Rowana Miller

Cosmic Writers, a Penn-based creative writing education nonprofit, received our startup funding from the 2022 President’s Engagement Prize. Since launching just over three years ago, we have brought creative writing education to 5,000+ children in 34 states and 18 countries. Our belief is that creative writing is about more than producing a poem or story; it is about developing literacy, communication skills, empathy, self-expression abilities, and social-emotional skills.

Through our own data collection, we have verified the success of our interventions in boosting students’ writing confidence (81% of participants reporting increases) and enjoyment of writing (83% of participants reporting increases). Now, we would love to collaborate with an academic partner to conduct a more robust study of our programming. We have a full-time Executive Director and part-time Director of Programs who will be active collaborators in this work, and we are currently hiring for a Program Manager who will be part of the project as well.