About Us
Why wait until college to get started on honing your craft in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction?
Every summer for more than two decades, talented high school students (rising juniors and seniors) have been welcomed to Denison University in Granville, Ohio, for the acclaimed Reynolds Young Writers Workshop. It’s an eight-day residential program that incorporates small creative writing workshops, group sessions with Denison creative writing faculty and notable visiting writers, and much more.
Only 36 students get the chance to come to “The Hill” to participate each June. That means students experience small, intimate writing workshops and one-on-one interactions with people who have made writing their career. It’s a great way to connect with a close-knit community of writing teachers, mentors, and peers from around the country and the world.
This is your chance to work with award-winning authors whose work has appeared in publications like The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and SB Nation; who have published books; who care deeply about storytelling; and who love to teach.
Location
DENISON UNIVERSITY, GRANVILLE, OHIO
Denison University, a liberal arts college of 2,200 students, is located on a 1,200-acre hilltop campus overlooking the village of Granville, a quaint New England-like town of 6,000 residents. All campus buildings–academic, residential, and athletic–are within walking distance of each other as well as of the village and Denison’s 350-acre biological reserve. Click here for an interactive campus map.
Denison’s library, technology resources, and athletic facilities are available to Reynolds Workshop participants. Students have access to basketball, tennis, and volleyball courts, and an Olympic-size indoor swimming pool.
Granville’s main street is just a short walk from campus, and offers a number of shops and cafes to explore. Located just 20 miles east of the city of Columbus, Granville provides a beautiful and safe community that has nurtured writers for generations.
How to get to Denison
How close is Denison to...?
Cleveland - 2 1/2 hours
Cincinnati - 2 1/2 hours
Pittsburgh - 3 hours
Indianapolis - 3 1/2 hours
Chicago - 7 hours
Washington, D.C. - 7 hours
St. Louis - 8 hours
New York City - 9 hours
History
JONATHAN R. REYNOLDS
Successful playwright, author, and screenwriter Jonathan R. Reynolds is a 1965 Denison graduate who, through a remarkable $1.75 million endowment, has enhanced the University’s offerings in creative writing and theatre by creating a Distinguished Professorship, a Playwright-in-Residence position, and this Young Writers Workshop, now in its 23rd year.
Jonathan Reynolds’s plays include Girls in Trouble, Dinner with Demons, and Stonewall Jackson’s House (nominated for a Pulitzer Prize). He is the recipient of Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundation grants as well as the Dramatists Guild Flora Roberts Award for Sustained Achievement. For 6 years he wrote a bi-weekly food column for the New York Times Sunday magazine. His memoir, Wrestling with Gravy: A Life, with Food, was published by Random House in 2010. He lives in New York with his wife, the set designer and producer, Heidi Ettinger.