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 from District Irish Dance Academy. Then we welcomed our procession of award winners up to the mic, where they shared the reasons why they write. We also heard excerpts from pieces that received American Voice nominations; from the total of 2,619 works submitted across the DC region, these 5 pieces stood out as exceptionally strong. Congrats to all of the DC Scholastic AVNs—Michaela Frey, Nadia Lach-Hab, Aigerim Bibol, Tara Prakash, and Aliyah Majeed-Hall.
This year, we were thrilled to award a new regional prize, the Emerging Voices Award, to Bard High School student Daniel Goldson. This $200 prize, awarded to a piece of writing from a writer in Wards 7 or 8 of DC, was made possible by a generous grant from the Momentus Capital’s Charitable Contributions Committee. Congratulations, Daniel!
Our keynote speaker—and beloved Writopia instructor!—Liz Lawson shared her personal journey as a writer and commended the bravery and vulnerability of our young writers. Liz is the New York Times bestselling author of The Agathas series (co-written with Kathleen Glasgow) and The Lucky Ones. Her next book, a YA murder mystery entitled Murder Between Friends, releases on April 22nd, 2025. You can learn more about Liz and her writing at https://www.lizlawsonauthor.com/.
To close out the ceremony, graduating senior Tara Prakash delivered a beautiful speech about observational writing, pulling inspiration from the world around you, and the importance of connection and community. Tara is a long-time Writopian and a core part of our Creative Portfolio program, and is also a recipient of the highest Scholastic regional honor, a Gold Key for her senior Writing Portfolio. Congrats to Tara and all of our seniors! You will be very missed, but we’re excited to see what the future holds for you.
Many more thanks are in order! We’d love to extend our gratitude to:
Author and Writopia instructor Jordan Casomar, who co-emceed the ceremony and has provided invaluable feedback and support to our writers over the years.
Our awesome cohort of Creative Portfolians—Michaela Frey, Sofia Hernandez, Charlotte Long, Izzy Oh, and Tara Prakash—who ran the check-in desk so beautifully.
Writopia’s founder and CEO Rebecca Wallace-Segall, for visiting from New York to take photographs and support the ceremony.
Our friends at District Irish Dance, for arranging such a fun opening for the ceremony.
The team of Scholastic Writing Awards volunteer judges—teachers, librarians, and writers from across the country—who spent many hours reading student works.
Derek Morgan and the whole theater team at UDC.
The spirit of the Scholastic Awards ceremony is to recognize the originality, skill, and voice of young writers, to foster community, and to validate the importance of creative expression. To all our writers—whether or not you received Scholastic recognition this year, remember that there is great value and great joy to be found in writing, revising (yes, revising!), and sharing. Keep writing, and stay in touch!
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 be a good thing. I always remind myself. For the most part, us writers who teach kids are a gentle bunch. We’re here ‘cause we love words and we love kids. And so, when something comes up in the creative writing workshops we lead—a behavioral issue, for example—new instructors often reluctant to address it head on. We don’t want to shut the kid down, we don’t want to sully the room that—on those days when it all clicks—feels like a microcosm of unbridled creativity, we don’t want this space where kids come in order to find a sort of sanctuary to feel anything like school with punitive measures, and so our impulse is to avoid struggle. But it’s important that we allow that struggle, I remind our instructors. That week or two of discomfort, of awkwardness and messy feelings, of strategy practicing, will often blossom into real learning not just for the kids in the room but also for you, I remind myself. Growth is what lives at the very end of struggle. Struggle is how we get there.
So here I am struggling. And even though the struggle is good, it doesn’t always feel good. What I’m struggling to do is write this essay that my colleague Lena Roy asked me to write, sharing the story of how I found myself at Writopia. I’m happy she asked, but I’m still struggling.
