The Creative Writing Center at NYU in Ghana will be both catalyst and preceptor to artists, scholars, students and others engaged in exploring the written and spoken Word. The Center will serve a variety of functions. It will be a gathering place for the teaching and discussion of writing of all sorts - poetry, drama, fiction and non-fiction prose - by established authors and students from Ghana and the U.S., from across Africa and beyond. It will also provide a practical, pedagogical function in the efforts of NYU in Ghana to foster meaningful interaction between the U.S. and African students. The artistic and intellectual identity of the Center will be shaped, in large measure, by the Global Distinguished Writer-in-Residence -- a leading artist of Africa or the Diaspora, appointed annually to a renewable position, and responsible for the creative vitality of the Center. The Writer-in-Residence will host a regular series of lectures and readings by Ghanaian and visiting artists, and will organize an annual conference on African letters. Aspiring writers and diarists -- from Accra universities and the broader community -- will be encouraged to participate in regular "poetry slams" and writing competitions.

In addition, the Center will serve as a resource for the teaching of writing, and for teaching through writing. Faculty associated with the Center will teach Creative Writing courses in the regular NYU in Ghana program, as well as special short-term workshops aimed at mid-career writers from Anglophone West Africa. Finally, young scholars and writers will be engaged as preceptors at the Center to facilitate recitation sections, with a writing focus, organized for NYU and Ghanaian students enrolled in lecture classes together.