. Air-conditioning makes the Stabi highly popular in the summer months. To use the wifi you have to register, which may prove just the obstacle you need. We recommend getting a one year library card for 30 euros, which gives you access to the best workspaces and an extraordinary variety of books (mainly in German) for when you’re seeking inspiration/distraction.

The Berlin City Library

Less well known and certainly less snazzy than the Stabi, the Berlin City Library in Mitte is a great little secret for writers. You don’t have to be a member to work there, and there are plenty of tables and chairs to settle down and get into the writing groove. It’s a popular choice for the many students living in the city, and sharing a silent space with a whole room of academics furiously scribbling away can be great inspiration to write. Yes, the decor isn’t exactly chic, but there’s an affordable cafe (try the scrumptious Mohnschnecke!) and an open courtyard for when you have to beseech the gods to help you overcome writer’s block. It’s also conveniently centrally located within a stones throw of Museum Island and the Spree, so there’s plenty of history to absorb during writing breaks.

Bars & Cafes

If libraries and bookstores aren’t your cup of tea, try a cafe! Berlin is positively heaving with cafes and bars just waiting for you to come and pen your masterpiece.

For the Neuköllners amongst you, Muted Horn is a great space for writers, with craft beer on tap, cosy tables and armchairs in smoking and non-smoking areas and even a collection of board games if you feel like getting sociable after hitting your word count. Whilst it can get packed in the evenings, weekdays are fairly relaxed, and its distinctive ‘only in Berlin’ vibe is sure to unleash your inner prolific writer.

The Apotheken Bar in Kreuzberg is a former pharmacy turned cafe/bar (natürlich). Not only do they have delicious cafes and top notch coffee, but the polished dark wood, leftover apothecary paraphernalia and squishy furniture perfect for creating your own little writing nest makes it a winner, particularly in winter.

For all beer lovers with an anarchist streak, Cafe Morgenrot in Prenzlauer Berg is a delightful alternative to the spick and span cafes flooded with chatting out-of-towners that pervade the area. Not only does it tick all the right Berlin boxes (covered in graffiti, alternative art on the walls, excellent veggie food) it’s surprisingly quiet in the daylight hours, meaning you can scribble your diatribes of ‘taking down the system’ in this old anarchist favourite and then enjoy a crisp German beer on the terrace outside as a reward.

Sticking with the bar theme, those of you in Friedrichshain should head to Fitchers Vogel on Warschauer Straße. With its bare walls, candlelit tables and mismatched furniture, it’s a great place to hunker down and write over a dangerously cheap hausbier. Arrive early evening and take a seat towards the back, and enjoy the absence of distracting music before the crowds spill in from 8 or 9 onwards.

The district of Mitte has two bookstore/cafe combinations you’ll want to check out. Shakespeare & Sons on Warschauerstrasse has bookshelves on every wall and great bagels to keep you fuelled whilst you write. On the other end of the spectrum is the mighty Dussmann on Friedrichstrasse, which is a bookstore so vast you can literally get lost in it. A pleasant surprise is the subterranean cafe with a gigantic living rainforest waterfall wall, ideal inspiration for fantasy writers. Arrive before the lunch rush or mid afternoon to take advantage of the lulls.

Outdoor Spaces

If you prefer to scribble with the open sky above you, there are some nice places to take a pew on a picnic bench around the city. Search out Cafe Hasenschänke in Hasenheide park, the huge beer garden at Cafe am Neuen See in Tiergarten, or the endearingly retro Restaurant Schoenbrunn in Volkspark Friedrichshain for great writing spots surrounded by greenery. Or take a trip to the community gardens in Tempelhofer Feld, where you can grab a spati beer, take a seat amongst the flowerpots and gain inspiration from watching kite-surfers and rollerbladers at this enormous fascistic former airport. Only in Berlin!

So here’s a list of some of our places to get scribbling in Berlin. Do you have any of your own places you’d like to share? Get in touch with us on Facebook or Twitter ! 

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Creative Writing for the Stage

This study programme focuses on three areas: creative writing for the stage, dramatic practice and analytical dramaturgy. After two years of basic study and an intermediate examination students in the programme continue with a further two years of advanced study in which audio drama and screenplays are also covered. Graduates of the programme are awarded a university qualification equivalent to a Master´s degree. Workshops with acclaimed authors and directors as well as collaborative projects with other departments and professional theatres supplement the seminars. The programme aims to attract the greatest possible diversity and prospective students representing different cultures, generations and personalities. They are encouraged to apply. Applications are accepted every two years in the autumn and require the submission of a scene written by the candidate, two texts following specific guidelines and an analysis. In recent years eight students were accepted from an average of 170 submissions.

