Writing Center
Overview
Writing Center tutors are available in person and online to help students achieve their writing goals at any stage of their writing process. All currently enrolled degree-seeking students are welcome, and they can work on essays, artist statements, application materials, presentation texts, theses, proposals, creative writing, or social media posts. Our tutors are kind, encouraging, and interested!
Though drop-ins are welcome, the best way to guarantee an appointment is to schedule one in Navigate. Once you create an appointment, you will be emailed instructions with directions for working with your tutor online or in person.
If you have any questions, or need help making an appointment, stop by the Writing Center on the 10th floor of Lakeview, call us at 312-499-4138, or email wcenter@saic.edu. A front desk assistant will be happy to assist you during our open hours.
Make an Appointment
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Making Appointments
You are able to make one appointment per day and no more than two appointments per week.
Cancelling Appointments in Advance
If you can't make your appointment, please cancel your appointment as soon as possible. Do so by logging into Navigate, selecting your appointment, and then deleting it.
No-Shows
A "no-show" is when you do not cancel your appointment in advance and miss it. If you miss two appointments in any given term, you will be blocked from making additional appointments for the rest of that term.
Last-Minute Cancellations
A last-minute cancellation is when you cancel your appointment within twelve hours of your appointment. It will be counted as half of a no-show. Two last-minute cancellations count as one no-show.
Late Arrivals
If you are ten or more minutes late for your appointment, it will be offered to another student and counted as a no-show. -
The Writing Center is now using Navigate to schedule appointments with tutors.- Visit saic.navigate.eab.com.
- Click "Login with your school account."
- Enter the credentials you use to access your SAIC Gmail account.
- Click "Schedule an Appointment."
- Select "Writing Center" as the department.
- Select "Online Appointment" as the appointment type.
- Pick a date to see time slots in a 30-day range from that date.
- Click "Find Available Time."
- Use the arrows to switch between days and look for a time that works for you.
- Click a time slot to schedule an appointment!
For more help with scheduling an appointment through Navigate, please watch the appointment scheduling tutorial.
For more information about Navigate and additional tutorials, please visit SAIC's Navigate webpage.
The Writing Center serves all currently enrolled degree-seeking students.
All Writing Center Tutors are equipped to work with students on many different forms of writing, and everyone can help you with your writing goals! Take a look at the bios of our Writing Center Tutors & Staff, and if you would like to schedule an appointment with a specific tutor, email wcenter@saic.edu.
Writing Tutorials
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) offers free, fifty-minute writing tutorials through the Writing Center. Tutors are available to assist all currently enrolled students with any stage of the writing process.
Students may work with tutors on the following:
- Interpreting writing prompts, essay questions, & application leads
- Brainstorming & getting started
- Creating artist statements
- Making claims & arguments
- Developing ideas
- Strengthening organization
- Improving writing style
- Clarifying language
- Addressing Chicago Manual of Style (CMS), American Psychological Association (APA) style, & Modern Language Association (MLA) style questions
- Citing references
- Correcting basic grammar, spelling, & punctuation
Mission Statement
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At the Writing Center, our work is individualized, while our scope is global. Everyone is welcome.
We use close observation, careful listening, and honest response while we encourage impassioned engagement, deliberate language, and thoughtful action. Students' ideas hold sway.
We embrace works in progress and what they demand from us: that we must allow false starts, address our biases, research facts, bring evidence to light, and hear alternate arguments before we make claims. Messiness is essential.
We encourage striving beyond safe conclusions, and we accept that discomfort is necessary to reach meaningful understanding. Openness is key.
We believe that relationships—between individuals listening to and asking hard questions of each other—form the basis of personal transformations and meaningful social change. Learning happens together.
Staff
Emma Stine
Head Tutor
Born and raised in New Hampshire, Emma Stine received a dual degree in Fine Arts and Italian Studies from the University of New Hampshire. During that time she studied oil painting at the Lorenzo de’ Medici Institute in Florence and attended a course on the legacy of totalitarianism in Italy at University of Rome’s Sapienza Institute. Since coming to Chicago, her work has focused on interpersonal relationships, ideas of memory and its malleability, and the question of what it means to faithfully represent a family. Emma is currently a second-year MFA candidate in the Painting & Drawing Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Specialties: Artist’s statements, personal and creative writing, any writing to accompany or supplement visual art
Pronouns: She/her
Shanti Grandhi
Tutor & Head FDA
I’m a second-year Painting and Drawing MFA student. I work primarily in oil and charcoal. My work is a meditation on my personal narrative, how history gets written, and how the language of paint makes meaning. Before SAIC, I lived in New York City, and I have studied art history and business. As a tutor, I like to focus on helping students clarify their key arguments and work to clearly express their points.
Pronouns: She/her
Will Henry Owen
Tutor
I study in the Writing Program at SAIC. Mostly, I write short fiction, poetry and music. I am skilled at academic writing and research and using common style guides, especially the Chicago Manual of Style.
