The Missoula Writing Collaborative was established in 1994 as a writers-in-the-schools program mentored by Teachers and Writers Collaborative, New York and Houston WITS. We place professional writers into school classrooms in Missoula, Montana and surrounding rural areas, including the Potomac Valley,the Bitterroot Valley, and the Flathead Reservation of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.
We currently have eighteen school residencies that provide continuing, in-depth creative writing instruction directly to 1500 schoolchildren each year and indirectly to over 4500. Creative writing is combined with human service at our evening workshops called Common Ground, which reach teenagers living in area youth homes. Over the years we have taught creative writing at the Poverello Center and the Joseph Residence, shelters for the homeless in Missoula, and we have participated in the Flagship Program, a free, after-school program at Missoula schools.
The Missoula Writing Collaborative is a member of Writers In The Schools Alliance (WITSA) and, in collaboration with the Poetry Society of America, we sponsor Poetry in Motion, which places poetry on Mountain Line buses in Missoula.