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Creative Writing

Writers as artists, writers in the world.

Creativity, Clarity, Community

Oberlin offers undergraduates the rare opportunity to major in creative writing—not as a concentration in another department, but as an independent discipline in its own right. Creative Writing provides an intense and rigorous course of study with instruction, studio training, and coursework in a variety of genres, including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drama, translation, screenwriting, and hybrid forms. Our program encourages work across disciplines and prepares students for a range of careers both within and beyond the literary world.

An Inclusive and Imaginative Workshop Culture 

Creative Writing at Oberlin emphasizes an inclusive workshop climate where creative expression, experimentation, and collaboration thrive. Our faculty are practicing poets, novelists, screenwriters, and essayists who value the art of teaching and supportive mentorship. Advanced creative writing students pursue large-scale independent projects with the support of a faculty mentor and a dedicated small group of peers. Because we are more than just a studio program, our students employ the skills of open inquiry and intellectual curiosity: their liberal arts education enriches their creative work, and their creativity inspires rigorous cross-disciplinary thinking both in the classroom and beyond.

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In Oberlin Writers in the Schools (WITS), students learn how to take their passion for writing into the local schools in meaningful and effective ways.

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Students have the opportunity to connect with diverse visiting writers, including notable alumni, through campus readings, master classes, craft workshops, and individual consultations.

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Word & image: poetry in dialogue with visual art.

Join in the dynamic conversation between poetry and visual art and explore how visual art can inspire and challenge the making of poetic image and meaning.  Through collaboration with the Allen Memorial Art Museum, students have the opportunity for close-looking at superb and diverse works of art across many cultures and centuries.

Race and Poetic Innovation

Explore the dynamic relationship between racial identity and creative inventiveness in poetry. Delve into contemporary and classic poems that broaden and challenge notions of race and representation. Experiment with using craft and technique to subvert conventional understandings of identity and racialized experience.

Plot & Structure

In this course, cross-listed with Comparative Literature, students read experimental contemporary fiction from around the world. Students gain an understanding of the historical basis of Western narrative structure, while simultaneously considering alternate models and learning to question established rules about managing plot and action. Students respond to texts both critically and creatively, with the goal of structuring their own narratives more boldly.

False Documents

A false document is “a technique employed to create verisimilitude in a work of fiction.” This can take many forms, such as epistolary novels, or fictions in the form of annotated poems, online reviews, author acknowledgments, wills, indexes, email threads, and beyond. How do we perceive verisimilitude as readers? How do we, as writers, fake it? In addition to examining literary false documents (and hoaxes and frauds), students will write a number of short fictions over the course of the semester.

Student Profiles

Paige reinstein ’21.

“In this tight-knit community we get to see each other grow (as both people and writers) from introductory courses as awkward first-years to capstone senior year. The faculty and students are some of the most supportive people in my life, and I love learning with them.”

Fiona Warnick ’22

“I feel so consistently lucky to have such dedicated professors. Everyone I’ve worked with in the Creative Writing Program cares deeply about their students both as writers and as people. Classes are small, so you’re able to actually know and trust each other, which is important for productive workshopping.”

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“From the professors to the students, everyone always wanted to see me and my writing grow and develop, but not at the expense of what made my voice unique. It's a warm and supportive community that only gets better the longer you're a part of it.”

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Creative writing department open house, what does creative writing at oberlin look like.

Professor Tom Hopkins moderates an alumni panel on publishing and journalism in the first annual Creative Writing Program Career Fair.

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Our alumni have found notable success in the publishing world: these were only a few of the best-selling books by Obies published in 2020.

Get in touch; we would love to chat.

56 Best universities for Creative Writing in Germany

Updated: February 29, 2024

• Art & Design
• Computer Science
• Engineering
• Environmental Science
• Liberal Arts & Social Sciences
• Mathematics

Below is a list of best universities in Germany ranked based on their research performance in Creative Writing. A graph of 62K citations received by 9K academic papers made by 56 universities in Germany was used to calculate publications' ratings, which then were adjusted for release dates and added to final scores.

We don't distinguish between undergraduate and graduate programs nor do we adjust for current majors offered. You can find information about granted degrees on a university page but always double-check with the university website.

Please note that our approach to subject rankings is based on scientific outputs and heavily biased on art-related topics towards institutions with computer science research profiles.