It should be simple enough to recall the story of a late-twenties playwright/actor/
bartender/babysitter picking up the kid he watched everyday for three years from a Writopia day camp on the Upper West Side. How the two of them—extremely close despite their twenty year age gap, with a tendency to “bro out” together weekday afternoons watching Star Wars or playing pretend—grabbed a cold drink and a snack (a cold brew for the babysitter, a muffin for the kid) as the kid told the babysitter about his day. How the babysitter was rapt by everything the kid got to do; work on an original story for THREE WHOLE HOURS, develop a graphic novel, and play Dungeons and Dragons, tomorrow he’s thinking of taking a stab at songwriting, and he’s curious about filmmaking, he might give that a try, too. I could tell you that the kid and the babysitter were both acutely aware that their relationship, at least as it stood, had a looming expiration date. The kid was entering 5th grade and after 5th grade was middle school and in middle school, kids no longer have babysitters. And for the babysitter, he would be thirty that year, and maybe it was time to find something else to support himself as he pursued the financially thankless profession of professional playwright. This was their last summer together as babysitter and kid. Could the babysitter maybe teach at this creative mecca for kids where the kid just spent his day? Apparently not, you needed to be a published author or produced playwright for them to even consider you, and the babysitter—while having spent chunks of his twenties at residencies and fellowships and hosting professional readings of his work—had not reached the milestone of production. So it remained just a distant dream, of finding something meaningful and fun to do that also paid enough money to actually live in this city. And of figuring out what he was going to do when the kid got too old to spend afternoons with him.
I could also tell you that that dream didn’t stay dormant for long. A series of events led the babysitter to a production only months later, his very first, which he starred in, a play he had begun to write in the kitchen of the kid’s family’s apartment while the kid was in the other room one afternoon playing with a friend, and so when June came, and his parents held a goodbye cookie party for the babysitter, as the kid and the babysitter’s relationship was shifting permanently, they’d go watch the new Star Wars movie together over the holiday but they were no longer a daily duo, at that point, the babysitter found himself not a babysitter anymore. He found himself a produced playwright in need of some financial stability.
I could tell you that he applied for the job and became a part time creative writing instructor. And he loved it. He loved the kids. He loved their writing. He loved their voices and how they deepened and expanded in writing workshop. He loved working with all the ages, kid and teens alike, and witnessing growth and development. And a year in, he asked if they could hire him full time, even though there wasn’t really anything he could do that would be practically helpful for an organization. Spreadsheets freaked him out, and he didn’t have any tech skills. He was all heart. But still, they hired him full time and he grew and he learned over the years and he found immense amount of meaning and joy and yes, at times, he also struggled, to find balance with his writing, to conserve energy, with a feeling that he wasn’t being his full authentic self 40 hours out of the week, and, once the pandemic hit, struggling to adapt to teaching and meeting online, a place where it’s hard to know if any real learning and connection is happening because there’s no physical room where it happens.
But despite those struggles–small in the scheme of everything, non-existent if you’re reading the news—he remains inspired six years in, inspired by the work, by his colleagues, and most of all, at the center of it, the kids, of course the kids. As the world becomes more challenging to make sense of, he feels meaning in the work of helping kids tell their stories, and helping kids find some sort of peace, and he too would find those things in them. As one of the first kids he taught when he started working there would tell him on a recent Friday afternoon, after she had—in astonishment to the babysitter/playwright-turned-playwright/educator–grown into a teen over the many years they worked together, and had begun interning in workshops with little kids, “I think kids are the best people…no offense.” And he would turn and say, “none taken. I agree.”
There it is. The story. I’ve told it. Struggle over.
But I’m still struggling. Something keeps nagging at me about this story, maybe it’s the plot holes. There are people who shaped the playwright/educator in such a way that when the kid started talking about what he did that day at day camp, the playwright/educator’s ears perked up. The story feels incomplete without them. Who and what made it so that when he stumbled upon Writopia, he felt like it fit just so?
Was it his dad, an actor, who took him to the theater nights growing up, where he hung out backstage, actors in their period costumes coming and going, sometimes helping him with French homework, one time consoling him when he puked backstage because of a stomach bug, some nights sneaking into the back of the house to watch his favorite scene, others viewing it all from a different angle backstage, set pieces and stagehands flying around him, a journey into the inside of a physical story every Wednesday night while mom was at night school? His dad, who stayed up late with him while they read Lord of the Rings together in elementary school, no not read, devoured, forgetting time altogether as they acted out parts and made discoveries? Who stayed up even later nights to coach him on monologues for performing arts school, talk through papers in high school till 4 am the night before they were due? Nights with dad were a potent mixture of storytelling and nurture that the playwright/educator would bring with him years later when he’d conference with kids and teens one-on-one at Writopia about their own stories. Was it because of those nights with his dad that he knew how to help a young writer flesh out a character in her story or pair down the latest 1,000-word draft of his college essay, all while enforcing for them how valuable their natural impulses on the page actually were, all while gently redirecting others impulses and nurturing those that had room to grow, while inviting them on a journey to the heart of their piece, while always listening what it is they had to say?
