Welcome to Sunset Summer Session.
WHO IS ELIGIBLE?
High school students, ages 14-18, including rising college freshmen. We welcome international applicants and will work to accommodate time zone clashes and technological concerns.
WHY NOW?
In the era of a global pandemic, a time of isolation and unrest, we need outlets for creative expression and personal connection. We believe that Sunset Summer Session will create that safe and positive environment where growing writers and thinkers will gain invaluable workshop experience and a space where they can respond to current political events and address how they’re feeling right now.
WHAT’S THE COST?
To be as inclusive as possible, there is no tuition cost for Sunset Summer Session. However, we encourage that if you believe in our mission to donate what you can to Sunset’s #BLM Fund which is now live.
Sunset Summer Session is a virtual creative writing program for young adults designed, directed, and taught by Kenyon College students. This summer program will address key elements of the creative process across poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and hybrid genre. Classes will meet twice a week for two-hour sessions where teachers will oversee the general workshop and guide weekly discussions about contemporary writing, editing, and publishing. Students will then respond to writing prompts and bring in their own work for peer-review. Our five-week program will culminate in a print student anthology and virtual live reading open to friends and family.
AT SUNSET SUMMER SESSION, STUDENTS WILL…
Meet one-on-one with our teachers outside of class for personalized feedback and direction.
Collaborate with peers in intimate workshop groups to establish effective workshop etiquette.
Experiment across genre and explore the multiplicity of their voices.
Read widely from our curated digital library which includes work by a diverse range of contemporary writers.
Attend panels by guest writers who are Kenyon professors, fellows, and published writers. This summer our Writer Panel will include Misha Rai, Ira Sukrungruang, Andrew Grace, and Molly Mcully Brown. They will read their own work and host a Q&A session to discuss their creative processes and literary careers.
Edit and compile their work into a Sunset Summer Session Archive that will be distributed to students and published on the Sunset Press website.
Read their polished pieces during a Zoom virtual reading with the rest of the program and family and friends.
Find a creative and safe space through Sunset Press’s Summer Session to address what they’re feeling and experiencing in this current international, political, and transformative moment in all of our lives.
Gain access to the Sunset Network and receive valuable mentorship from Sunset Press staff and alumni about literary careers
Forge valuable relationships in this new literary community and in our Sunset Press family.
SUNSET SUMMER SESSION CURRICULUM
As writers, we aspire to move, shock, and connect through language. But how do we charge such power into our words? How do technical elements like point of view, voice, narrative structure, form, and characterization work together?
During this five-week session, we will learn how to read as writers. We will closely examine relevant contemporary texts for their literary techniques, while also questioning and challenging the conventional notions of “craft,” “genre,” and the rules of “good writing.”
Each week, we’ll explore these demonstrated lessons from contemporary texts. Then, we will experiment with these concepts by responding to in-class prompts and writing short pieces that will be shared and workshopped as a class. Students will also participate in one-on-one meetings with workshop teachers in order to discuss their work and process outside of the workshop.
All students will walk away from the Sunset Summer Session with a critical sense of what makes “good literature,” polished pieces, that will be published in the program-wide anthology and on the Sunset website, and a diverse repertoire of techniques to use in their future writing.
MEET OUR STAFF
Our Summer staff is composed entirely of Kenyon Students and Sunset Press staff members, many of whom are Kenyon Review Associates and Kenyon Young Writers alumni. Your teachers are aspiring writers themselves with personal experience across the entire creative process—from composing their own writing to participating in and teaching workshops and to publishing their own work. They are invested in building inclusive spaces for young writers to flourish. Learn more about their individual interests and accomplishments below.
SUMMER SESSION DIRECTORS
EMMY RODAY ‘21
Emmy Roday, from New Haven, CT, is a rising senior at Kenyon College studying English, with a Creative Writing emphasis, and Arabic. She is an alum of the Educational Center for the Arts, Kenyon Young Writers, Sewanee Young Writers, and Middlebury Breadloaf Writers Conference. At Kenyon, she’s the recipient of the Georgia Nugent Scholarship for Creative Writing and the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sunset Press. She also works as an associate and editorial intern for the Kenyon Review. Emmy has studied abroad across the Middle East, Morocco, the Philippines, and England. Because of her international immersions and literary experiences, she believes that the workshop space can become the site of empowering cross-cultural, linguistic, and personal exchange. As founder of this program, Emmy will serve as a director and workshop teacher for Sunset Summer Session 2020. Some writers she loves include Agha Shahid Ali, Mahmoud Darwish, Ada Limon, Dean Young, and Sharon Olds.
ARMIYA SHAIKH ‘21
Armiya “A” Shaikh is an immigrant raised in the heat of Dallas, Texas. She is an associate and intern for The Kenyon Review, co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sunset Press, and an Aquarius who loves the color blue. As a rising senior English Major at Kenyon College, her accolades include The Academy of American Poetry Prize, Propper Prize for Poetry, Robert Daniel Memorial Scholarship for Creative Writing, and a Kenyon Summer Scholar Fellowship in English for her research in Native American literature. Her poems have been published in Glass Mountain, Jam & Sand Journal, Underblong and Dust Magazine. Recently, she has been working on a hybrid poetry memoir project about intergenerational trauma within South Asian communities and a personal essay about her crush on Adam Driver. As founder of this program, Armiya will serve as a director and workshop teacher for Sunset Summer Session 2020. Some writers she admires are Amitava Kumar, Terrance Hayes, Morgan Parker, and Dean Young.
