Congratulations to all Writopia writers selected for publication this past school year in this year’s Writopia Publishing Lab’s books.

Connecting Across Cultures: A Collection of Writing by Ten Jewish and Muslim American Teens

• Zoe Becker
• Dania Bressler
• Leila Cisse
• Mahnaz Daud-Basrai
• Heba Elkouraichi
• Zara Hai
• Ilana Horwitz
• Leonid Metlitsky
• Millie Nathanson
• Anniyah Rizvi

“Loved Your Essay!” – The Admissions Team: The Most Fiercely Individualistic College Essays: Second Edition

• Eli Berliner
• Daniela Brillon
• Ella Davis
• Sophia Hall
• Eliana Herzog
• Ailynn O’Neill
• Camil Piperni
• Eli Prager
• Sophia Rubin

Frightopia: The Most Spooky and Surprising Stories by Young Writers

A Wish Upon a Snowflake: Winning Stories of Writopia Lab’s 2023 Winter Story Contest

• Laurel Aronian
• Diego Azar-Wolfe
• Madison Bennett
• Bessa Carabetta
• Hannah Cays
• Mary Chen
• Aashvi Choudhary
• Ariadne Civin
• Felix Del Aguila
• Jean Frye
• Greta Garcia
• Sage Gasson
• Karenna Gutierrez
• Oliver Halkett
• Mika Higgins-Woo
• Prisha Hooda
• Naomi Jeske
• Naomi Katz-Moss
• Amaya Khwaja-Patel
• Poppy LaFrance
• Audrey Lu
• Nathalie Rostek-Weretka
• Isobel Ryu
• Boaz Sager
• Aria Sharma
• Jane Sheldon
• Kaylie Souza
• Margalo Teich
• James Wilson
• Isabella Zhou

Wonders of the Wild: A WriCampia Anthology 

• Layla May Berrada-Riggs
• Ellen Booth
• Imogen Brownas
• Sonali Browning
• Mahnaz Daud
• Madison Dorsey
• Evie Fox
• Astro Getahun
• Adriana Gonzalez
• Asha Harker
• Zoe Husock
• Evie Lee
• Serine Lee
• Rain Lee
• Livi Lesburg
• Taylen Li
• Brian Li
• Jun Lowenhar
• Hunter Maguire
• Lila Melinger
• Sage E. Morgan
• Stella Pham
• Louisa Rosenblatt
• Sophia Rubin
• Maya Savard
• Ruby Sinder
• Isabella Sumner
• Nikolina Trefalt-Liu
• Reva Tucker
• Yanic Valbrune
• Tara Wong

By Matthew Jellison

We were losing literary bingo when the thought hit us.

We were surprised to be losing. After all, Malcolm and I have spent the better part of a decade working in literacy, and Yael about a decade and a half. We are (affectionately speaking) literary nerds. In the office we share, Yael and I often pick up books hanging out on one another’s desks because we’re always curious about what the other is reading; we go on about literature, film, and television. And Malcolm seems to have an endless well of facts about various curiosities at his disposal. Take the one train back from teaching with him at a partner school, for example, and he’ll tell you about the history of a particular subway stop along the way, which then turns into a history of architecture in uptown Manhattan, which then turns into how the whole city is organized. Ask him how he knows so much about that one specific topic he’s gone into with such detail and he’ll likely say, “Oh, I was just wondering about it one day, and so I decided to research.”

All of this goes to say, we know about the world and we know about literature and there’s no reason we should not win a game of literary bingo. But there we were losing.

We were in Ohio at a social gathering for the National Council of Teachers of English Annual Conference last November. We work at Writopia Lab, a national nonprofit whose mission is to foster joy, literacy, and critical thinking in kids and teens of all backgrounds through creative writing. To that end, we build creative writing workshops for kids. They come to us after school and over the weekends at one of our many locations around the country–called labs–where they sit in aged-based groups and work on the writing that’s meaningful to them, all while deepening their knowledge of writing craft through prompts and original writing games, receiving feedback from their instructors, who are themselves professional writer, and forging a community with like-minded youth. For students who can’t come to us, we go to them, bringing our method into classrooms, CBOs, and alternative-to-detention centers for incarcerated youth. Malcolm–a songwriter–runs our songwriting program. I primarily design curriculum and oversee the professional learning of our network of creative writing instructors. Yael runs the show, and along with our CEO Rebecca, seems to effortlessly weave all the strands–from programming to operations, from everyday functioning to ambitious organizational dreaming. All three of us also teach. That’s one thing about our work culture, no matter how senior we become, how much further we root ourselves in the role of administrator, it’s important to us that we never lose sight of what it is to work directly with kids in the room.