1. Free University of Berlin

For Creative Writing

2. Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main

3. University of Munich

4. Heidelberg University - Germany

5. Humboldt University of Berlin

6. University of Cologne

7. University of Hamburg

8. University of Freiburg

9. Saarland University

10. University of Bremen

11. University of Tubingen

12. University of Gottingen

13. Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz

14. University of Leipzig

15. University of Munster

16. University of Konstanz

17. University of Bonn

18. University of Bielefeld

19. University of Erfurt

20. University of Duisburg - Essen

21. University of Marburg

22. Ruhr University Bochum

23. University of Trier

24. University of Potsdam

25. University of Stuttgart

26. University of Wurzburg

27. University of Augsburg

28. University of Giessen

29. Heinrich Heine University of Dusseldorf

30. Dresden University of Technology

31. University of Bayreuth

32. University of Erlangen Nuremberg

33. University of Siegen

34. Kiel University

35. RWTH Aachen University

36. TU Dortmund University

37. Technical University of Munich

38. Friedrich Schiller University of Jena

39. University of Wuppertal

40. University of Regensburg

41. University of Kassel

42. Technical University of Berlin

43. Osnabruck University

44. Darmstadt University of Technology

45. University of Mannheim

46. University of Bamberg

47. Braunschweig University of Technology

48. Otto von Guericke University of Magdeburg

49. Leuphana University of Luneburg

50. Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg

51. University of Passau

52. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

53. Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg

54. University of Paderborn

55. Leibniz University of Hanover

56. University of Rostock

The best cities to study Creative Writing in Germany based on the number of universities and their ranks are Berlin , Frankfurt , Munich , and Heidelberg .

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The department of english and creative writing responds to the may 1, 2024 events and arrests on campus.

We the faculty and staff of the Dartmouth College Department of English and Creative Writing write to condemn the decision-making process that led to the presence of multiple militarized police units on our campus. One of these units, the New Hampshire Special Weapon and Tactics , defines itself as a highly-trained squad,

with expertise in weaponry and specialized tactics such as rappelling and building assaults. The purpose of the SWAT Unit is to be able to respond to high-risk incidents such as barricaded suspects, hostage takers, high-risk warrant service, active shooter situations and executive (VIP) security, as well as other incidents in which the lives and safety of the public are in extreme danger.

As in-person observers of the protest—representing a range of political views within the department—and as faculty who've consulted with students representing a range of political views, we affirm that the following played no role in the protest:

—barricaded suspects,

—hostage takers,

—standing warrants,

—active shooters,

—executive (VIP) security.

The decision to call in law enforcement, leading to the presence of militarized police, made this a case of "SWATting," the practice of summoning militarized police to a non-threatening situation to increase the risk of violence​. This decision endangered the safety of every member of the Dartmouth community.

The protest in question obstructed nothing and threatened no violence. Before this administration took power, there was no precedent in Dartmouth history for responding with law enforcement to language that is not explicitly threatening. There is no precedent in Dartmouth history for responding to any protest with militarized police units created to respond to life-or-death situations.

Therefore, w e call for the College to formally revise its dissent policies, in consultation with the faculty, so that police and militarized police will never again be used in response to peaceful protest.

In solidarity with students and with the many departments and programs across our campus that have issued statements denouncing the administration's actions, we reiterate and affirm the demands articulated by our colleagues in the Department of History and African and African American Studies that the Dartmouth administration

• acknowledge publicly that the deployment of state police and armored vehicles was an excessive and punitive response to peaceful protests, which will not be repeated,
• announce publicly that you are asking prosecutors to dismiss all criminal charges against the faculty, students, and staff who were arrested on May 1—a request that in no way infringes on prosecutorial discretion—and charges against the two students arrested in the fall, Roan V. Wade and Kevin Engle, should also be dropped immediately,
• make it officially and publicly known that academic freedom includes the right to peacefully express support for Palestinian rights. The college should permit nonviolent protest and restore faith in fair process and commitment to free speech on campus.

This statement was agreed upon by a clear majority of 26 yes votes, with 1 no vote, 1 abstain vote, and 9 uncast ballots.

• Israel-Hamas War

My Writing Students Were Arrested at Columbia. Their Voices Have Never Been More Essential

O n April 30, 56 years after Columbia sent the police in to arrest student protesters who had taken over Hamilton Hall in protest of the Vietnam War—protests the school loves to promote—I was walking my 12-year-old daughter home after her choir performance. We had gone an extra stop on the subway because the stop at 116th, Columbia’s stop, was closed. Instead, we had to walk back to our apartment from the 125th stop. When we got within sight of Columbia, a line of dozens of police blocked our path. I asked them to let us through; I pointed to our apartment building and said we lived there. As a Columbia professor, I live in Columbia housing.

“I have my orders,” the cop in charge said.

“I live right there,” I said. “It’s my daughter’s bedtime.”

“I have my orders,” he said again.

“I’m just trying to get home,” I said.

We were forced to walk back the way we came from and circle around from another block. Luckily, our building has an entrance through the bodega in the basement. This is how I took my daughter up to her room and sent her to bed.

