Find inspiration in the work of student artists and writers. At each session of Writing Club, poets and writers from CofC’s MFA program in Creative Writing will offer a series of onsite writing prompts based on pieces from Young Contemporaries. This is an opportunity to generate your own stories and poems in a supportive, serene space, surrounded by visual art. Writing Club is free, and all are welcome.
Writing Club takes place in Halsey Institute galleries on Friday, February 20 & Friday, March 13 3-4 PM.
Millie Bennett, North Hermitage, oil on canvas, 2025
Prompt: Use your five senses to create a rich environment on a hot summer evening by the water. Let your reader see the spray of color reflecting across the water’s surface, feel the grit of sand clinging to damp skin, the smell of sunscreen stinging noses, hearing the crack of a freshly opened Coca-Cola, and taste the brine of a wave catching someone off guard. Immerse your audience so completely that the scene feels tangible—almost touchable.
Bio: Emily Duke is a Charleston native who hopes to travel the world and share her stories to anyone who might need the bravery to start their own.
Abbey Oakley, The Things She Kept, Archival Digital Print, 2025.
From Abbey Oakley’s artist statement: “A visual study of my grandmother’s immigration story from Francoist Spain to the United States in the 1950’s: exploring the tension between assimilation and preservation, between the life she curated and the life she carried.”
Prompt 1 (Fiction): In the Nightstand
Someone has gone missing. They lived alone, and their absence has been reported by a neighbor who usually sees them leave for work in the morning, who noticed the car hadn’t moved in a few days. You are a detective, brought in to solve the missing person. Their apartment has few revealing details, but the nightstand has these six items. What are they, and what story do they tell?
Prompt 2 (Creative Nonfiction): Braided Essay: In the Nightstand
Think of six things that are in your nightstand drawer, or perhaps that hidden shoebox, maybe the personal safe—somewhere where intimate valuables are kept. Now, write a braided essay that is broken up into weaves/ strings/ sections that tell an emotional truth without addressing it head on (at least not immediately). Don’t worry about the throughline, just describe those items and you will be surprised where an underlying tension, or throughline occurs. For Oakley’s subject, it was the tension between assimilation and preservation. What tensions will you discover?
Bio: Todd Larkin Tremble is a poet who frequently shifts between mediums. Born in New Jersey and raised in the Catskills, Todd enlisted in the Marines at seventeen and has since lived in many places. He is a first year MFA candidate at the CofC, with a studio focus on poetry. He also serves as an assistant editor for the College’s literary magazine, swamp pink.
He is the winner of The Iowa Review’s David F. Hamilton Undergraduate Award for his poem “Woody,” and the winner of the University of Iowa English Department Critical Essay Award for “The Progressive Fall of the Highest Goddess in the Religious Epic Poem.” His poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, The Pettigrew Review and Wonderlust Travel.
Jack Jemison, Button King, Digital Photograph on Luster Paper, 2025.
Prompt: If you could cover an outfit in anything what would it be? What does the base outfit look like? What shape does it take? Write a scene in which you/a character is wearing this outfit.
Bio: Allison McCoy is a DC native who has slowly made her way down south. She earned her undergraduate degree in North Carolina at UNC Chapel Hill and is continuing her study of creative writing at the College of Charleston. She enjoys writing fiction, poetry, essays, birthday cards, and the occasional comic.
Maddy Mann, Exile, Oil on canvas, 2026.
Prompt #1: Think of a time you entered either a sacred space or an old, unfamiliar space. It could be a historic church, an antique shop, a haunted house, a mansion tour.
You step in and this is what you encounter: something ethereal, incorporeal, spiritual, angelic. Are you fearful, curious, or caught up into the experience? Or you could be the bear/bears, the spirit, or the flowers on the table.
Situate yourself in the piece, in the experience, and write from there.
Prompt #2: Think of the experience of exile. It could be thought of as being trapped outside of the place you want to be––or to call––home. You have immense freedom to start over, but with potentially limited resources and outside of your comfort zone.
Do you see in this piece something (or someone) trapped or someone freed to struggle into a new opportunity? Or is the house (or world) about to burn? You can be or do anything you want in the writing, you just can’t come home. Write from that feeling.
Bio: Jimmy Passaro studies Fiction with an emphasis on comedy in the MFA program at the College of Charleston. He has conducted author interviews published in swamp pink. His non-fiction can be found at thereconstructed.org.
Mya Hayes, I think of you in everything I do, watercolor, colored pencil, cotton paper, alcohol marker, 2025.
Prompt #1: Who do you think the woman in the foreground is thinking about? The figure in the water, the person climbing the tree, or someone else? What, specifically, is she thinking about this person?
Prompt #2: Is it possible to think about someone in everything you do – even if only for a period of time? Make up a story about someone who thinks about someone else nonstop and why.
Prompt #3:Picture in your mind a person you think about often. Write down something important you would like to say to this person that you have never said before. Conversely, write down something important this same person might say to you that they have never said before.
Bio: Ron Menchaca is a Charleston-based writer and Army veteran. With nearly three decades of experience as an award-winning journalist and communications executive, his career spans war reporting, investigative features, and literary fiction. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at the College of Charleston, where he also leads institutional storytelling. His writing has been recognized with numerous state and national awards.
Julia Belk, Intertwined, Oil on canvas, 2025.
Prompt #1: Write a five hundred word story starting with this sentence: “She left the cup sitting on the counter.”
Prompt #2: Write a scene with a character painting or drawing or noticing the markings on the tiles to the right of the counter in the painting.
Bio: Grace Stroup is a writer from Virginia. She is working on her first novel.