Or was it his mom? Who would take him each September to help set up her classroom and each June to help her take it down, over the twenty years or so when she worked at a public school on the Upper West Side, first as a reading teacher and later as assistant principal, a place where, just like he was physically inside of a story when he went to theater with his dad, he was physically inside a hub of learning. His mom, who would vocalize her frustration over standardized testing, share missives and soundbites about her teaching principles that championed following the student through their journey of learning, letting kids take the lead, while still, as educators, providing structure and oversight.
Who would tell him, when he asked her years later why she left acting for teaching, that she was never very good at advocating for herself, something you have to do as an actor in a tenacious business, but felt like she could advocate really well for kids, and so that, when he was out there in the world, in his twenties, trying to get seen by a certain casting director or court an actor with a bit of a name for a play reading of his, when he was trying to tell his own stories, me me me, he would look up at this photo of her that hung in the living room of the apartment where he grew up, his dad’s favorite photo of her, and it would slowly embolden this notion within him that maybe there were people to champion beyond simply one’s self, the photo of her on tour as an actor in the eighties in the Soviet Union playing Peter Pan–the musical version, the famous one–standing across from a little boy who’s just come to see the show, who’s meeting Peter for the first time, and she’s facing him and pointing directly in that boy’s direction, emphatically, ecstatically, you you you.
Or was it a series of teachers and mentors? His third grade teacher, a former Alvin Ailey dancer who–between typical third grade curricular fair like building Mayan temples and times tables–took his class to the fifth floor dance studio each day and taught them complex dance routines to Whitney Houston’s I’m Every Woman, thirty or so small awkward, impressionable bodies who had ownership over nothing in their lives except, in those moments, the dance floor? Who taught him that learning wasn’t simple cognition, it was physical and full-bodied? Or the seventh grade teacher whose only homework were “reader’s letters,” weekly communications about what he was reading, obsessing over words, making conclusions, triggering associations, picking up books with greater frequency than ever before with the excitement to share new insights about them? Or maybe his AP Lit teacher junior year, injecting some brightness into the playwright/educator-then-moody-highschooler’s otherwise unimaginative academic classes, by assigning the class to read To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf? Or his voice professor in acting conservatory who sat him down one day to tell him that she, after years working with him on his physical instrument, believed that when he acted, the way he carried his voice, he was subconsciously trying to impersonate the way his dad sounded to him when he was growing up, an epiphany that led him to find more truth on stage?
Was it the series of adults at the 52nd Street Project, the arts and education non-profit that was his Writopia growing up, who helped him write his first play performed by professional actors when he was ten, a zany whodunit about a detective on the hunt for Cupid’s murder, or a performance of a new musical when he was thirteen, an original one-person show on his sixteenth birthday about non-conformity and pot smoking, which they’d uninvite parents to in response to his play’s not-so-parent-friendly material so that the teens could be uncensored in their work, who took him to London and France with their production of As You Like It duringthe summer between junior and senior year, the summer of his life. The series of adults and full time staff at the project who were all actors and directors and playwrights themselves and who showed him that working in a third space with kids was actually a job that people do?
Or was it his adult playwriting teacher, who he studies with still, thirteen years after their first session together, who uses writing exercises that involve markers and drawing and postcards and cut outs and images to activate her adult students, much the way Writopia uses games to unlock kids, who champions a warmth in feedback that focuses on what the writers brings naturally to the page, who conferences one-on-one with her students in a way that challenges and comforts them. When the playwright/educator enters Writopia on day one, he gets it because it’s basically her playwriting workshops, but for kids. He gets to teach kids to write the same way he learned as an adult.
There is no finding Writopia for me without those people; the story feels fuller with them in it. But it’s still incomplete. Lena’s going to kill me–she’s waited patiently as I’ve struggled and steeled myself against perfectionism in order to make progress on this essay–but I’m not done quite yet.
