Writing for Wellness Initiative

In the past 10 years, medical professionals and clinicians have recognized the therapeutic value of creative writing. A discipline once practiced only in college classrooms with a singular goal of publication in top-flight literary journals or academic presses, creative writing is now recognized as a tool for healing, maintaining wellness, and expressing the buried memories of trauma.

The Butler MFA program which was founded eight years ago with community service as one of its founding principles, has recognized the potential for healing and maintaining wellness, and has taken Creative Writing for Wellness as part of its mission. The Butler MFA now prepares students to lead workshops in wellness among diverse communities. In the past two years, our MFA students have run writing classes with staff members at Eskenazi Hospital; with senior citizens at American Health Care Services; with troubled adolescents at Riley Children’s Hospital and Hope Academy, and soon with prison inmates. At this point, most of this work has been done on a strictly volunteer basis, but some pioneering MFA students have been paid to pilot and develop new partnerships.

The Butler MFA program is an institutional member of the National Association for Poetry Therapy. While our programs are not clinically therapeutic, we focus on coping skills, stress management, artistic engagement and enrichment, and community building.