This was our first time at the NCTE conference. We had gone to lead a panel on how we teach craft by utilizing original writing games that promote critical thinking and transformation. Besides presenting, we were there to absorb. The conference was filled with panels on almost every aspect of literacy instruction we could imagine. We would fill our days with the individual presentations that interested us the most–giving effective feedback, humanistic teaching practices, professional learning, racial justice in education, teacher burnout, AI in the classroom, and on. Some of the panels left us misty-eyed with their deep commitment and care for youth, some were duds. But we were absorbing everything, navigating the convention halls, stumbling into conversations with English teachers and educators from around the country who all seemed literate, passionate, and quirky. There was a charged energy in those halls that we all felt, and we were eager to bring it back to Writopia.

That Saturday night the energy was depleted though as the other teams were whooping us. “What’s a word that means something different than what it is?” the game leaders asked. “What the hell does that question even mean?” I asked Yael and Malcolm, exasperated. “Write down, ‘gaslighting,’ maybe we’ll get a humor point.” The judges laughed, but no point. Finally, we gave up and moved to conversation.

We all know each other in this very specific way that colleagues at a literacy nonprofit who’ve been teaching together for several years know each other. We get along, we can bounce ideas, we care about the work, and most importantly, we know how to teach together. When we get in the workshop room or a classroom, we have a common language we’ve found over the years, a sense of how we each individually communicate to a room full of kids and how we ourselves can complement each other in that room and reach the kids as a team. We also have an innate understanding as to why the other ones are here, working at this very specific place doing this very specific thing, and what makes them particularly good at this work. We all admire each other’s teaching–or at least I admire Yael and Malcolm’s–it’s a specific type of admiration and knowledge of the other two. 

So it shouldn’t have been any surprise, and maybe it wasn’t, maybe we’d known it about the other two all along but hadn’t connected all the dots, still, sitting in downtown Columbus over a failed literary bingo game, that’s when it really resonated that all of our moms are or were reading teachers, and further, tired and invigorated from panel upon panel of new knowledge and inspiration, we collectively had the deeper realization that we need to get them together for a forum with our instructors.

Months later and it’s Spring. We design a conference of our own for our instructors. Five panels on new ways we can incorporate the hard skills–grammar, mechanics, and usage–into our creative writing workshops organically. We call it “Hard Skills Week.” On Monday, our instructors reflect on how they themselves learned to read and write, before diving into an info session on “the reading wars,” and a discussion on where–as a third space–Writopia fits into this debate. Tuesday’s session is aimed at easing the anxiety around hard skills instruction, and crowdsourcing the soundbites and missives that you can sneak into one-on-one instruction that don’t feel like outright lessons. On Wednesday, we learn new games that use grammar and mechanics as creative generators–embracing style before content, or building new characters out of verbs–rather than saving it for the end of the writing process and then forgetting to teach it entirely (something that I’ve been guilty of in my own teaching). Thursday is a deep look at who made the arbitrary grammar rules in the first place, the gatekeepers, and what their intentions were (hint: to sell books), establishing that a definition of “good” grammar is different for each and every person, that a person’s upbringing and identity are all a part of their own innate sense of grammar, and that we can use a child’s natural grammar to help them find voice. The inspiration and research for all of these sessions originated with the NCTE conference we went to last fall.

Friday’s panel–the final panel of the week–is a talkback with our moms, three outstanding educators with different backgrounds in teaching, but who clearly have a lot in common in their philosophy and approach and care for young people. I’ll stop talking now and let them speak for themselves, except to say this. These three educators, who met for the first time on Zoom in this hour, seemed to have such a common language, and seemed to have a reverence for one another’s ideas and mutual understanding, the kind that Malcolm, Yael, and I developed with each other over the years, but found in mere minutes. That they fell into it so quickly is testament to how deeply they’ve lived and breathed education. All three of us found their words and wisdom inspiring, moving, invigorating, but we’re of course biased. Still, we suspect that they’ll inspire you too. I was also heartened to catch Malcolm’s sensibility in his mother’s honesty, and a bit of Yael’s philosophy in the stories her mom told about surrounding her kids with books. It was a treat to see a bit of my colleagues in their respective moms.

