Explore your imagination and strengthen your writing skills in classes focused on fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and the novel.
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Creative Writing
Creative Writing
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Join MPC’s Writing Community
Creative Writing Club
- For club meeting times and details, email creativewriting@mpc.edu.
- Learn more about Scheherazade and submit your work.
Writing Your Career Story
Crafting a Path to Publication
Student Awards in Creative Writing
Laura Wilson
Shawn Leonard
Creative Writing Highlights & Resources
Online resources for writers about. Here are a few favorites
Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in libraries, bookstores, and schools. Typically (but not always) held during the last week of September, the annual Fall event at MPC highlights the value of free and open access to information. Students who want to learn more can stop by our Creative Writing Club table and join us for a special Banned Books Read-In, open to all!
About Banned Books
The American Library Association collects reports of attempted and successful book
bannings from public and private schools and libraries nationwide. There are hundreds
of such cases reported annually, and an unknown number go undocumented. A Book Ban
results when an individual or organization attempts to have a book removed from library
circulation or from a school reading list and is successful in doing so. A Challenge
results when the attempt is unsuccessful.
In recent years the number of challenges and the number of different books banned
or challenged have both grown exponentially.
Books that have been among the most targeted for decades include classics like Fahrenheit 451, 1984, To Kill a Mockingbird, Slaughterhouse Five, The Color Purple, Beloved, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, among others.
- The poem “The Daughter of Samhain” by Shawn Leonard and short stories “The Hanged Man” by Booker Catlin and “The Shortcut” by Marc Ferris were selected as winners of the 2023 MPC Halloween Writing Contest. They will appear in the next issue of Scheherazade, the MPC Literary Magazine.
- Howard Gustafson has published Fort Ord Poetry and Song (with stories, cartoons, humor) collecting original work by soldiers who lived and trained at Fort Ord during the period spanning the pre-WW II years until the closure of the massive U.S. Army base in 1994.
- Sophia Moreno attends CSU-Monterey Bay as a Creative Writing major.
- Autumn Guerrero attends San Jose State University as a Creative Writing major.
- Madeline Eubanks graduated from Humboldt State University as an English major with a focus in Creative Writing.
- Works by Sophia Moreno (Poetry), Miriam Mack-Piccone (Fiction), and Michelle Prejean (Memoir) were selected for inclusion in the MPC Theatre Program production, Perseverance, presented online in May, 2021. The writers read their work in recorded segments that appeared during the event.
- Jupiter Berrysmith's short story, "The Blackbird," was selected as the winner of the 2020 Halloween Writing Contest and appears in Issue 11 of Scheherazade, to be published in Spring 2022.