Read More: Columbia's Relationship With Student Protesters Has Long Been Fraught

A week earlier, I had brought some food for the students camping out on Columbia’s West Lawn and had met with similar resistance. Security guards asked whether I was really faculty; I had already swiped my faculty badge that should have confirmed my identity. They asked to take my badge, then they said I hadn’t swiped it, which I had, two seconds earlier, as they watched. They said their professors had never brought food to them before. I didn’t know what to say to this—“I’m sorry that your professors never brought you food?” They called someone and told them the number on my badge. Finally, they were forced to let me through. They said again that their professors had never brought them food. “OK,” I said, and walked into campus. I reported their behavior and never received a reply.

On April 30, after I had got my daughter to bed, my partner and I took the dog down to pee. We watched the protesters call, “Shame!” as the police went in and out of the blockade that stretched 10 blocks around campus. Earlier that day, we had seen police collecting barricades—it seemed like there would be a bit of peace. As soon as it got dark, they must have used those barricades and more to block off the 10 blocks. There were reports on campus that journalists were not allowed out of Pulitzer Hall, including Columbia’s own student journalists and the dean of the School of Journalism, under threat of arrest. Faculty and students who did not live on campus had been forbidden access to campus in the morning. There was no one around to witness. My partner and I had to use social media to see the hundreds of police in full riot gear, guns out, infiltrate Columbia’s Hamilton Hall, where protesters had holed up , mirroring the 1968 protests that had occupied the same building.

In the next few days, I was in meeting after meeting. Internally, we were told that the arrests had been peaceful and careful, with no student injuries. The same thing was repeated by Mayor Adams and CNN . Meanwhile, president Minouche Shafik had violated faculty governance and the university bylaws that she consult the executive committee before calling police onto campus. (The committee voted unanimously against police intervention .)

Read More: Columbia Cancels Main Commencement Following Weeks of Pro-Palestinian Protests

Then, Saturday morning, I got an email from a couple of writing students that they had been released from jail. I hadn’t heard that any of our students had been involved. They told me they hadn’t gotten food or water, or even their meds, for 24 hours. They had watched their friends bleed, kicked in the face by police. They said they had been careful not to damage university property. At least one cop busted into a locked office and fired a gun , threatened by what my students called “unarmed students in pajamas.”

In the mainstream media, the story was very different. The vandalism was blamed on students. Police showed off one of Oxford Press’s Terrorism: A Very Short Introduction . (This series of books offers scholarly introductions that help students prepare for classes, not how-to pamphlets teaching them to do terrorism.)

“I feel like I’m being gaslit,” one of my students said.

I teach creative writing, and I am the author of a book about teaching creative writing and the origins of creative-writing programs in the early 20th century. The oldest MFA program in the country, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, was funded by special-interest groups like the Rockefeller Foundation and, famously, the CIA, and was explicitly described by director Paul Engle as a tool to spread American values.

Read More: 'Why Are Police in Riot Gear?' Inside Columbia and City College's Darkest Night

The way we teach creative writing is essential because it shapes what kinds of narratives will be seen as valuable, pleasurable, and convincing. Today’s writing students will record how our current events become history. One of the strategies Columbia took with its police invasion was to block access of faculty, students, and press to the truth. It didn’t want any witnesses. It wanted to control the story.

For weeks, Columbia administration and the mainstream media has painted student protesters as violent and disruptive—and though there have been incidents of antisemitism, racism, and anti-Muslim hatred, including a chemical attack on pro-Palestine protesters , I visited the encampment multiple times and saw a place of joy, love, and community that included explicit teach-ins on antisemitism and explicit rules against any hateful language and action. Students of different faiths protected each other’s right to prayer. Meanwhile, wary of surveillance and the potential use of facial recognition to identify them, they covered their faces. Faculty have become afraid to use university email addresses to discuss ways to protect their students. At one point, the administration circulated documents they wanted students to sign, agreeing to self-identify their involvement and leave the encampment by a 2 p.m. deadline or face suspension or worse. In the end, student radio WKCR reported that even students who did leave the encampment were suspended.

In a recent statement in the Guardian and an oral history in New York Magazine , and through the remarkable coverage of WKCR, Columbia students have sought to take back the narrative. They have detailed the widespread support on campus for student protesters; the peaceful nature of the demonstrations; widespread student wishes to divest financially from Israel, cancel the Tel Aviv Global Center, and end Columbia’s dual-degree program with Tel Aviv University; and the administration’s lack of good faith in negotiations. As part of the Guardian statement, the student body says that multiple news outlets refused to print it. They emphasize their desire to tell their own story.

