Overview
The CSSSA Writing Program offers personalized and interactive workshops for approximately seventy talented and motivated young writers. A faculty of professional writers and educators guide and instruct students in the techniques of fiction, poetry, non-fiction, and dramatic writing.
We’re looking for students who have the courage to be themselves on the page. We’re looking for students who love language. We’re looking for students who want to tell their own stories: stories from their imagination, from their neighborhood, from their family.
Ideally our students have begun to outgrow the High School reading list. They have struck out and found the writers that speak to their own inner life and experiences. Whether it’s edgy YA, slam poets at the local cafe or on YouTube, European novelists, or the latest New York playwrights, CSSSA students tend to have a list of writers they love.
We’re also looking for students with discipline and endurance. CSSSA is one of the most free, creative environments a young artists can experience. It is also a great deal of hard work. During the course of the four weeks you will write and workshop more than you ever have in your entire life. Be ready.
Students currently enrolled in grades 8 through 12 are eligible to apply. (CSSSA is open to students entering grades 9, 10, 11 or 12 next fall 2026. CSSSA is also open to students who are graduating from high school in the spring of 2026. You can still do the program the summer after graduation.)
Writing Curriculum
CORE CLASS
Core is a foundational writing workshop. Faculty members will teach their specialty, offering an introductory class in prose fiction, poetry, or dramatic writing. By the end of the month, every student will have had a class in every genre.
FOCUS CLASS
These workshops provide students with an opportunity to go deep in a particular genre or approach to writing: poetry, drama, fiction, and non-fiction. Students will choose their focus class during the departmental orientation.
GUEST ARTISTS
Published writers, editors, agents, and select panels are invited to CSSSA for workshops, discussions, and presentations. CSSSA Writers have the opportunity to participate in lively discussions and learn creative strategies from nationally recognized writers.
COLLOQUIUM
On Saturday mornings the Writing department gathers to hear students to share work created during the prior week. Faculty members describe the writing exercises, their purposes, and the problems and discoveries made by the writers.
LITERARY Magazine
Writing students have the opportunity to contribute work for the CSSSA Literary Anthology. Our anthologies live on as a demonstration of the exceptional work produced by CSSSSA Writing students each summer.
OFFICE HOURS
Every week students will have the opportunity to drop in for office hours with the Writing faculty. This can be a time to go over student work, discuss future projects, and find strategies to deal with the CSSSA workload.
Program Instructors
ZAY AMSBURY
DEPARTMENT CHAIR
Zay Amsbury is a playwright and native Californian whose plays have been performed in San Francisco, Boston, and New York. Theater credits include The Thing in Jesse’s Room (Fertile Ground Theatre Festival), Lady Shade and the Yellow King (En Garde Entertainment), The Word (SF Playhouse), Love is the Law and Sweet Self (Impact Theatre), and Days of Rest and Worship (New Beginnings Theatre Company). Zay is a founding member of the influential San Francisco Bay Area company, Impact Theatre. He has performed versions of his stories in Live Transmission I and II, a series of solo shows in the Berkeley and San Francisco. Zay earned his B.F.A. in Dramatic Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and his M.F.A. in Playwriting from the New School for Drama. His most recent story, The Ballerina’s Foot, will be published in the literary magazine Varnish in June. He attended CSSSA as a student in 1990, 1991, and 1992.
CHIWAN CHOI
Faculty
Chiwan Choi is a poet, writer & publisher. He is the author of four books – The Flood (Tia Chucha Press, 2010) & the Daughter Trilogy: Abductions (Writ Large Press, 2012), The Yellow House (CCM, 2017) & my name is wolf (2023) – and multiple poetry chapbooks, including Time Out of Space and lo/fidelity lovesongs. He wrote, presented & destroyed the novel Ghostmakerthroughout the course of 2015, as part of his ongoing examination on the meaning of a book, of conjuring & nurturing of ghosts. Chiwan has published his poetry, fiction & essays in numerous journals and magazines, including The New York Times Magazine, ONTHEBUS, Poem-A-Day and many other publications. Chiwan has been the subject of features on KCET, LA Weekly & the OTHRPPL podcast. He was a librettist for the opera Songs and Dances of Imaginary Lands, produced by Overtone Industries.
KINI SOSA
Faculty
Kini Sosa is a teaching artist and poet from San Diego, CA. A recent Creative Writing MFA graduate from the California Institute of the Arts, she also holds a BA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Riverside and has previously taught at other youth arts programs such as the UVA Young Writers Workshop and Inlandia’s Poetry is Power Institution. Their practice consists of graphic text and poetry with an emphasis on liminal human forms, intimacy, trauma, queerness, the “feminine grotesque,” and the visual / literary translations of images. You can find her work in the Mosaic Arts Literary Magazine, Experiencing Comics: An Introduction to Reading, Discussing, and Creating Comics, Rejoinder, pacificREVIEW, and other publications. They attended CSSSA as a student in 2014 and 2015.
KATE MARUYAMA
Faculty
Kate Maruyama is the author of Alterations (Running Wild Press), The Collective (Writ Large Press), Bleak Houses (Raw Dog Screaming Press), and Harrowgate (47 North). Her novella Family Solstice was named Best Fiction Book of 2021 by Rue Morgue Magazine and she was awarded the Uncharted magazine short story prize. Her short work has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals including Asimov’s and Analog. She is a lecturer at Antioch University Los Angeles, University of Laverne, and Cal State LA and serves on the Board of Directors for the Shirley Jackson Awards. Kate writes, teaches, cooks, and eats in Los Angeles.
Chelsea Sutton
Faculty
Chelsea Sutton is a writer and director based in Los Angeles. She’s a PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow, a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop, a Humanitas Play LA award-winner, and she co-wrote the Emmy-nominated Welcome to the Blumhouse Live, an interactive film event for Blumhouse/Amazon. Her play Wood Boy Dog Fish appeared in the inaugural season at the Garry Marshall Theatre. She’s the author of the novella Krackle’s Last Movie and her short work has appeared in many journals and podcasts, including It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton. She’s the Artistic Director of Rogue Artists Ensemble and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UC Riverside. She attended CSSSA in 2003.
Sabita Bastaloti
Faculty
Sabita Bastakoti is a Nepali-American fiction writer and a current Creative Writing MFA student at the California Institute of the Arts with a diverse array of interests. She completed her MA in Writing & Rhetoric Studies with a focus on decolonial theory from the University of Utah. She also holds a BA in Art History. Her practice consists of critical and theoretical texts centered on decoloniality, as well as experimental and surreal fiction and performance works with an emphasis on language and semiotics, trauma and grief, encounters, and archiving. She is also interested in fables, folklore, and fairytales, and is currently working on a short story collection influenced by Nepali folklore and fairytales. Besides English, she is fluent in Nepali, Hindi, and Urdu, and works through and across these languages in her creative practices.
Michael Buckley
Faculty
Michael Buckley, MFA, is a widely-published fiction writer whose work has appeared in Best American Non-Required Reading 2003, The Southern California Review, Struggle, Transcurrents MFA Journal, Spot Lit Literary Magazine, Rip Rap, and Watermark. He is a frequent contributor to Alaska Quarterly Review and a former London-based correspondent for the Rotary International Newsletter. Mr. Buckley is co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Transcurrents Literary Journal, and he has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize for short fiction. His short story collection Miniature Men was published by World Parade Books in 2011.