It took a trip to Columbus last November for Yael, Malcolm, and I to come up with a simple, but inspiring idea. It’s important to take the teams that work well and place them in new situations, where they can think about their work and the world a little differently. This can yield innovation, even if that innovation is something as small as, “let’s have our moms hang out and talk about education on Zoom for an hour.” As an organization, we continue to branch out and send our staff to exciting new places. This year, we’ll be back at the NCTE conference, this time in Boston, leading two panels. And if there’s literary bingo happening, you better believe we’ll be there, for whatever comes up, game faces on.

Each July is filled with our longtime deeply meaningful and exciting partnership camps! For a decade now,  Writopia has been running a special writing arts camp for dozens of creative and fun-loving children and teens at Homes for the Homeless’ Saratoga Family Inn. 

Starting seven years ago, we began working with 20-30 wonderful and gifted tweens from low-resourced areas who are selected by The Exam Schools Initiative (ESPI) as they prepare to apply to NYC’s specialized, magnet, highly selective high schools. It is a gift to us to brainstorm and help cultivate original short stories, films, and graphic novels with all of these beautiful young people who deserve all of the enrichment, support, and inspiration in the world. 

ESPI directors recently surveyed 50 of their alumni for feedback on how they may further benefit from ESPI support;  80% of them have named college essay support as a “top need.” So starting this summer, we have had the deep pleasure of working with some of our former middle school ESPI students, now highly engaged college applicants. In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Affirmative Action, equal access to college access support systems has become even more urgent.    

According to ESPI Founder, Andy McCord, “For ESPI students the Writopia week is a revelation. For students who have already begun to self-identify as readers and writers the experience is a homecoming. Many of these students continue on their own with Writopia in future years on scholarship. For other students, probably a majority, who are math kids who have never liked ELA, Writopia connects their innate verbal flair with a subject that had often seemed dull and restrictive in school. Our goals are explicitly academic, in that we seek to address the “excellence gap” that keeps many Black, Latinx, and low-income students out of the pipelines to schools like Hunter, Stuyvesant, and Bronx Science, but we find that a creative approach like Writopia is essential across disciplines to build deeper motivations that can underlie achievement at high levels as our students progress through school. At an organizational level, ESPI’s partnership with Writopia has been a model.”

By Rebecca Wallace-Segall

Within this essay, I  examine the ongoing youth literacy crisis in New York City and, along with it, two long-standing, opposing education policies—progressive and traditional—that have sought to address it. I argue that resisting dogmatic adherence to one or the other of these approaches, coupled with teacher-centered professional development opportunities that emphasize educators’ reconnection to the personal experience of writing, will improve classroom writing education goals. Over the course of a decade and a half, I co-designed a new educational framework that combines and elaborates upon the strengths of both approaches; over the past year, I co-designed a teacher-centered professional development opportunity for New York City public school teachers that allows them the space to apply that framework to their own writing and, ultimately, grow as both writers and writing educators. Inspired by John Kingdon’s open policy window theory, as a new administration took office in the city in 2022, I researched and connected with old and new contacts that lead a like-minded policy community within the Department of Education in order to implement and test this professional development project. In this paper, I imagine a city in which all writing teachers have access to joyful, teacher-centered writing workshops of their own, and the potential impacts this would have on youth; I suggest that building bridges between educators and writing experts, between progressive and traditional educators, and from high- to low-performing schools, may improve literacy education for public school youth in New York City.

Click here to read the full essay.

Click here for more information about how we can best serve your school.