In a time of mass misinformation, writers who tell the truth and who are there to witness the truth firsthand are essential and must be protected. My students in Columbia’s writing program who have been arrested and face expulsion for wanting the university to disclose and divest, and the many other student protesters, represent the remarkable energy and skepticism of the younger generation who are committed not only to witnessing but participating in the making of a better world. Truth has power, but only if there are people around to tell the truth. We must protect their right to do so, whether or not the truth serves our beliefs. It is the next generation of writers who understand this best and are fighting for both their right and ours to be heard.

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Picture Prompts

125 Picture Prompts for Creative and Narrative Writing

What story can these images tell?

By The Learning Network

For eight years, we at The Learning Network have been publishing short, accessible, image-driven prompts that invite students to do a variety of kinds of writing via our Picture Prompts column.

Each week, at least one of those prompts asks students: Use your imagination to write the opening of a short story or poem inspired by this image — or, tell us about a memory from your own life that it makes you think of.

Now we’re rounding up years of these storytelling prompts all in one place. Below you’ll find 125 photos, illustrations and GIFs from across The New York Times that you can use for both creative and personal writing. We have organized them by genre, but many overlap and intersect, so know that you can use them in any way you like.

Choose an image, write a story, and then follow the link in the caption to the original prompt to post your response or read what other students had to say. Many are still open for comment for teenagers 13 and up. And each links to a free Times article too.

We can’t wait to read the tales you spin! Don’t forget that you can respond to all of our Picture Prompts, as they publish, here .

Images by Category

Everyday life, mystery & suspense, relationships, science fiction, travel & adventure, unusual & unexpected, cat in a chair, happy puppy, resourceful raccoon, cows and cellos, people and penguins, opossum among shoes, on the subway, sunset by the water, endless conversation, falling into a hole, lounging around, sneaker collection, the concert, meadow in starlight.

Related Picture Prompt | Related Article

Public Selfies

Night circus, tarot cards, castle on a hill, security line, batman on a couch, reaching through the wall, beware of zombies, haunted house, familial frights, witches on the water, blindfolded, phone booth in the wilderness, shadow in the sky, a letter in the mail, hidden doorway.

Point of No Return

Darkened library, under the table, playing dominoes, looking back, a wave goodbye, out at dusk, conversation, walking away, alone and together, a new friend, heated conversation, up in a tree, hole in the ceiling, under the desk, at their computers, marching band, band practice, in the hallway, in the lunchroom, the red planet, tech gadgets, trapped inside, astronaut and spider, computer screen, special key, tethered in space, on the court, in the waves, city skateboarding.

Fishing in a Stream

Over the falls.

Under the Sea

Sledding in the mountains, cracked mirror, wilderness wayfaring, car and cactus, walking through town, tropical confinement, travel travails, roller coasters, atop the hill, climbing a ladder, under the ice, other selves.

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.

Find more Picture Prompts here.

From writing to roleplays: ASU grad shares her experiences as a student, worker and creative force on campus

Editor’s note:  This story is part of a series of profiles of  notable spring 2024 graduates .

Grace Peserik, a writer for ASU Student Life and a communications aide for the School of Politics and Global Studies , spends her time outside of work writing fiction and playing tabletop roleplay games.

Now, as she prepares for graduation this spring, Peserik reflects on both her studies as an English literature major through The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and her favorite memories as a Sun Devil at work. 

The start of Peserik’s academic career at ASU was rather untraditional. She started taking classes during the COVID-19 pandemic in fall 2020, which was a difficult adjustment compared to the normal trajectory from high school into college life. 

“It made my first year of college feel like we were in a limbo state,” Peserik said. “It was very odd for me personally because it is much harder to meet people and make friends when you are essentially on lockdown in your dorm.”

Since the height of the pandemic, Peserik has adjusted and found friends and communities she can engage with on campus. 

Work experiences on campus

Before taking on her dual communications positions for Arizona State University as a student employee, Peserik began as an office aide for  the ASU School of Art . Throughout her professional work experience, Peserik has had a wide range of responsibilities that have helped prepare her for entering the job market post-graduation. 

“A lot of these positions have taught me to be more willing to advocate for myself and to feel confident in the things I am doing,” Peserik said. “As a writer, it is really critical to have those good communication skills.” 

Perserik first honed her prose as a creative writer, working through genres ranging from young adult to sci-fi and fantasy. During her time with ASU Student Life, she has worked closely with many Sun Devils to help tell their stories on and off campus. 

“One of my favorite pieces I’ve written at ASU Student Life was about a roleplaying game through Solis Diaboli ,” Peserik said. “It was one of the first stories that I pitched, and it was a fun piece to write.”

When asked about the importance of her work at ASU Student Life, Peserik expressed a sincere appreciation for the stories she got to tell during her employment. One of the latest pieces she worked on was about the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, also known as WIC.

