Inprint is proud of the work we do to support emerging writers, including giving more than $2.8 million since 1983 in fellowships, prizes, and other support awarded to graduate students at the highly ranked University of Houston Creative Writing Program (UH CWP). This support attracts the best emerging writers to Houston who go on to publish books, win nationally competitive literary awards, enhance our city, and serve as educators throughout the community.

Being a creative writing graduate student, however, isn’t always an easy thing. No high-paying summer internships or corporate recruiters come these students way! And in addition to pursuing their craft, many generously give back to the community, like the great pool of writers at the UH CWP who teach our Writers Workshops, Teachers-As-Writers Workshops, and Senior Memoir Workshops. Without them, Inprint workshops would not be ranked among the best in the city.

Jameelah Lang, a PhD candidate in fiction at the UH CWP, taught a fiction workshop for Inprint this summer. We asked Jameelah to share her experience as an instructor with us. We were blown away by what she said.

I had a bad go of it last year. I took comprehensive exams, moved into another apartment, and rescued a puppy; my puppy cried without end, the windows in my new apartment wouldn’t open, and Virginia Woolf stalked me in dreams. My students were all too young or too old or too tired to care who Marguerite Duras or the New Kids on the Block were; they wrote about murderers even when I explicitly told them to write about anything but murderers.
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