Congratulations! Rebecca Wallace-Segall, Chief Executive Officer, published the Writopia founding and impact story in the Village Voice in 2022 and co-authored an article on partnering for literacy impact in the Afterschool Matters Journal. She is completing her Masters in Urban Education Policy at CUNY Graduate Center this winter. Yael Schick, Co-Associate Executive Director, graduated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2022 with a Masters in Education Leadership, Organizations, and Entrepreneurship. At Harvard, she was a recipient of a Saul Zaentz Fellowship, awarded to emerging leaders in early childhood education. Jeremy Wallace-Segall, Chief Operations Officer, completed a Certificate in Business Excellence at Columbia Business School‘s Social Leaders Program for Nonprofit Professionals. Janelle Williams, Director of Programs and Outreach, had her novel, Gone Like Yesterday, accepted for publication by Tiny Reparations Books, forthcoming in February 2023. Rita Feinstein, D.C. Regional Manager, had her narrative poetry compilation, Everything Is Real, published through Brain Mill Press. John Manuel Arias’ debut novel, Where There Was Fire, was accepted for publication by Flatiron Books. Léna Roy, Bianca Turetsky, Rebecca Wallace-Segall, and Janelle Williams, whose proposed panel was accepted to the Association for Writing Programs conference forthcoming in Seattle in 2023.  Rebecca Wallace-Segall’s session, co-proposed with Susan Matloff-Nieves, the Vice President of Innovation and Justice at Goddard Riverside, was accepted to the New York State Network for Youth Success conference. Special thank you to the Pinkerton Foundation for their ongoing commitment to extending Writopia’s literacy impact throughout the broader after-school educational landscape. Léna Roy, Director of Teen Programs, and Rob Roy, Director of Program Operations, launched Writopia’s first university-based residential program, Advanced Writing Seminar, at The New School in 2022. Matthew Jellison, Senior Manager of Education, and Elsa Bermúdez, Los Angeles Regional Manager and WriCampia Co-Director, ran a free summer program for Portland Public Schools students. Bianca Turetsky became our Associate Director of Programs. Tom Flynn became our Director of Business Operations and Development. Will Bond became our Manager of Digital Media and Communications. Jocelyn Gottschalk became our Senior HR Manager. Malcolm Knowles became a Program Manager. Tasnim Hussain became a Program Manager. Shanille Martin became our Registration and Debate Program Lead. Michaela Florio became a Project Manager. And a special congratulations to Danielle Sheeler, Co-Associate Executive Director, for the birth of her first baby, Maya Fae!

Instructors’ 2022 Publications Amy Dupcak Prose poem published in The Blue Mountain Review’s September print/digital issue. Poem forthcoming in the American Writers Review’s “The End or the Beginning?” themed print issue, published by San Fedele Press. Published the personal essay “My Own Nirvana” in Vol. 1 Brooklyn. Newly acting Editor-in-Chief for the literary journal Cagibi, and is currently reading, editing, and organizing for their winter issue, which will go live on January 17, 2023. Andres Vaamonde Phillip Roth Resident in Creative Writing at Bucknell University, January 2023. Carly Sorenson Blog Writer for the volunteer- and queer-led Love Wins Food Pantry.  Chava Pearl Lansky Graduated from the CUNY Graduate Center’s M.A. in Biography and Memoir. Began writing a monthly cooking column in Dance Magazine, where she features artists’ favorite home recipes and approaches to cooking. Christina Poulin Published four articles in Mochi Magazine:  “Obake Stories: The Clash Between Superstition and Religion.” “Rolls off the Tongue: The Trendiness of Asian Snacks.”  “5 Things You Should Consider Before Taking a Gap Year.” “All That Glitters: The Owner of Magpie Reveals Small Business Secrets.” Cloe Gentile Reyes Published poems and prose in Brown Sugar Lit. Presented doctoral research & writing at the International Alliance for Women in Music 2022 conference.  Awarded the Judith Tick Award for Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies by the Society for American Music for her research on reggaeton, Puerto Rican culture, rap, fashion, and racialized femininity.  Di Jayawickrema     Published in The Pinch and New Delta Review and had a zine out with One Minute Press, which is a new flash zine for Asian diaspora writers. Fiction Fellow at Kundiman. https://dijayawickrema.com/writing/ Liqing Xu Partook in “An Evening of Commissioned Monologues” at the Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival. Selected to be a Many Voices Fellow. Selected to partake in The Orchard Project. Had a workshop production through Second Stage. Lizz Mangan Their show “Good Morning! A Preschool Play” was featured in the 3rd Annual Hartford Fringe Festival in October 2022. Michaela Florio Pushcart Nominee for nonfiction piece “The Sanctuary.” “The Sanctuary” in Quarter After Eight Volume 27. Rita Feinstein Published poems in Salamander Magazine, Alien Magazine, and Beloit Poetry Journal. Flash fiction published in The Normal School. Sanina Clark Published a Q & A with Kekla Magoon in Publishers Weekly. Published a review of “Things to Pack on the Way to Everywhere” in A Gathering of the Tribes Online Magazine. A Gathering of Tribes Online Magazine Review for “Things to Pack on the Way to Everywhere”. Hosted the Black Dawn Series Launch w. Firestorm Books. Series Editor for AK Press; accepting speculative fiction submissions for the Black Dawn series. Sophia N. Lee Debuted her first picture book titled Holding On with Atheneum in August 2022. It is the first Filipino picture book to be published by Simon & Schuster. Her second book Lolo’s Sari-sari Store, also with Atheneum, has been announced on Publishers Weekly. It’s slated for release in the summer of 2023. https://linktr.ee/sophianleewrites