This is my second year as a writing tutor at SAIC. Tutoring gives me a sense of connection with other students. I am proud to help artists meet the written demands the world places on them—whatever those demands may be. I look forward to working with you.
Specialties: Creative writing; academic and legal writing; citation form (esp. Chicago style); grammar
Pronouns: He/him
Pahola Ramos
FDA
I am a second-year graduate student in the FVNMA department with a background in experimental documentaries. Recently, I have developed a curiosity for expanded cinema and creating different forms of documentary narration through writing, installation, and performance. I enjoy watching films, running, and finding good places to eat!
Pronouns: She/her
Selena Brewer
FDA
Hello! I'm a writer (or I like to call myself one) from North Carolina. Like every writing student ever, I enjoy reading and writing. I am currently in my second year at SAIC in the—you guessed it—MFAW program. I love poetry and cafe hopping & you'll often catch me doing both!
Pronouns: She/her
Riley Gunderson
Tutor
I am a third-year graduate student in the dual degree Arts Administration and Art History program. I have a background as a visual artist and writer, with a BFA in Fine Arts from Parsons. My work uses visual and written means to explore themes such as history, perception, materiality, and memory, specifically concerning queer, trans, and feminist identity.
Specialties: Artist statements, research papers, visual and literary analysis, and art history/theory
Pronouns: They/them
Sam Anthem
Tutor
Hi! My name is Sam and I'm super excited to join the Writing Center as a tutor. I'm a second-year MFA grad focusing on sound, performance, and writing. My practice oscillates between research-based art and art-based research, as I explore a hodgepodge of topics such as archives, fabulation, policing via sound and noise control, embodiment, houseplants, banned books, institutional critique, performing extremes, grief, and failure. I care a lot about community building and forming relationships where we feel comfortable being uncomfortable. In my free time, you'll find me re-watching The Legend of Korra, enjoying fall colors, and trying to self-teach jazz accordion. In fact, if you or anyone you know is skilled at jazz accordion, please send them my way.
Specialties: Artist statements, close reading and literary analysis, research papers, creative writing, and anything weird. <3
Pronouns: They/he
Charlie Burke Dykstal
Tutor
I'm a first-year student in the MA Modern and Contemporary Art History program. I'm from Minnesota and have lived all around the Midwest, working in museums and practicing video production and editing. I'm primarily interested in how art can discuss and address the climate crisis, habitat destruction, and humanity's ever more concerning relationship with the planet. I love to play music, ride my bike, meditate, and talk about art; so let's do that!
Specialties: Art history/visual analysis, grammar, and syntax
Ezekiel Cambey
FDA
Ezekiel Cambey is an individual from North Carolina in the Painting and Drawing Post-Bacc program. He is 22 years of age and enjoys reading, eating, sleeping, walking, etc. He talks to others and enjoys listening as well. His current favorite book is The Variations by Patrick Langely.
Pronouns: He/him
Tikkun Bambara
Tutor
Tikkun is a MFA student in Writing. His research focuses on Caribbean Surrealism and Caribbean Romanticism; 20th and 21st century Caribbean and African American feminist engagements with what surrealist poet Suzanne Cesaire called the domain of "the marvelous" as a fertile theory, worldview, and method in black studies and black diasporic literatures. He is working toward completing his first manuscript titled Marvel Upon Marvel Upon Marvel: Black Study & Feminist Engagements with Caribbean Surrealism.
He has served as the director and founder of a local art cooperative in South Minneapolis for Black Artists. He has also served as an educator of Critical Ethnic Studies in Minnesota. Bambara has received the Verve Grant, the Beyond the Pure fellowship, The Emerging Writers Grant, and The Spoken Word Immersion Fellowship for his work. His essays are available at MN Artists through the Walker Art Center.
Specialties: Caribbean Feminism, Caribbean Surrealism, Black Studies, African American Literature
Pronouns: He/him/his
Rex Delafkaran
Tutor
Rex Delafkaran is an Iranian-American interdisciplinary artist and dancer from California. Delafkaran holds a degree in Ceramics and Performance Art from the San Francisco Art Institute, and a forthcoming Masters in Sculpture from SAIC. Using movement and objects she plays with the failure and poetry among readymade and handmade objects, identities, and language. Delafkaran has exhibited and staged performances at the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum (Washington, DC), Panoply Performance Lab (Brooklyn, NY), Platform Art Fair (Athens, Greece), Satellite Art Fair Miami (Miami, FL), Southern Exposure Gallery (San Francisco, CA), and the Textile Museum (Washington, DC) among others. She is a recent recipient of a NARS Foundation International Artist Residency Fellowship and a Warhol Foundation Wherewithal Research Grant. She is also the Co-founder and Co-director of "but, also" an artist run project that sells artist made products, produces exhibitions and works with a mission of empowering artists to both self sustain and experiment.
