Since 2004, the author has been facilitating a creative writing program for teenagers at the historic Paul Robeson House, centrally located in the urban community of West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Begun as an intensive five-day summer workshop, Teen Writers Academy has expanded to offer ten-session Saturday workshops during the spring, two ten-day summer sessions, and an annual invitational public reading. The author's aim in facilitating Teen Writers Academy has been to encourage creativity and improve the writing skills of participating teens by offering a consistent methodology of researched creativity exercises as well as exercises of her own devising, along with selected readings, writing practice, and one-to-one mentoring. While completing a graduate program in the Department of Culture and Communications at Drexel University, the author had the opportunity to survey a body of research, conducted from a psychological perspective, on how creativity is developed within the individual. This article looks at the research in light of the author's work with Teen Writers Academy and documents how some of the expert findings are applied in creative writing workshops.