Welcome our 2022 New Full-Time Staff Carly Sorenson, Instructor and Registration Associate Christina McDowell, Registration and Outreach Coordinator; Instructor Lizz Mangan, Private Sessions Coordinator Jem Werner, Registration Associate John Manuel Arias, Registration Coordinator Matthew Wong, IT Specialist Peter Quinn-Jacobs, Operations, Registration, and RPG Coordinator

Partnership Highlight We have been serving juniors and seniors at WHEELS, Washington Heights Expeditionary Learning School. This year their team has been internally measuring our impact on 80 of their writers. We are thrilled to start sharing their early findings with you!

Writopia Publishing Lab Highlights Rueda y Rueda: the 2022 Homes for the Homeless Anthology. Learn more about our decade-long relationship with HFH! Hello From Here: A Celebration of Asian American Identity, a book filled with postcard letters and illustrations created by Asian American kids from all around the country. Produced by a group of Writopia teens funded by Riley’s Way. Food, Memories, and Recipes from the Heart: An ICHS Cookbook, a collaboration with International Community High School celebrating the cuisine and voices of young writers in the Bronx. Twilight Time: Poems About Dreams and Fantasies, a collection of Writopia’s youngest writers’ poetry.  Rituals and Traditions: A WriCampia Anthology, produced by our WriCampia CITs.

Specialty Program Highlights WriCampia Served 200 kids at our 11-day sleepaway camp in the Poconos. Enrollment is opening soon for our August 14th-August 25 2023 session! Two films made in the Filmmaking Track at WriCampia were selected for the New York Short Film Festival. Congratulations to Sam Stearns for INERTIA and Castle Bloodgood and Moon Emigli for Worm On A Genius String!

Special thank you to Alex Tlatelpa, our Accounting and Operations Specialist, for bringing Mabel to WriCampia this year!

Worldwide Plays Festival Produced 32 short plays live in Bryant Park.

Watch the plays from the festival in the playlist below!

Missed the student accomplishment newsletter in June? Check it out and let us know if you have more news to share!  During these difficult financial times, our team continues to do great work. Please help us stay intact and continue to have impact into the new year. On behalf of our Board of Directors and our entire staff, thank you and happy holidays!

Support Writopia Lab

Our graduating seniors wrote dozens of individualistic, beautifully-crafted college essays at Writopia this year that helped college admissions teams get to know—and feel deeply connected to—them as people. I am excited to share two essays below because of the creative format the writers chose to employ and because of the high level of personal reflection and analysis they shared. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as they enjoyed writing them!   

Eliana’s Essay

“So, Eliana. What’s your sustained investigation? What’s the meaning behind this painting?” Ms. Fallon, my art teacher asks. It’s our monthly in-class critique, and it’s my turn to present my project. “Well, it’s a long story…” I begin to respond, reflecting over the moments that led me to where I was. I contain a multitude of histories and stories that no one can see, but that I feel deeply. These histories help shape who I am.  

I’m seven and visiting my maternal grandmother’s family in Finland. I learn how to play Old Maid from my great aunt and greet my cousin’s cows, feeding them chocolate chip cookies.  

I’m ten and my sister and I are visiting our paternal grandparents in Brussels for the first time without my parents. It is thrilling to be in a foreign country without our parents. We visit Le Grand Place and its museums, explore castles, play Rummikub, and light Shabbat candles.  

I’m thirteen and eating Sunday brunch with family and friends the day after my bat mitzvah. My father’s family is there, the ones who escaped Poland in the war and immigrated to Venezuela. Although I am tired from the beautiful chaos of the previous day, I feel encompassed by the love of all those who traveled from near and far to support me as I read Torah. Everyone speaks Spanish and English while eating bagels and arepas and telling me how much I’ve grown: “¿Me recuerdas? I changed your diapers!” I feel incredibly fortunate to have my father’s Venezuelan dishes and family every Sunday, allowing me to connect with my heritage through delicious food.  