Specialties: Artist statements, brainstorming, and organizing notes in preparation for presentations of papers. I look forward to meeting you!
Pronouns: She/her
Bela Koschalk
FDA
Bela Koschalk is a third-year BFA student in the Writing Department. Their poetry considers intersections of disability, Trans* identity, and the archive. Bela's work dares to ask such questions as, "What if the spider bite was lesbianism all along?" And, "Is archival work simply an unsanctioned romance with Sisyphus?" They reside in Rogers Park in the Psychomantium with Norman, the cat driven mad by the song of the bone flute.
Pronouns: They/them/theirs
Angel Adams
Tutor
Angel is a second-year graduate student in the Art History department with a background in comparative literature, art history, and gender studies. Their research focuses on the intersections of literature and art, particularly as it relates to the creation of mythology, ritual, folklore, and the development of feminist and queer theories. Their thesis research involves critiquing mid- to late-19th-century feminist science fiction aesthetics. When they're not doing thesis research, they're reading, thrifting, or hanging out at home with their cats.
Specialties: Art history/theory, feminist/queer theory, visual and literary analysis, critical analysis, exhibition reviews, essays, research papers, resumes, artist statements
Pronouns: She/they
Sara Rani Reddy
Tutor
Hello! My name is Sara Rani (I go by my first and middle names), and I’m a first-year student in the MFA Writing Program. I enjoy writing narratives in fiction and poetry. Before SAIC, I studied chemistry and French in undergrad, taught English on a Fulbright grant in Luxembourg, and earned my Master’s in French from Columbia University in New York. I enjoy watching films—if you have any recommendations, let me know!—and listening to movie scores like they’re a soundtrack to my own life. I’m excited to help you make your ideas and writing shine!
Specialties: Grammar, citations, visual and literary analysis, creative writing, research papers, resumes, application essays
Pronouns: She/her
Madden Pilkerton
FDA
I am a senior with a focus on ceramics and fashion design. In my work, I use delicate materials to explore little moments within nature and life, focusing on family, fragility, and a sense of belonging. Through my practice, I want to inspire people to be unapologetically themselves, as well as encourage them to slow down, even for just a moment. In my free time I enjoy biking, hanging out with friends, and reading really sappy romance novels and murder mysteries!
Pronouns: She/her
SunAh Shim
FDA
I am a first-year art therapy and counseling graduate student, originally from South Korea. I have been cross-trained in Fine Arts and Performing Arts, and I have worked as an educator and a language interpreter. I am passionate about multicultural and international student wellness and advocacy; it matters to me that you feel safe and welcomed here at the Writing Center!
Pronouns: She/they
Héloïse Paillard
FDA
Héloïse Paillard is a writer and curator from Paris. She is a graduate of Central Saint Martins, London, where she earned a BA in Culture, Criticism, and Curation. She is now pursuing a dual degree in Art History and Arts Administration at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. With a background in the arts sector, she has experience working in museums, galleries, and auction houses across Europe. Héloïse has developed skills in curating, organizing exhibitions, and managing art publications, as well as contributing to high-profile events. Héloïse's work often intersects with themes of social justice, particularly in gender studies and Latin American art, and she is also drawn to the study of epistemology, which informs her critical approach to art. Fluent in French and English, with proficiency in Spanish, Héloïse combines her academic background with hands-on experience to bring a thoughtful, interdisciplinary approach to the art world. She is eager to continue expanding her expertise in both practical and theoretical aspects of arts administration.
Pronouns: She/her
Olive Maurstad
Tutor
I'm a first-year student in the MFA Writing program. I mostly write short fiction, often focusing on the speculative, the horrific, or the bizarre. You will often find me in the Writing Center, cursing to myself about how the NYT's "Connections" word puzzle is rigged and unfair.
Specialties: Fiction, essays, grammar
Pronouns: She/her
Gouri Bhuyan
Tutor
I’m a first year Performance (Studio) MFA student working primarily with themes of identity, language, accessibility and memories. Until a few months ago, I was a practicing industrial psychologist, theater maker and script/copy writer. I am forever curious, looking to learn new things and acquire new skills. I love watching films/TV shows, and am mildly obsessed with the genres of true crime and investigative journalism.
Specialties: Critical analysis, literary analysis, personal essays
Pronouns: She/her
Contact Us
Fall and Spring Semester Hours
Monday–Thursday, 9:00 a.m.–7:00 p.m.
Friday, 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
Summer Session Hours
Virtual: Monday, Wednesday, & Friday
In person & virtual: Tuesday & Thursday
10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
Winter Interim Hours
Virtual only
Monday-Friday, 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
Coordinator
Leila Wilson lwilson@saic.edu
Senior Administrative Director
Amber Da ada@saic.edu
Administrative Assistant
Richard Gessert rgessert@saic.edu