Foundation Circle
The journal habit, the folk tales of the river country, first poems — and the weekly reading aloud, which teaches more than any lecture ever will.
Programme Dates →
Discipline 04 — Letters
Creative Writing
Prose, poetry and the writer's craft — in Hindi, English and Bangla — kept in the Writing Room beneath the library, where the river does the background thinking.
The Discipline
Apply to the Creative Writing Discipline →
Three tongues, one room of one’s own
Between Hindi, English and Bangla, the river country speaks in three tongues — and our Creative Writing discipline is the only school programme in the district that lets a young writer work in all three. The department keeps the Writing Room: a quiet, book-lined room beneath the Ganga Library, with a living wall of student anthologies that grows every single year.
Students write constantly — journals, letters, stories, poems, reportage — and publish just as constantly. The school's annual anthology is entirely student-edited; The Citadel Review, our termly magazine, is written and typeset by the senior class; and the spoken-word evening each monsoon fills the amphitheatre to its last bench.
Writers from the programme have won national essay prizes, published in youth literary journals, and carried their portfolios into journalism, literature and law degrees across the country.
24
Issues of The Citadel Review
The Programmes
Three ways to study with us
Creative Writing at the Citadel runs from Class VI to Class XII — with a manuscript retreat open to every school in the district.
Senior Workshop
Fiction, verse and creative non-fiction with formal craft study, peer critique around the workshop table — and one published piece every term.
Programme Dates →
The Monsoon Manuscript
A three-week writing retreat in which every participant finishes a long-form piece — essay, novella or collection — for the annual anthology.
Programme Dates →
Curriculum
What you will learn
- Fiction & narrative craft — scene, character and the discipline of revision
- Poetry & form — from the couplet to free verse, in three languages
- Creative non-fiction & journalism — interviews, essays and reportage from the district
- Translation — carrying a story honestly across Hindi, English and Bangla
- Editing & publication — the student-run anthology, magazine and spoken-word evenings
Each winter the department hosts a writer-in-residence. The 2026 resident is alumna and columnist Prerna Jha, leading a Tuesday seminar on the essay.
From the Studio
Recent work from the studios
A glimpse of the studio's latest — see the full gallery on the Student Work page.
Join the Discipline
Every writer begins with one honest sentence
Places in the Senior Workshop are limited to eighteen students per year, and the Monsoon Manuscript retreat fills by April. Begin your application — or send us the first page of something true.