WORKSHOP TEACHERS
LIV KANE ‘22
Liv Kane is the current Creative Nonfiction Writer for Sunset Press. Born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, she was first published by Young Pegasus Poetry and has taught writing workshops at the San Antonio Public Library. A current Kenyon Review Intern and Kenyon Magnetic Voices poet, Liv studies English and Environmental Studies in hopes of pursuing science writing. She received the New York Life Award for her exploration of bereavement, and she is excited to share her new book, Gulfwater (Sunset Press 2020), with the world soon. Her heart is in scientific discovery and she hopes writing will make natural phenomena more accessible and empathetic. In her free time, Liv runs a lot, photographs everything, and looks forward to a time when she can hug people again.
KYLIE LOHRENZ ‘20
Kylie Lohrenz is a queer poet from Houston, Texas. She recently graduated with English Honors from Kenyon College with a concentration in creative writing. Her senior thesis focused on the intersection of queer experimental poetry, queer theory, and lesbian public archives. As the Associate Poetry Editor at Sunset Press, Kylie has previously worked at Inprint Houston, Gulf Coast, and was a Kenyon Review Associate for four years. She will be attending Columbia University’s Publishing Course in the fall. Some writers she admirers are Hanif Abdurraqib, Morgan Parker, Sara Ahmed, and Tommy Pico. Kylie’s favorite things in the world are poems with a lot of white space and Spotify Premium. Check out her poem in the June issue of Streetcake Magazine.
BEN WEINMAN ‘21
Ben Weinman was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA. A rising senior at Kenyon College, Ben majors in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing and has a Music minor. On campus, he is the Manager of the WKCO Studio and the Music Director of the Kokosingers. He has written and compiled substantial poetry portfolios in Kenyon’s Introductory and Advanced poetry workshops. His work tends to incorporate natural imagery and takes on absurdist, associative tones. Ben plays the saxophone, guitar, and piano and is the lead singer and songwriter of his band Surf Party, USA. Because he loves to write poems and songs, he is eager to further explore the intersections between these two artistic mediums. Some of his favorite artists include Dean Young, John Irving, and Adrianne Lenker.
ERINTRUDE PIETA ‘20
Erintrude Pieta is an MFA candidate at NCSU, attended the South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities, is a graduate of Kenyon College, as well as a former attendee of the Iowa Young Writer's Program and the Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship. She is a co-founder of Sunset Press and her work can be found in Fourteen Hills, The Sierra Nevada Review, and storySouth, among others.
ELIJAH NEWMAN ‘22
Elijah Newman is a rising Junior from Brooklyn, New York. If it wasn’t for books he doesn’t know what else he’d be doing. Ever since he wrote a short poem in second grade titled “Angels in Chairs Drinking Coffee” (which is just what you think it’s about), he’s been developing his passion for writing. In 2018, he worked at PEN America where he organized the 2018 World Voices Festival. Currently, he copy edits for the Kenyon Collegian and works as a press editor for Sunset Press. Next year he’ll be helping students write papers at the writing center on campus. His favorite writers are Susan Sontag, James Baldwin, James Joyce, and Jhumpa Lahiri.
VIRGINIA KANE ’22
Virginia Kane is the author of the poetry chapbook If Organic Deodorant Was Made for Dancing (Sunset Press 2019). A graduate of the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop, she is a junior at Kenyon College where she double majors in English with an Emphasis in Creative Writing and Women’s and Gender Studies. Virginia serves as Managing Editor of Sunset Press, Operations Intern at the Kenyon Review, and performs with the Kenyon Magnetic Voices spoken word poetry group. A semi-finalist for the 2019 Button Poetry Chapbook Contest, Virginia’s work has appeared in them., SWWIM Every Day and Dust Poetry Magazine.
CURRICULUM TEAM
JENNY TIE ‘21
Jenny Tie is a prose writer from Kunming, China. She has published a nonfiction chapbook, A Shoebox of Sparrows, in collaboration with Sunset Press. The essay collection explores topics of distant family and the witnessing of abuse. She was awarded the 2020 George B. Ogden Prize for best essay in English prose. Currently, she is interested in how digital surveillance and technology law intersect with the creation, dispersion, and suppression of narratives, as well as the sites of literary resistance that can emerge within those contexts. Some of her favourite writers include Yu Hua, Kazuo Ishiguro, Sei Shōnagon, Louis Cha, Nazim Hikmet, and Elena Ferrante.
JACK COHEN ‘21
Jack Cohen is a rising senior studying English at Kenyon. On campus, he has worked with Sunset Press as a non-fiction editor since its inaugural semester as well as playing for the Men’s Varsity Soccer Team. After being sat down by his two uncles before leaving for college and told, “not to be afraid of a humanities degree,” he has found a home within the workshop and broader literary community. Outside of school, he has worked for multiple publications writing and editing about a variety of subjects ranging from building homes to video games. Currently, he’s experimenting with screenwriting and working on a screenplay titled And the Spirit and the Bride Say Come that he hopes will get finished now that he has mentioned it on the internet.
MICAH ELLIOT KEY-TECH KIM ’23
Micah Kim was born in Vernon Hills, Illinois, and tried very hard to impress his elementary school teachers. Positive feedback turned him into the writer he knows himself as today. He mainly enjoys short fiction and making music. His horror short story collection, Venous is being published by the Sunset Press in the fall. He also beat his older brother in a spelling bee when they were in middle school.
DESIGN TEAM
MAIA CORNISH-KEEFE ‘23
Maia Cornish-Keefe is a rising sophomore at Kenyon College, from Irvington, New York, a small town on the Hudson River. She is very passionate about the visual arts, especially through drawing and painting, and has been exploring how to blend her artistic creations with literary endeavors. Most recently, she has been reading and reflecting on The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and has been working on multi-media pieces to address current politics.
