Terry Spanke:  

I was a Creative Writing major at IAA from 1975, my freshman year, age 14 until my junior year 1977, when I became ill just before the Christmas break and had to return home. I had received a full 4 year scholarship for Creative Writing, that was the first ever Creative Writing major at Interlochen Arts Academy. Interlochen was donated a huge grant from the FORD Foundation to add the Creative Writing Major to it's list of Majors and the Creative Writing Department was born under Loretta Sharp's incredible instruction, along with Jack Driscoll. I won my first Scholastic Writing Award in my intermediate school in 8th grade at age 13. I continued to win national Scholastic Writing Awards my freshman year, 1976 and my sophomore year 1977. In the spring of 1977, I won 8 national Creative Writing Awards for my poetry and short stories, 3 of which were national first place Awards from the Scholastic Writing Awards. I was published in The Interlochen Review Spring 1976, Volume 1, Number 1, the IAA on campus publication, The Red Wheelbarrow and again in The Interlochen Review Spring 1977. I was also published in numerous Scholastic Writing magazines for the high school student and Teachers. After leaving Interlochen, I was published in the first METRA magazine in 1980, a Detroit publication in it's first 3 months and an international global Anthology out of Sweden, that is still in libraries around the world. I continue...Expand for more