“That one was a fairly big undertaking and took a lot of work to make happen,” Peserik said. “I am very proud that it's out there.” 

Peserik enjoyed her time as a student employee at ASU and highly recommended it to other Sun Devils searching for reliable and adaptable employment. 

“Student jobs are a great way to meet other people that aren’t necessarily in your major or academic program,” Peserik said. “Who doesn’t want to get a job that will also work around your school schedule?” 

Life as an ASU student

One of Peserik’s favorite memories as an ASU student came about through a forensic anthropology class she took in her first year, a course she selected to fulfill her major’s science requirement. It taught her early on to explore the wide range of classes available at ASU, even if it isn’t one she would normally go for.

“I was told I needed to take a science class, and it was the only one that sounded particularly interesting to me,” Peserik said. “I learned so much about the human skeleton and the different ways to identify people based off their skeletal structure. You can tell what gender someone was assigned at birth from different aspects of their skull alone.”

During her time as a Sun Devil, Peserik has found hobbies outside of work and class, predominantly manifesting in her involvement with Solis Diaboli , the classical civilizations club at ASU alluded to above. She began her time with the club as a traditional member and eventually took on the role of president, having held office for close to two years. 

“Solis Diaboli is essentially a bunch of people who enjoy Greco-Roman history getting together and playing games related to that,” Peserik said. “As president, I mostly planned our meetings and any of the fun events that we hosted.” 

One of the events Peserik cherished during her time with Solis Diaboli was an escape room she helped build for their team. Peserik and others transformed a classroom into a wild, Greek mythology-themed space. 

“The club members definitely made the escape room unsolvable,” Peserik said, reflecting on that night with a smile. “They broke more than one puzzle in trying to get out, but it was really fun, at the end of the day.” 

Not only did Solis Diaboli give Peserik a community of friends on campus, but it also connected her to her long-term boyfriend. 

“Not to sound mushy, but one of my favorite memories as a student has to be meeting my boyfriend here,” Peserik said. “I technically met him through Solis Diaboli, but I didn’t acknowledge him fully until we had a class together. From then on, he and I became very close friends and then ended up dating.” 

In Peserik’s own words, all of her creative work also ties back to tabletop roleplay games, a hobby that she and her friends can join together in, suspending belief and relishing in a uniquely innovative atmosphere. Peserik gets to not only play these games, but she also takes on the role of writer from time to time, developing the plots and settings her friends then get to explore. 

“I’m excited for this upcoming game we’re starting up,” Peserik said. “I’m writing a very weird Star Wars-esque story and making my friends play it. Our first session is next weekend.” 

After her graduation this spring, Peserik is looking forward to pursuing a career that involves writing, such as content writing or running social media accounts for large companies. Her dream job is to one day write fiction full-time. 

To find Peserik’s work for ASU Student Life, read more of our student stories here.

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Creative Writing a Gateway to Creative Climate Solutions

How poetry and art are crucial in the climate crisis .

• by Malia Reiss
• May 06, 2024

“Raging Floods.” “Climate Migrants.” “Coral Reefs Gone.” These are the kinds of stories spanning today’s headlines. As temperatures are rising globally, morale is steadily sinking. 

New solutions are needed to combat this crisis, environmentally and emotionally. UC Davis creative writing master’s students and professors say that creative storytelling and art may be the keys to helping the world process these changes, and that collaborations with scientists can give rise to new, innovative solutions.

“Art and poetry are going to play a pivotal role in adapting human behavior to these new circumstances that are vastly different from anything we’ve known,” said poetry master’s student Trevor Bashaw . 

Imagining a better (or worse) future 

Free of limitations, art is a portal to reimagine the world.

In 2020, UC Davis English professor Michael Ziser and geology professor Nicholas Pinter took graduate students on a white water rafting trip down the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon. They also invited two famous science fiction writers, Paolo Bacigalupi and Kim Stanley Robinson , both of whom write about a climate-apocalyptic world. 

“The advantage science fiction writers have is that they have license to completely reimagine things,” said Ziser. “They can just pose a solution and think about how it may work out. It encourages people to imagine, what world do they prefer to be a part of?” 

The authors and students entered the Grand Canyon on March 10, 2020. They emerged two weeks later to a world shut down amid a global pandemic. The merging of science and science fiction felt all too relevant.

Bacigalupi’s thriller novel, The Water Knife , tells a dark, futuristic story where the Southwestern U.S. is engaged in a violent war for water. Bacigalupi attended the Grand Canyon trip with graduate students studying the same river system he wrote about drying up. 

Robinson's novels also explore what the future may look like under continued corruption and failure to address world crises like climate change. On the trip, students read Robinson's Pacific Edge, part of his series depicting the future of California. 

