The Creative Writing Society, a student group of ETSU’s Department of Literature and Language, had their first meeting of the semester this past Wednesday, led by president of the club, Emily Price.
“We essentially provide an environment for students to workshop materials with their peers rather than with an instructor,” Price said. “It provides kind of a safer and more welcoming environment than you might find if it was being overseen by a faculty member.”
For many years, the Creative Writing Society has served ETSU students interested in writing as a hobby or as a career. Though the club has changed names through the years, the purpose still remains focused on the students and their work.
“The mission of the club and for potential members is to create a space for those to share what they love and to have an outlet or community to share their art with,” Price said. “We mainly focus on what we do with individual students in the club. That extent can go as reading their work, providing commentary on it and generating new material within the workshop.”
Price spoke on the kinship in the club and the intimacy they share, not only with each other but within their personalized works.
“We are a very close-knit department here in the English department, and the creative writing minor is also very close-knit,” Price said. “We are really involved with the ‘Mockingbird,’ and we actually promote all of their activities.”
While the Creative Writing Society is hosted by the Literature and Language Department, the club extends its membership to all majors and minors.
“The Creative Writing Society is pretty diverse. We have international studies majors and a lot of foreign language majors but primarily liberal arts majors,” Price said. “The club is definitely open and not just English majors, and most of the members are not even creative writing minors, as we are just people that are curious and passionate and want an environment to find that, because it may not be found in academia if you don’t study creative writing.”
The Creative Writing Society meets on Wednesdays at 4 p.m. in Burleson Hall, room 301. Meeting times could change depending on student input but will likely remain the same.
