This summer, Kelly Writers House will host its first intensive writing workshop for high school juniors and seniors. Directed by Jamie-Lee Josselyn, associate director for recruitment at the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, the 10-day residential program, which will run July 9-19, is meant to inspire, energize, and empower young writers.

“For a number of years, we’ve wanted to open the Writers House up in the summer for high school students,” Josselyn says. “[We want to] give them a sense of what the space is like, what it’s like to be part of such a close-knit writing community.”

The program will enroll 20 students. Applications, due Friday, March 17, require a 300-word essay, high school transcript, teacher recommendation letter, and writing sample. An optional need-based financial aid statement will also be accepted.

Students will spend their morning workshop sessions in the Writers House Arts Cafe, constructing personal essays and memoirs, led by Josselyn, a creative writing instructor at Penn. Throughout the course of the workshop, participants will read and critique each other’s work.

“A goal of the program is to give these participants the opportunity not just to see how their own writing can improve while being part of a community, but how they can impact their peers’ writing, too,” Josselyn says.

In the afternoons, different “craft sessions” will take place presented by guest lecturers, including alumni, faculty, staff, and working authors and writers who have an affiliation with the Writers House.

“The craft sessions will offer a variety of genres,” Josselyn says. “It will give the participants the opportunity to get exposure to different kinds of writing.”

Topics for the sessions will likely include poetry, fiction, experimental writing, screenwriting, and comics.

The students will have work to do in the evenings, says Josselyn, but the program has also incorporated opportunities for participants to explore campus and the city, with two graduate students acting as their guides. (One activity, of course, is getting a Philly favorite—cheesesteaks.) Participants will stay on campus in one of the University’s college houses.

The program fee for the summer workshop is $2,750. Financial assistance in the form of full- and half-tuition grants will be available for students, thanks to the generosity of Penn alumnus and close Writers House friend Maury Povich.

“We want to embrace student participants from all different backgrounds,” says Josselyn. “It’s so important and crucial even for institutions like Penn to be open to anyone, including high school students, who might not have thought that they have access to a place like this. We have tremendous resources, staff, and faculty, and this program is embracing all of that.”