By inviting these authors, Pinter and Ziser hoped to encourage the merging of art and science and to give graduate student scientists a new way of looking at the future of their study systems. 

“Any channel by which we can get more people from different walks of life to be thinking about these problems, the better,” said Ziser. “These problems require our coordinated response as a civilization.” 

Collaborations between scientists and artists can generate solutions that one party may not have been able to accomplish on its own. 

“Everyone is being asked to hyperspecialize, and I think that age is over,” said Ziser. “We need to keep a multi-pronged approach to understanding the world.” 

To poetry master’s student Bashaw, the divide between art and science isn’t clean cut, and separating the two can limit progress.

“The sciences and the arts have a lot to learn from each other, in terms of knowledge bases and methodologies,” said Bashaw. “The writer’s workshop is a lot more similar to a lab than people may realize; a lot of scientific discoveries were made through creative accidents; and art is pushed forward by technological advances.”  

With collaborations like these, new ways of thinking can emerge. Art can be a limitless tool toward furthering scientific discovery. 

“Everything is trapped by its genre. But when we try to imagine something radically different, we create something bigger,” said Pinter. 

Where processing has a place 

For creative solutions to be acted upon, policymakers, scientists, and the public need to reach common ground. UC Davis creative writing master’s students contend that art and writing not only generate innovative solutions, but also open gateways to these solutions. 

“With climate change, there’s a lot of grieving that we need to do as a community,” said Bashaw. “I don’t think we have even emotionally accepted it’s occurring.” 

Bashaw thinks that only when humanity can process the climate crises can the world come together to carry out solutions. To them, art is where processing has a place.

“In art and poetry, there can be more room for love and feeling and all of these things that make us human,” said Bashaw.

In their own writing, Bashaw draws parallels between processing the queer experience and processing the climate crisis. They describe their writing as “queer eco-poetics,” which focuses on how individuals relate to nature and constructed  environments. 

“Poetry can transform what feels scary into all kinds of different things and bring a sense of peace,” said Bashaw. “I want people to feel seen without shame.  I think of my writing as home-making and finding peace within place.” 

Connie Pearson, a creative nonfiction master’s student at UC Davis, also believes that art can bring to life the human emotional experience within major world crises.

“It’s a real sweet spot: seeing what’s going on, combined with how somebody is processing,” said Pearson. 

Pearson’s work comprises personal essays centered around her experiences being an animal activist. By diving into her vulnerable and personal experience, she hopes to humanize the activism she’s been part of since 1980. 

“Vulnerability is so crucial in writing,” said Pearson. “I connect so much more to pieces written from the personal lens.” 

Processing and healing 

Climate change is a global phenomenon, and will require everyone working together to reach a solution. This is a daunting task, but with solutions posed by both scientists and artists together, and with a shift in mindset, the future could heal. 

“Art allows you to sit with the unknown and ambiguity in a way that’s not paralyzing, but exciting,” said Bashaw. “We need to help people process and confront this looming phenomenon.”

Malia Reiss is a science news intern with UC Davis Strategic Communications. She studies environmental science and management at UC Davis.

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Book News & Features

Ai is contentious among authors. so why are some feeding it their own writing.

Chloe Veltman

The vast majority of authors don't use artificial intelligence as part of their creative process — or at least won't admit to it.

Yet according to a recent poll from the writers' advocacy nonprofit The Authors Guild, 13% said they do use AI, for activities like brainstorming character ideas and creating outlines.

The technology is a vexed topic in the literary world. Many authors are concerned about the use of their copyrighted material in generative AI models. At the same time, some are actively using these technologies — even attempting to train AI models on their own works.

These experiments, though limited, are teaching their authors new things about creativity.

Best known as the author of technology and business-oriented non-fiction books like The Long Tail, lately Chris Anderson has been trying his hand at fiction. Anderson is working on his second novel, about drone warfare.

He says he wants to put generative AI technology to the test.

"I wanted to see whether in fact AI can do more than just help me organize my thoughts, but actually start injecting new thoughts," Anderson says.

Anderson says he fed parts of his first novel into an AI writing platform to help him write this new one. The system surprised him by moving his opening scene from a corporate meeting room to a karaoke bar.

Authors push back on the growing number of AI 'scam' books on Amazon

"And I was like, you know? That could work!" Anderson says. "I ended up writing the scene myself. But the idea was the AI's."

Anderson says he didn't use a single actual word the AI platform generated. The sentences were grammatically correct, he says, but fell way short in terms of replicating his writing style. Although he admits to being disappointed, Anderson says ultimately he's OK with having to do some of the heavy lifting himself: "Maybe that's just the universe telling me that writing actually involves the act of writing."

