The Humphrey Family Writing Center has always been home to all writers at The Hill School; it is a place in which they unfold their talents and express their passion for writing. Since the beginning of the academic year, the Writing Center has been holding intriguing workshops and activities that have attracted many students to participate, including a comedy workshop and one on writing for social change.

Dr. Catriona Miller, co-director of the Writing Center and the Humphrey family visiting scholar, shared her thoughts and plans for the Writing Center in the near future.

“For April, Dr. Pearson and I are talking about doing something with poetry and with Earth Day. April is a month about environmental issues, and I’m thinking about bringing in someone who can actually talk about it,” Miller said.

In retrospect, Miller described her experience with activity planning for the Writing Center.

“I actually had a student who told me that she would like to see a slam poetry or spoken word poetry event, and I was looking for someone to do a workshop,” Miller explained, “But in that process, I came across the poet laureate of Philadelphia, Cydney Brown, and, since she’s a high schooler and lives locally, I thought that would be really cool to bring her in and have a spoken word and open mic night that features an established poet but someone that’s still in high school.” 

Miller also mentioned that she invited Hill Alum Max Barth to do a comedy workshop.

“Because I’m new and I don’t know about all the clubs on campus, I found out that there was a comedy club, so it actually worked out really well,” Miller said.

Luke Gerdeman ’23, the president of the comedy club, believed that the workshop was a great opportunity for him and members of the club to approach comedy in a more professional way.

“It’s nice to hear different perspectives on comedy and working in it as a professional space, just because there are so many different people who had very different journeys,” Gerdeman said.

Apart from the activities, Miller introduced a new leadership position for students who are passionate about writing.

“Students from each form will lead between the Writing Center and the student body. We would hope to have meetings with them regularly next year, and they would help to say, like, our form would be really interested in doing a Writing Center event centered around a particular topic.”

Arwen Lutwyche ’22 shared their thoughts on working as a Writing Fellow this school year. 

“When people learn things, they learn it better if they figure it out themselves,” Lutwyche said. “It’s not just a proofreading thing; it’s improving their writing skills.”