In 1999, a group of graduate student tutors set out to give creative writers this opportunity. Dan Elkinson, Beth T. Shannon, HD Bennett, Jeff Osbourne, and others started [NEED TO LOOK FURTHER INTO THIS, APPARENTLY IT EXISTED EARLIER] and sustained a weekly, non-credit critique group in the Writing Center called the Creative Writing Corner. Armed with MFAs and a desire to help young writers, these coordinators created a forum for undergraduates to discuss and workshop their creative efforts.
“There seemed to be a need for something like this,” Dan said in an interview, “a casual creative writer's group. I had students come to see me in the center to work on stories or poems (rather than class work / essays) and thought it would be a better forum to create a group.”
After brief promotion, the Creative Writing Corner got started with a core group of six to ten students who regularly brought work for critique.
“We had a solid core of about six participants [plus] coordinators, and about eight more who'd come and go...on any given week,” Beth explained.
In addition to undergraduate writers, grad students and even faculty members often attended meetings. Without the pressure of grades, deadlines, or assignments, students were more willing to express themselves, offer feedback, and internalize criticism. The coordinators, in an attempt to promote discussion, offered their own work up for criticism as well. The core group grew very close. Beth explains:
"It was...a thriving and supportive group who spent an evening every week work-shopping fiction, [and] discussing and practicing reading, the coordinators sharing advice about publishing, and shooting the breeze about all topics to do with creativity and the survival of creative people in college and in the world."
As their writing community grew, the students became more confident in their work. They wanted a way to share their work with the larger community around them.
The Creative Writing Corner began giving readings at a local coffee shop each semester.
Before too long, they even put together their own publication called Etch which they printed annually for five years. Although the publication disappeared after 2005, the Creative Writing Corner continued to gather on the fifth floor of the William T Young Library until 2011 and the formation of Shale.