Training an AI model to imitate style

It's very hard for off-the-shelf AI models like GPT and Claude to emulate contemporary literary authors' styles.

The authors NPR talked with say that's because these models are predominantly trained on content scraped from the Internet like news articles, Wikipedia entries and how-to manuals — standard, non-literary prose.

But some authors, like Sasha Stiles , say they have been able to make these systems suit their stylistic needs.

"There are moments where I do ask my machine collaborator to write something and then I use what's come out verbatim," Stiles says.

The poet and AI researcher says she wanted to make the off-the-shelf AI models she'd been experimenting with for years more responsive to her own poetic voice.

So she started customizing them by inputting her finished poems, drafts, and research notes.

"All with the intention to sort of mentor a bespoke poetic alter ego," Stiles says.

She has collaborated with this bespoke poetic alter ego on a variety of projects, including Technelegy (2021), a volume of poetry published by Black Spring Press; and " Repetae: Again, Again ," a multimedia poem created last year for luxury fashion brand Gucci.

Stiles says working with her AI persona has led her to ask questions about whether what she's doing is in fact poetic, and where the line falls between the human and the machine.

read it again… pic.twitter.com/sAs2xhdufD — Sasha Stiles | AI alter ego Technelegy ✍️🤖 (@sashastiles) November 28, 2023

"It's been really a provocative thing to be able to use these tools to create poetry," she says.

Potential issues come with these experiments

These types of experiments are also provocative in another way. Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger says she's not opposed to authors training AI models on their own writing.

"If you're using AI to create derivative works of your own work, that is completely acceptable," Rasenberger says.

Thousands of authors urge AI companies to stop using work without permission

But building an AI system that responds fluently to user prompts requires vast amounts of training data. So the foundational AI models that underpin most of these investigations in literary style may contain copyrighted works.

Rasenberger pointed to the recent wave of lawsuits brought by authors alleging AI companies trained their models on unauthorized copies of articles and books.

"If the output does in fact contain other people's works, that creates real ethical concerns," she says. "Because that you should be getting permission for."

Circumventing ethical problems while being creative

Award-winning speculative fiction writer Ken Liu says he wanted to circumvent these ethical problems, while at the same time creating new aesthetic possibilities using AI.

So the former software engineer and lawyer attempted to train an AI model solely on his own output. He says he fed all of his short stories and novels into the system — and nothing else.

Liu says he knew this approach was doomed to fail.

That's because the entire life's work of any single writer simply doesn't contain enough words to produce a viable so-called large language model.

"I don't care how prolific you are," Liu says. "It's just not going to work."

Liu's AI system built only on his own writing produced predictable results.

"It barely generated any phrases, even," Liu says. "A lot of it was just gibberish."

Yet for Liu, that was the point. He put this gibberish to work in a short story. 50 Things Every AI Working With Humans Should Know , published in Uncanny Magazine in 2020, is a meditation on what it means to be human from the perspective of a machine.

"Dinoted concentration crusch the dead gods," is an example of one line in Liu's story generated by his custom-built AI model. "A man reached the torch for something darker perified it seemed the billboding," is another.

Liu continues to experiment with AI. He says the technology shows promise, but is still very limited. If anything, he says, his experiments have reaffirmed why human art matters.

"So what is the point of experimenting with AIs?" Liu says. "The point for me really is about pushing the boundaries of what is art."

Audio and digital stories edited by Meghan Collins Sullivan .

• large language model
• mary rasenberger
• chris anderson
• sasha stiles
• authors guild

College of Arts & Sciences

Congratulations to the 2024 Creative Writing Awards Finalists!

Posted in Announcement  |  Tagged Award , Department of English , News

Students, faculty, and staff gathered on April 30, 2024 in Copley Formal Lounge to celebrate our Creative Writing Awards finalists. We’d like to share their names here as well as feature the digital publication, New Points North 2024 , their prize-winning works!

2024 Creative Writing Award Winners

Bernard M. Wagner Medal 

Winner: Genevieve Jobson for “Sunday”

Runners Up:

Caroline Chou for “elegy for a neon rooftop”

Alison Karki for “Language Lessons from my Grandmother”

Annabelle Bonner Medal 

Winner: Josephine Wu for “Shark Body”

Honorable Mentions:

Cassandra Leahy for “The Jonathans”

Ollie Shirley for “My Brothers Keeper”

Lynch Pendergast Medal

Winner: Maya Kominsky for “History Repeating”

Second Place: Kirit Minhas for “Contrasting Derivations of Sovereignty”

Ora Mary Pelham Poetry Prize  

Winner:  Clayton Kincade for “A Sonnet to my Scottish Forefathers”, in “Other boys”