The playwright/educator walked into the lab the other day and could feel the emptiness. He’s felt it for some time now. Writopia is a teenager, and the pandemic has been unkind to teens. For many, we see a growing mental health crisis in youth. For the teen Writopia, what’s been hit is enrollment. He remembers when he picked up the kid from day camp here, how many summers ago was that? Seven? Eight? The kid had come bursting out of the door with a whole ton of other kids at pick up, charged smiles, like a bunch of jacks in one box. He sees echoes of summers and afterschool of years past, laughter, expression, creativity, children all blooming there, instantaneously, as if they just grew out of the crevices and corners and walls. Where had they gone? Writopia has worked hard to come back after the pandemic. New partnerships have formed. Many kids have returned and a lot of new young learners are coming to us for the first time. Come to our Manhattan location on a Monday afternoon and it will feel almost like an early childhood learning center, we are home to so many seven and eight year old writers that day. But the playwright/educator still longs for the time when you could walk through the halls and there wasn’t a single empty workshop room at any point afterschool any day of the week. When we were absolutely overflowing with young learners all the time. We’re told we’re not alone. And in many cases, we’re faring better than a lot of spaces like our own. Afterschool and youth programs throughout the country are struggling, third spaces are often empty. The playwright/educator sees it happening in theater too, as off-broadway theaters and development institutions that were once staples shutter. We are in a new world where meeting, gathering, and communing is viewed by so many as a risk that’s not worth taking. Who is the playwright/educator without the live moment? Does he lose the “playwright” in his identity? The “educator?” All that’s left this is a “/.” He’ll be forty in one year, was almost thirty when he stumbled on Writopia, maybe in the face of this new world, it’s time to take another look at who he is and what he does. How does one survive a changing tide?
And then the salt of the Pacific Ocean hits his face. He’s here in California for the first teen retreat Writopia has held on the West Coast, a weekend of writing workshops and poetry hikes and conversation against a gorgeous backdrop of dazzling waves and elephant seals and sunsets, a weekend of wearing a jean jacket in January while there’s a polar vortex happening back home and feeling like he’s beat the system, the launch of a new in-person program in the midst of an organizational struggle, an act of hope. Twenty teens show up, and they write and they talk about writing and they bond and they love the hot chocolate and they laugh and they play the writing games that the playwright/educator and the rest of the staff run for them. One night, they begin a big round of the Writopia murder mystery game. It’s like the popular game mafia if you added a short story component and in all honesty, the playwright/educator wishes instructors were more judicious in the playing, it feels overplayed, after all we’ve developed so many games, why do instructors feel the need to keep leading that one, but still the kids love it, and what writer/educator could deny them that joy? The kids sit in the lodge by an indoor fire and design a fictional setting where their fictional characters will meet and one of them will get–you guessed it–murdered. Twenty participants mingle there as original gangsters (many with pretty solid new yawk accents) before spilling out into the outdoor bonfire. Around the fire, they give impassioned monologues, play off each other brilliantly, awash in inside jokes that they’ve just created, they commit, they’re very down for the bit, it’s this inimitable moment, and the ever-present campfire smoke gives an extra layer of magic to it. At one point Lena–who’s also there–turns to the playwright/educator and says, “we’re in the middle of a piece of performance art.”
Many of these teens have been through depression, anxiety, loss of a parent, some have turned to self harm in the past, or have struggled through eating disorders. The world has given kids and teens a raw deal as they’ve gone through major stages of development in quarantine, as impossible body image standards and rigidity-of-thought spread through their social media feeds, inaction around a hamster wheel of school shooting, politicians that only really pay attention to education when they ban books or start “wars” over reading. It’s heartbreaking the way the world treats kids and teens. But that night around the fire on the west coast, they are there and present and if we keep doing that, showing up for them, building the conditions, the spaces, designing games, being present in conversation about their writing and whatever else they need to talk about, and if there is a patchwork of spaces like ours, third spaces, who can also stay afloat in this tenuous moment, and bring their ethos with them to any physical space, if there’s this much real presence with kids, then the hope is kids and teens will be okay, no more than okay, they will thrive and they will grow up and they will leave the earth–as the adage goes–even better than they found it, and that potential future for them is worth all the struggle there is.
