Writing Program
The Writing Program at Harvard Summer School offers expository and creative writing courses. All courses are run as small workshops and emphasize writing, reading, and revising. Classes meet twice a week for two and a half hours, with three conferences outside of class. In addition, the Writing Program sponsors a magazine of student work; workshops on special writing topics, such as "Writing College Application Essays"; and a reading series featuring students, faculty, and visiting writers. Featured visiting writers in previous years have included Dennis Lehane, Susan Orlean, and Tom Perotta.
Writing Center. Peer tutors of the Writing Center (advanced students at Harvard College) are available to assist Summer School students from beginning to advanced levels. Tutors from the Writing Center are available beginning the first week of classes. The Writing Center is located in the Barker Center, 12 Quincy Street, garden level.
Expository writing courses are based on the required writing course taken by all Harvard College freshmen and are taught by instructors from the Harvard College Expository Writing Program. All sections of Expository Writing help students develop the core skills required for writing successful college essays—analysis, argument, and source use—while also focusing attention on organization, paragraph development, grammar, and style.
Secondary school students are advised to consider EXPO S-20, which is based on the freshman writing course at Harvard College. Although each section concentrates on a special topic (EXPO S-20a on literature, EXPO S-20d on social and ethical issues, and EXPO S-20e on the essay), all EXPO S-20 sections focus on the skills required for writing successful college essays.
A typical EXPO S-20 section will require several short writing assignments and three longer essays: an exploratory essay that uses personal experience as a starting point; an analytic essay that focuses on a single primary text; and an essay that calls on students to work with both primary and secondary sources.
Creative writing courses are taught by published writers and offer instruction in the writing techniques common to traditional, and some nontraditional, genres: fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, playwriting, and screenwriting.