New Programs and Outreach
Advancing creative writing in the local and national field
Beyond scholarships, free workshops, and other forms of access to educational opportunities, your gift helps us pioneer new programs, outreach, and other initiatives to serve our larger community.
To learn more about new programs and outreach at the Center, keep reading. You can also read scholar stories.
Interested in supporting one of our new initiatives? Contact Associate Director Angie Dell at 480.727.0815 or amdell@asu.edu.
The Piper Writers Studio
With a growing number of classes and workshops, the Piper Writers Studio is serving more writers than ever before. Over the next few years, the Piper Center plans to offer even more diverse course options, including bilingual classes, free and pay-what-you-can models, Piper Writers Studio scholarships, and programming for middle and high schoolers, as well as opportunities for deeper, more intensive education through nationally-competitive online classes and mentorships.
Patio Renovations
Having received an outpouring of positive feedback after launching visiting writer event in the Piper Writers House’s backyard, the Piper Center is working with ASU to transform the back patio into a more dynamic outdoor venue for readings, workshops, and other events—expanding the center’s responsiveness and flexibility to program, saving valuable time and resources in planning, and creating a unique point of pride for the entire ASU community.
Community Outreach
Over the coming years, the Piper Center plans to develop many new avenues for access to creative writing programming, building off the successes and deep impact of programs like Story Days at Dunbar Elementary, Poesía del Sol in partnership with the Mayo Clinic, and the Piper Center’s Young Writers Program.
The Thousand Languages Project
The Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing’s Thousand Languages Project focuses on an ever-growing, large-scale literary translation database that aims to build connections between peoples and across borders by translating stories, poems, essays, and other creative writing out of English and into many languages from around the world.
The database will launch as a living, ever-developing literary catalogue housed online and freely accessible to the public. Drawn from thirty years of back issues of Hayden’s Ferry Review, the award-winning national literary journal run by Creative Writing MFA students at Arizona State University, and featuring guest translators and contributors, it will contain work by emerging and established writers alike, translated from English into many other languages. This multilingual database will be dynamically searchable, and the creative work presented within it will be complemented by events and other programming hosted by the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing and by essays and interviews exploring the art and scholarship of translation.