I’m fourteen and walking the streets of Jerusalem with my family. I hear Hebrew all around me and notice Judaica stores on every third street. I visit the Western Wall and feel the 2000 years of history. I stand on the roof of a citadel and view the city around me, feeling connected to my heritage. I buy a necklace in Tzfat, which I will wear practically daily for the next few years. 

I’m sixteen and, while exploring ideas for paintings, I ask my grandpa, the lifelong educator, to tell me more about his side of the family. In response, I get a 100-page packet. Looking at my ancestors’ names, it hits me once again that barely over 150 years in the past, my ancestors were enslaved Africans. Some days later, my mom and I are eating lunch and processing how racial justice has improved since then, yet how much more progress is necessary. My grandpa, a 78-year-old Black man, a retired teacher and school superintendent, had just moved to New Hampshire for the summer, out of fear of both COVID-19 and getting shot by the police.   

I’m seventeen and creating my final portfolio for AP art. I paint the farm and Le Grand Place. I paint the streets of Tsfat and arepas. I paint a Torah in my arms and draw the Lodz ghetto. I paint dark hands in chains and a Bantu mask, learning more about African art in the process. When I present my work, my classmates are quiet, ask many questions, and say, “We didn’t know your family was so diverse.” I shrug it off. I pass; this is who I am. Just because my heritage isn’t visible at first glance doesn’t make it any less meaningful. Through my art, I can share my story and feel a little less unseen. Art has helped me feel more comfortable discussing my identity and enhanced my connection with my family. I now understand the power of sharing who I am with the world. When someone shares who they are, the world becomes a more incredible place.  

There is loneliness in feeling unseen, but there is fulfillment in knowing who I am and all that my ancestors have overcome to lead me to where I am now. 

Ailynn’s Essay

Two Minutes Till: I’m going to need full focus for what I’m about to do. I can feel the presence of my group mates in the room, even though I’m not looking at them. People give off energy, I think, whether they mean to or not, and I can feel theirs almost as strongly as my own. 

Noah is pacing, Jack is fiddling with his inhaler, Charlie is staring off into space, and Tomoko has mysteriously disappeared. An unspoken understanding passes between me and Noah: we are both terrified, but we can’t show it because that will make it real.

One Minute Till: We form a huddle, like a football team. Music can, in fact, be an athletic endeavor, especially in a chamber group. Everyone must be aware of each other, simply through peripheral vision and non-verbal communication. 

Noah tells us to try to just have fun. I translate: Play with wild abandon. We nod. This piece is so dramatic, we silently assure each other, it almost plays itself. Yet we are keenly aware of the lack of control we really have out there. A violin might fall out of tune. Someone might miss a measure. The panic might swallow us up. 

Twenty Seconds Till: We line up. The walls begin to close in, but I push them away and quiet my breathing. I don’t look up at the faces of the professors and students in the balconies, in case they can read my thoughts. I’ve had years of practice, but the better I am, the higher my expectations of myself are.

Time’s up: We bow, our voices reedy as we announce our names and what we’re playing: Dvorak’s Piano Quintet in A minor, first movement. I sit down, smooth my purple dress out on the piano bench. I know this. Charlie looks scared, but determined. I nod and give her an assuring wink. We know this. 

I start my opening solo, letting my fingers linger lovingly on the keys before sound emerges. The cello part dances alongside me, her notes sometimes complementing mine and sometimes clashing purposefully. The others join us, sometimes in unison, sometimes forging their own paths. It feels like the first time I’m hearing it, getting lost in the beauty and emotion behind every phrase.

This is the moment I usually start to unravel. But I don’t. Instead, it’s as if the chaos of my life comes together. I know who I am, I know what I’m doing, I know why I like it. This is for me alone, it’s both this beautiful exploration into myself and an external break from the hectic nature of life and everything I’m interested in; it encompasses my love for history, my need for non-verbal communication, my desire to share with others something that is personal, precious, and instant. It speaks to my ability to empathize and internalize feelings, my love of good stories. Music ties my entire life together. It creates a bond between things that usually feel separate and makes me feel like a full, whole person.

