By Elsa Bermudez, Associate Director of Specialty Programs On Friday, March 28th, 2025, Malcolm and I led the Open Mic for Scholastic Award winners at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC! The event was beautiful: 40 teen writers shared innovative, heartwarming, powerful, and often funny excerpts from their 2025 Scholastic Art & Writing gold …
By Peter Quinn-Jacobs, Operations and Scholastic Awards Affiliate Manager, Writopia Lab and Rita Feinstein, Regional Manager, Writopia DC On Sunday, March 9th, we celebrated the regional winners of the Scholastic Writing Awards in the DC Metro Area. The ceremony, held at the UDC Theater of the Arts, opened with a high-energy performance by young dancers …
Written by Matthew Jellison, Associate Director of Education, Writopia Lab I’m struggling. This is good, actually. Isn’t struggle at the center of learning? I always remind the instructors at Writopia—the writing and education non-profit where I oversee the professional learning of our network of adult writers who teach writing to kids and teens—that discomfort can …
Worldwide Plays Festival 2025: Light Up The Dark! Poetry Society of New York First Annual Youth Poetry Contest Deadline: March 1 for writers eighteen and younger who live in New York State Submit three to five pages of poetry for cash prizes. An exciting organization! Rawling Society Contest Deadline: March 1 for writers in middle …
Written by Elsa and Matthew, Camp Co-DirectorsAdditional comments by workshop and elective instructors Malcolm, Jem, Peter, Rita, & Will We ran our 6th annual winter retreat at Camp Mariah over Presidents Day weekend this year! A smaller, more wintry version of WriCampia, our winter writing retreat (for tweens and teens) is a long weekend of …
Written by Lena Roy, Director of Teen Programs, and Peter Quinn-Jacobs, Associate Director of Operations LENA: Scholastic season may be over, and sure we’ve all rolled up our sleeves and gotten back to work, but as writers, we also need to celebrate when we can. We celebrate the fact that we submitted at all. It’s …
Written by Tasnim Hussain, Program Manager at Writopia Lab On February 11th, 2025, Writopia Publishing Lab celebrated the launch of Frightopia: The Second Edition with a celebratory reading for all 72 contributors. It was an uplifting and inspiring evening filled with writers, ages 7 to 16, who read excerpts of their published pieces to each …
Written by Elsa Bermudez, Rita Feinstein, Tasnim Hussain, and Matthew Jellison On Superbowl Sunday, Writopia Lab NYC and DC ran our 8th annual essay conference! Writers from grades 7th-12th participated in both our NYC and DC conference, and some writers even flew in from California and Toronto to participate in our NYC conference! Their excitement …
Hi Everyone! It’s Zoe Becker coming to you live from DC (certainly an interesting place to be right now) with this week’s Epistle! Weekly Epistles are generally written by Director of Teen Programs, Lena Roy, for those of us who are part of the year-long pre-college Creative Portfolio Program but I’ve wanted to contribute a …
Written by Lena Roy, Head of Writopia Lab’s Creative Portfolio Program Turning the Page (TtP) hosted a Virtual Cozy Crafts event this past Saturday afternoon while many of us in the Northeast were preparing for a snowstorm! TtP is a literary social justice committee started by members of the Creative Portfolio program in 2019, whose …