About CA/T

Columbia Artists/Teachers (CA/T) designs free creative writing programs in partnership with New York City schools and community organizations, and develops the teaching-artists who lead them.

Founded in May 2002, CA/T is a faculty of teaching-artists in the Writing MFA Program at Columbia University's School of the Arts. Our writing classes and programs are designed with community partners and revised together over time. We ground our work in our partners' and students' goals, and in the knowledge, histories, and creative traditions already present in the rooms we're invited into.

We work from the conviction that teaching is an art in its own right, deserving the same training, attention, and revision we bring to our writing. MFA students develop as teachers through pedagogical coursework, mentorship, and teaching opportunities on and off campus, with students of all ages and levels of experience—and what they learn in partnership shapes how they teach and how they write.

CA/T is advised by Professors Alan Ziegler (Writing Program Director of Pedagogy), Keri Bertino, and Dorothea Lasky. The organization is run and staffed by graduate student directors, coordinators, and teachers.