Seven minutes later: This is what it’s supposed to feel like. Applause erupts around me from all sides. Full of adrenaline, I bow. The walls are where they are supposed to be. A light feeling grows in my chest–We did it. And I would do it all over again, just to feel that infinite, temporary joy for a few more minutes. It’s the first time I haven’t performed just to get through the piece. Instead, the melodies flowed through my veins and the world of the piece fully enveloped me in its arms. I smiled as I hit the last note. The breath I let out now is not one of relief, but wistfulness at having to leave the scene of this beautiful creation. This is what it’s supposed to feel like. I feel grounded, ready to take on the world.

by Bianca Turetsky

At our last virtual retreat we took an exercise from Brene Brown’s book, Dare to Lead, and through the process of elimination discovered what our core values truly are. In the busyness of day to day life, particularly these past two years, it’s not a question we often give ourselves the time to dig into. What really matters to me? These central beliefs guide us in both our personal and professional lives because as Brene points out, we only have one set of values. A lot of unhappiness and unease creep in when one’s values at work don’t align with their values in their personal and home lives.

We shut off our cameras and individually pondered over an extensive alphabetical list of values ranging from accountability to leadership to wisdom. We started by picking ten values, which was challenging enough, and then reluctantly culled our list down to two values. The values that act as our North Star, much like how I describe a log line in a novel to my novel writing workshop. Everyone’s values were different. It was hard tossing out creativity, community, success, and learning. I felt tremendous guilt crossing out family. But for the sake of the exercise, I did it. 

I was surprised at what I was left with: 

Joy and Curiosity 

Upon more reflection I realized that curiosity and joy felt like umbrella terms for many of the other values in my more expansive list. For me, joy includes humor, connection, well-being, optimism and love. Curiosity encompasses creativity, learning, and flexibility. When I looked at the two words again through this lens, they felt true to me.

I have always loved how joy was one of the first words of Writopia’s mission statement: Writopia Lab fosters joy, literacy, and critical thinking in children and teens from all backgrounds through creative writing. If you are in a place of joy, you are more open to learning and community and growing. You are not coming from a place of fear. I’ve always tried to take a Marie Kondo approach to life – does the way I spend my days bring me joy? Because of course as we all know, the way you spend your days is the way you spend your life. Writing brings me joy. Working with kids brings me joy. Helping young writers tell their stories brings me joy. And seeing the joy these writers experience when they write a sentence or story they are proud of makes me feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to put this value into practice. 

I lead my workshops coming from a place of curiosity. I genuinely want to learn more about who these writers are and how I can guide them to tell their truths. I’m curious, what story are you destined to tell? Through our strengths based approach, constructive feedback is offered in the form of questions: I’m curious, how does your character feel at this moment? I’m curious, what does this magical forest smell like? I’m curious, what inspired this hilarious talking cat? I’m curious, I’m curious… 

Even in her 90s, my grandmother is still the most dynamic person in the room. She has an insatiable curiosity that has never diminished. She is always learning new things, meeting new people, asking questions and actively listening to the answers. Not surprisingly, she was a beloved second grade teacher. A smaller group of us did this exercise a few years ago and I found myself with two different core values (“making a difference” and “creativity”). These are values that still strongly resonate with me. They definitely made my top 10 list this year. But a lot has changed in the world in a few years and I think when things seem really hard, I am actively leaning more towards joy. When the news seems confusing and scary, I am actively leaning towards curiosity. I plan to do the activity again in the future to see what resonates with me at that moment in my life. It’s exciting to know that even as adults we’re ever evolving. I hope to still be chasing joy with our young writers. And I’m curious to meet my future self and find out. 

by Madeline Taylor & Kimberly Faith Waid 

At our national staff retreat in 2019, our full-time staff came together to focus on teen leadership and the ways we could empower our young writers within our community and beyond. We’d run programs in the past, and we were ready to take it to a new level: to guide writers to contribute their ideas, help produce events, and be the voice of the messaging that, after all, defines their passions. Our discussion centered primarily around the needs of our teen community; many of our teens had been involved in Writopia for many years and were ready for a new experience, in the midst of a world full of new challenges. We wanted to center our programs around our young writers’ passions and ideas so that we could provide the scaffolding and tools while allowing them the freedom to express their creativity in new, impactful ways.

