Pearl Spurlock, an eighth-grader at Clinton-Massie Middle School, completed a Creative Nonfiction course in August as part of the nonprofit Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth 2016 summer residential program on the campus of Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The course met for three weeks, five hours per day, five days per week, along with evening sessions.

“We are so pleased that Pearl has had the opportunity to experience the course offered through the John Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth,” said Curt Bradshaw, Coordinator of Gifted Services at the Southern Ohio Educational Service Center. “Alumni of CTY include the cofounder of Google, the CEO of Facebook, and many other world leaders in the sciences, arts, and government. I have had the pleasure of enjoying her writing and artistic talents over the years, and I have no doubt that Pearl will someday soon join the ranks of these highly successful leaders of our community and society at large.”

Throughout the course, students read and discussed the prose and poetry of writers such as Charles Simic, Eula Biss, Eduardo Galeano, Jamaica Kincaid, and Raymond Carver. They completed several essays during the course.

For more information on CTY, visit http://cty.jhu.edu/.