Rowana Miller is the founder and Executive Director of Cosmic Writers, a new nonprofit that uses creative writing education to boost K–12 students’ literacy, communication skills, and self-confidence. Rowana has always been passionate about creative writing. She wrote her first novel in middle school, and started her first job as a writing tutor shortly afterward. Ever since, Rowana has been writing young adult fiction and working in writing education.

Here is what Rowana had to say when we asked her about writing and creativity: 

GenHERation^®: What is Cosmic Writers?

Rowana Miller: Cosmic Writers is a nonprofit that runs creative writing workshops for K–12 students, with a focus on serving children from underserved backgrounds. Few children are taught the art of writing expressively and imaginatively, even though ongoing research shows that writing is a core tool for improving students’ literacy. In our workshops, students develop their reading and writing skills while building the self-confidence they need to thrive.

GenHERation^®: Why were you inspired to start Cosmic Writers?

Miller: In the spring of 2020, as I neared the end of my sophomore year in college, I won a small grant from my university to develop a free, virtual creative writing camp. I expected the camp to fill the specific need created by the pandemic—engagement for homebound children. However, we got 150 signups on the day we opened them. Parents and teachers told me over and over that they needed this camp long before Covid hit; there were very few creative writing opportunities that were available to children regardless of geography or family income. This was my experience as a child, too. I’ve been writing seriously since I was about 12, and I didn’t have formal creative writing education or a creative writing community until I went to college.

That’s how Cosmic Writers was born. The camp, Word Camp, became our flagship program, and it’s running for the fourth time this summer. We’ve since added additional virtual programming (one-on-one mentorships, asynchronous Discord-based workshops for teens) and established an on-the-ground presence in Philadelphia and NYC.

GenHERation^®: How should an organization, or a sole founder, create their mission statement and values?

Miller: The most important part of a mission statement is that it communicates the goal you’re aiming to achieve with your services, and not just the services themselves. With Cosmic Writers, our mission statement is: “Cosmic Writers uses creative writing education to boost K–12 students’ literacy, communication skills, and self-confidence.” This stands in contrast to a previous version of our mission statement: “Cosmic Writers provides high-quality, accessible creative writing education to K–12 students.” After some trial and error, we realized that the older draft didn’t capture the true core of why we exist, which is what we’re aiming to achieve through offering creative writing education. To figure out that core, I suggest asking yourself, “What change will happen in the world if my organization succeeds?”

GenHERation^®: Creativity plays a significant role in academic and professional settings because it encourages innovation, boosts productivity, and promotes adaptability. What are three actions you can take on a daily basis to flex your creative muscles?

Miller: Creativity takes so many different forms that, above all, I think it’s most effective to ask yourself: “Can I take a new/innovative/unexpected approach to something I’m already doing?” For more specific exercises to tap into your creativity, I recommend:

• Buying an ingredient you’ve never cooked before, and creating your next meal around it
• Taking public transit to a new area in your city/town and finding your way home (without Google Maps, if possible)
• Following someone else’s morning/evening routine for a day

GenHERation^®: When you are in the early stages of building an organization or a company, how should you establish and leverage partnerships to expand your influence?

Miller: I recommend talking about your organization everywhere you go. Talk about it in professional contexts, with friends and family members, when you run into a friend from middle school and they ask, “So, what are you up to these days?” You never know when someone will know someone else—and it brings people a lot of joy and meaning to connect others in their lives. When I was starting to build a network for Cosmic Writers, I was surprised by how many of my friends knew teachers who would want to bring us into their classrooms. If you move through the world as an ambassador for your organization, often these kinds of partnerships will appear without you needing to ask for favors.

GenHERation^®: How can you use storytelling to advance your personal and professional goals?

Miller: Even though data and statistics are essential to proving the merits of your work, people’s mental and emotional cores respond to storytelling. As a result, I find that the most effective pitches are, essentially, stories. In contrast to an essay-inspired structure—a thesis and several different types of evidence—you can tell the story of your organization in a way that includes a beginning, middle, and end. I find it helpful to base your pitch on the classic story template of “somebody/wanted/but/so,” with some slight tweaks:

Somebody = you, the founder, or potentially the organization as a whole

Wanted = mission and goals of organization

But = obstacle(s) preventing you from being able to achieve your mission at this point

So = the ask—what are you seeking from the person you’re pitching?

For example: I want Cosmic Writers to be able to teach creative writing in the Philadelphia public school system, but the system is quite underfunded and can rarely spend money to hire outside contractors, so I’m coming to [a donor or foundation] to ask them to support Cosmic Writers’ workshops in Philly public schools.

GenHERation^®: What would you tell yourself the day you graduated from college?

Miller: Identify specific areas—not related to work—in which you give yourself permission to be mediocre. I’m a perfectionist, especially when it comes to high-stakes scenarios like running Cosmic Writers, but after running CW full-time for a few months, I burned out. In retrospect, I think it’s because I felt that I could never make any mistakes, ever, and so I was operating at the top of my capacity for everything I did. Since then, I’ve started cultivating hobbies in which I don’t feel the pressure to be perfect. These days, I do The New York Times crossword puzzles, and my solve rate is pretty dismal. I can solve the Monday and Tuesday crosswords, and sometimes the Wednesdays, but never more than that—and it’s an enormous relief to know that I’ll never have to do better.

Rowana Miller is the founder and Executive Director of Cosmic Writers, a new nonprofit that uses creative writing education to boost K–12 students’ literacy, communication skills, and self-confidence. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and has been awarded the 2023 Greater Philadelphia Social Innovation Award for Educational Entrepreneurship and the 2022 University of Pennsylvania President’s Engagement Prize. Rowana has always been passionate about creative writing. She wrote her first novel in middle school, and started her first job as a writing tutor shortly afterward. Ever since, Rowana has been writing young adult fiction and working in writing education. Her own writing can be found in the Penn Review, plain china, and Slate Magazine, but her greatest joy is in helping youth to express themselves with clarity and confidence.