Welcome to the 2024 Annual Newsletter. First, congratulations to the thousands of Writopia writers, from young and teen writers to instructors and full-time staff, who set out and completed the writing of original pieces this year! A few hundred members of our community also bravely submitted writing to the 2024 Scholastic Awards and to other …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Student Publication Highlights 2020-2021 Abey Weitzman won a Scholastic Silver Medal for his senior portfolio, “Disability.” Watch his powerful graduation speech below in which he mentions Writopia Lab. Analia Rivera had a piece accepted to Alphabet Soup. Carol Brahm-Robin published a review in Pank. Jordan Ferdman won the National YoungArts Foundation Merit Winner in Writing: Creative …
By April, the grueling 2020-2021 college admissions process will have to come to an end, with over five million high seniors finding out which colleges have accepted them during one of the most disheartening application years in decades. And just then, as the trees begin to blossom and the Covid-19 vaccine supply begins to meet …