After a long
Time only sand remains
Of all this
Like you could miss
Him if you tried. Like
If you ripped up a piece
Of paper into dust and
Care to put it together again.
This is an excerpt of a poem written by the members of a queer youth group from Bucks County, Pa., in the summer of 2023. That was the peak of the national conversation surrounding Bucks County’s book bans—one of the most dangerous times in recent history, I think, to identify as an LGBTQ+ youth in Pennsylvania. By now, Democrats have gained control of the Central Bucks School Board, but with Pennsylvania’s swing red in the general election, this moment is at best an uncomfortable peace.
I often find myself returning to this poem, written when the Bucks County youth group invited my creative writing education nonprofit, Cosmic Writers, to run several workshops for their members. The workshops served as a necessary outlet for kids who couldn’t see themselves in the literature they were able to access in school. These kids, I remember thinking, were lucky to have a safe community organization that wasn’t subject to the school board’s regulation, in which they could feel confident that they would always be able to express themselves.
After we wrapped up our collaboration, though, something occurred to me: our workshop actually could have run in Bucks County schools. The workshop wasn’t about being queer, nor did it feature model poems that revolved around LGBTQ+ experiences; it was about poetry. While the workshop did feature texts that represented the participants’ voices and experiences, the participants created those texts themselves.
I’ve come to believe that creative writing is one of the best possible tools for providing equitable, safe ELA education under book bans. There may be restrictions on the kind of content you can provide to students, but to the best of my knowledge, there aren’t comparable restrictions on the types of writing that you can guide students to explore. In fact, creative writing activities are often excellent for teaching the kinds of literacy skills mandated by state standards. Students need to learn how to recognize internal vs. external traits, and write a logically coherent paragraph. So why not teach those skills through units in which students can write the kinds of stories that they find most meaningful?
Recently, Cosmic Writers has been running a number of monster-building workshops, and I have found that this subcategory of fiction is an especially useful package for helping students explore identity-focused themes. When students write monster stories, they’re creating original characters, exploring protagonist/antagonist relationships, and plotting narrative arcs—all content represented in most states’ sets of ELA standards. More holistically, students are developing the kinds of literacy and communication skills that help them become strong writers. And they’re having fun! None of these outcomes are controversial; throughout the vast majority of the political spectrum, parents are delighted when their kids come home from school excited to share skillfully written monster stories.
But there are more subtle outcomes of a monster-building unit, too. When you teach any kind of fiction-writing, especially fantasy-writing, you give kids an opportunity to write from the perspective of a character who isn’t them. That allows kids to try on identities that they may not feel comfortable exploring in real life. And when students build out fantasy worlds, they can draw on the cultural references that they find most interesting and personally significant. Even if educators need to be careful when raising discussions of race, for example, kids’ monsters can be inspired by the mythology passed down by their grandparents. More specifically, the concept of the “monster” is an interesting one to discuss, since the idea of “monstrosity” is so closely tied to othering. The lens of the monster is a helpful vehicle for holding conversations about power and oppression, solely using examples from the fantastical world.
I make this argument with the caveat that, of course, it’s most effective to run creative writing workshops when you have the freedom to include model texts that represent your students’ experiences. These units aren’t a replacement for students’ and educators’ right to liberty. But in the parts of the country in which educators truly don’t have a choice, where violating book bans means that a teacher is likely to be stripped of their ability to impact children, I think that creative writing is often the best vehicle through which to connect students with the stories that can change their lives.
Rowana Miller is the founder and executive director of Cosmic Writers, a registered 501(c)(3) that provides children with the tools, knowledge, and opportunities to write creatively. Her debut novel, Secrets of the Blue Hand Girls, is forthcoming from Sourcebooks in fall 2025.