Our Enviroactivism club began after a teen entered the workshop space devastated by the impact of climate change and that conversation drew compassion and concern for the room at large. It became clear that this was a conversation these teens would like to be having but also a concern they were motivated to pursue actionable change to achieve. The group is student-led, instructor-mentored, and aims to empower kids and teens to use their voice to become leaders and environmental activists in their own neighborhoods. Originally bi-weekly meetings, the structure expanded to a monthly event series. In the past year, participants have brainstormed advocacy efforts to raise awareness around climate change, written thank you letters to firefighters and advocates, written urgent letters to representatives and corporate social responsibility managers, and engaged in the replies! They’ve probed outside of typical “environmental stresses” and explored urban planning and housing for the homeless with a guest speaker who educated them on the intersection of public health and sustainability. These topics informed them as citizens who will care for the health of any city they inhabit. Local participation and advocacy is vital and how wonderful that it was born from their creative writing workshop where they can tackle words and ideas without censorship but rather with wholehearted empathy and cultural consciousness. 

One of the best things about teen leadership is watching it grow and evolve as the teens themselves grow up from passionate youth into smart, strong, well-equipped young adults. A favorite example is the way that Writopia’s LGBTQ+ community has flourished thanks to teen leaders who committed to forging a space not just for themselves, but for their whole Writopia family. During the summer of 2017 at WriCampia (our sleepaway camp), we started Plus, a discussion/writing/hangout space for LGBTQ+ campers and anyone who wanted to have a place to learn more about gender and sexuality in a friendly, low-key environment. Over the next several years, we grew beyond WriCampia and into our school-year programming as well. For Pride 2019, a particularly significant year that marked the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, we ran three different programs to reach more young writers than ever. From a queer movie night with poster-making, to an art and writing field trip at the Leslie-Lohman Museum, to the NYC Pride March itself, Writopia teens created powerful, fun, thoughtful spaces. 

As we reflected on our queer community’s evolution and the growth of our Enviroactivism group, we saw that in order to truly serve our kids, our role as educators must be to teach kids the toolkit they need to empower themselves; it’s incredible to watch how these empowered and equipped kids can take those tools to lift the needs of others as well.

A year after our initial conversations, when we gathered for our 2020 staff retreat, we had presentations prepared on the teen engagement programs we had started over the past year. Our retreat, however, turned into a huge planning session for Writopia Lab’s transition to online programming, which had to happen fast, as more cities started shelter-in-place orders. A few weeks later, once we had moved workshops on to Zoom and were getting in the groove of this strange time, we had a moment to stop and remember our teen leaders. Our next challenge: how could we continue to support our teen leaders and activists via online channels? How would Covid-19 affect these kids’ goals and plans?

It didn’t come as any surprise when we realized that these young leaders had continued their projects and started new, timely projects, all through their determination and hard work. Turning the Page, a group dedicated to writing about and destigmatizing mental health issues, has continued to meet every weekend; they are creating an anthology as well as sharing ideas for mental health support on their Instagram. The Next Chapter, a teen-led gun control advocacy group, continued to meet once a week to discuss future projects, including their involvement with the “Enough” plays project. They’re also accepting submissions for a zine about gun violence. Diatom, our new teen-run literary magazine, took the initiative to write acceptance letters and start curating their new issue, outside of meetings led by Writopia Staff. In our debate club, our older teens who are nationally ranked debaters are working with us to develop a new debate culture and format that goes beyond argument and rebuttal and celebrates problem solving as well. Enviroactivism has met monthly to process the impact of the virus on issues they’d covered prior like housing and climate. They’ve collaborated on earth day social media posts, a recipe exchange of common pantry items, and they traveled the Earth while staying home this month thanks to a Zoom viewing party of Our Planet. Our kids had the tools they needed to maintain their activism even — especially — during the most challenging time many of them have ever faced.

Covid-19 showed us clearly that the future of youth activism programs is dependent on our efforts as instructors and mentors to be alert to the questions of young people, reminding them that their voice is needed and deserves to be heard. In a time when young people are feeling weighed down by anxieties about the future, it’s vital that we foster literacy through creating spaces for writers to engage with their ideas, beliefs, and passions beyond the written page. Collectively, all of these programs will bring confidence and deep awareness to our young writers. Now is the time to hear and celebrate their passions, angers, and curiosities. Our present and our future will be filled with their voices.