Award-Winning Creative Writing Tutors
serving Oakland, CA

Someone who went from hating reading to devouring books understands the moment when language clicks — and that's the energy Aaron brings to creative writing. He digs into craft elements like voice, pacing, and scene construction, encouraging students to experiment on the page and then revise with intention. His conversational teaching style makes workshopping feel collaborative rather than intimidating.

A writer himself, Justin digs into the craft elements that make fiction and poetry land — voice, pacing, imagery, and the deliberate choices behind sentence structure. He treats each student's draft as a conversation, identifying what's already working before pushing the piece further. Rated 4.8 by students.

Most creative writing feedback stays vague — 'show don't tell,' 'find your voice' — without explaining how. Patrick earned his MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Miami, where workshop culture taught him to give line-level, craft-specific feedback on everything from narrative structure to sentence rhythm. He approaches each student's project on its own terms, whether that's a personal essay, a short story, or an experimental piece that doesn't fit neatly into a genre.

Good creative writing isn't just inspiration — it's craft decisions about point of view, pacing, dialogue, and revision. Peter trained as a journalist before earning his master's in English Education, so he teaches students to treat their drafts as material to shape rather than precious first attempts. That combination of storytelling instinct and editorial discipline shows up in the fiction, poetry, and personal essays his students produce.

A degree in Literary Arts from Brown gave Hasan deep exposure to craft across genres — fiction, poetry, personal essay, and hybrid forms. He teaches students to identify what makes their voice distinct, then sharpens it through targeted exercises in scene-building, figurative language, and revision strategy. Students rate him 5.0.

A BA in Creative Writing plus a daily writing practice means Thomas isn't just teaching craft — he's actively living it. He unpacks elements like point of view, dialogue mechanics, scene pacing, and sensory detail, then applies them directly to whatever a student is working on, whether that's a short story, a poem, or the opening chapter of something bigger.

Performing improv comedy and writing musicals at Yale has given William a practitioner's understanding of voice, structure, and revision — the three pillars that separate interesting creative writing from flat drafts. He teaches techniques like writing compelling dialogue, controlling pacing through sentence length, and developing characters whose choices drive a story forward rather than just narrating events.

Living in France and England didn't just give Heather conversational French — it gave her a writer's habit of noticing the small, strange details that make a place or a person feel real on the page. She brings that observational instinct into drafting and revision, especially when students need to move past generic description and find the specific image or moment that gives a piece its voice. Her quantitative methods background also makes her unusually good at talking about structure — why a scene works where it's placed, how pacing builds, what a piece gains or loses from a different order.

Few creative writing tutors have actually written and produced original plays — Maddy spent her time at Harvard doing exactly that, along with directing student theater productions. That background in dramatic writing gives her a sharp eye for dialogue, voice, pacing, and scene construction, whether a student is drafting fiction, poetry, or a personal narrative. She treats revision as a craft skill, not just proofreading.

Currently earning his MFA in creative writing at Harvard, Patrick lives inside the workshop process — drafting, receiving critique, revising, and learning to distinguish feedback that strengthens a piece from feedback that just changes it. He walks students through generating raw material, finding their voice within it, and revising with intention across poetry, personal essays, and experimental forms.

Spending years in research labs taught Emmanuel something unexpected about creative writing: the best ideas emerge from disciplined process, not inspiration alone. He walks writers through generating material, experimenting with form and voice, and revising with intention — whether the project is poetry, personal essay, or short fiction.

What separates a flat draft from one that actually moves a reader often comes down to articulation — knowing what you're trying to say and finding the precise language to say it. David's liberal arts background and deep experience across poetry, fiction, and essay writing give him a sharp eye for helping a student locate the real story buried inside a rough draft, then tighten the prose until every sentence earns its place.

I am a graduate of the Master's program at the School of Education at St. John's University, and a graduate of the undergraduate English program at Washington University in St. Louis. I am currently eligible to teach 7th to 12th grade English in a New York City school under the Initial Certificate, and have a combined three years of experience in the Department of Education. I have a significant background in tutoring, including test prep, English, Mathematics, and Social Studies. My extensive background in education, coupled with my intense desire to bring about positive change in the lives of New York City school children and my belief in the importance of using emerging educational technologies to engage with and enrich the education of students, has made me both a successful teacher, and a popular tutor.

The hardest part of creative writing isn't generating ideas — it's revising them into something that actually lands on the page. David approaches each session as a workshop, reading student drafts closely and pinpointing where voice falters, where a scene needs grounding detail, or where cutting a paragraph makes the whole piece stronger. His English background gives him a deep library of published examples to draw from during those conversations.

Kahini's path from an English degree at Brown to a neuroscience PhD at Columbia means she's spent years toggling between two very different kinds of writing — literary prose that lives in ambiguity and scientific writing that demands precision. That dual fluency shows up in her creative writing sessions, where she can help a student craft a poem that lingers in the right places or tighten a short story's pacing with the same structural instinct she brings to research. Her published fiction background and deep reading in psychology also give her a sharp eye for character interiority — the difference between telling a reader someone is afraid and making them feel it.