That night, as the murderer is revealed to be a sweet 12-year-old girl whose character runs a Sephora ponzi scheme, and the fire is dwindling, and we all slowly walk back into the lodge, an overcast of the brightest stars above, in that very moment, there’s such great ease and nobody struggles.
Deadline: March 1 for writers in middle school or high school
Submit a story, essay, or poem on any aspect of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s work. Winners will be published in The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society Newsletter.
Write an essay about whether or not you would want AI involved in evaluating your genetic testing results. Winners will receive genetic materials grants of up to $1,000!
Write a story inspired by the prompt (will be released in March) for the chance to win a cash prize and get published. Sign up for email updates to receive more information!
Written by Elsa and Matthew, Camp Co-Directors Additional 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 creative writing workshops and specialty writing and art electives like songwriting, RPGs, filmmaking, and graphic noveling/visual arts.
This year’s retreat was especially memorable: the first day was an unexpected one! We arrived at Camp Mariah while it began to snow, creating a white, icy landscape for the weekend. As we got to know each other on the first day, connecting with our new bunkmates and reacquainting old friends, we formed a cool, vibrant, kind, and incredibly creative writers’ community. Writers dived right into workshops on the first night to set goals and began projects in electives. As the weekend continued, we wrote for three hours each morning in workshops, divided into groups for electives in the afternoons, and then collaborated during our evening activities — including our super fun mystery game improv night — and, finally, everyone showcased their work on the last night. This year’s showcase included a final “trial” for an RPG game, a visual art gallery, two short films, three songs, a play, and a reading of the stories and poetry writers wrote during workshop. Videos of their work can be found below. Congrats to all the writers who joined us for such a cozy and productive weekend! You all completed SO much incredible work in just a few days and we had a blast with you!
And we have some specific shoutouts below!
Will: Shout out to Jazmine for writing, directing, starring in, and editing a 6-minute short film in only two days! And to Idan, Jackson, and Daschel for writing a rap about camp and creating a music video—featuring yours truly.
Peter: Congratulations to the new geniuses of Nilbog, who overcame their sordid roots and found a home in a new world in one of our D&D games over the weekend. To the members of the other D&D group, we found redemption and, most importantly, freedom on the high seas. The Doppler sails on under a new captain now. Thank you so much to Thaddeus, who taught a group of us how to play Blood on the Clocktower!
Elsa: Shout out to everyone who joined us in the art room! It was such a beautiful and sweet space because everyone was so kind and supportive. Also, shoutout to ALL of our retreaters for having such impressive improv skills during our mystery game evening activity!
Malcolm: I would like to give a special congratulations to my songwriters for writing, practicing, and performing their songs all within two days! The vibes in songwriting were immaculate; the support and camaraderie of the space would not have been possible without the people there. I could not have asked for a better workshop, y’all showed bold creativity and passion in your work.
Jem: Shout out to my wonderful workshop–Maya, Mirabelle, Leila, Gabby, Jackson, Idan, and Dr. Teach! Your stories filled me with awe and wonder, and I will treasure the poems y’all wrote on the last day. Remember: y’all “The greatest adventure in life is sometimes just living it!”
Matthew: Congratulations to my workshop, a group of writers whose talent is matched by your curiosity. For many of you, this will have been your last winter retreat. Experiencing your writing, and getting to talk deeply about craft with you, helped me find focus and purpose each morning. You are bright voices in the world, and I have faith that you will only get brighter. Please keep in touch!
Rita: To my awesome workshop—it was such a joy getting to know you as people and as writers, and I’ll always remember your wonderful and wacky collaborative story about the elf who lives in a bunker and thinks humans are a conspiracy. Even when it was cold outside, you always kept the energy warm.
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 lovely to be recognized of course, but more important is claiming our seats as writers in the spirit of community rather than competition. I’m here with my esteemed colleague Peter Quinn-Jacobs, who wears many hats including heading up our Writopia Scholastic team. As our representative affiliate for the awards, he is in charge of overseeing multiple areas including adjudication for the DC Metro Area, and ceremonies in DC and NYC’s Northern suburbs, the H2H region. He is also integral to the inner workings of Writopia as a whole! But back to Scholastic — Peter, we have some celebrations coming up, don’t we?
PETER: Why yes Lena, we do indeed! We’ll be celebrating teen writing in my hometown of Washington DC on Sunday, March 9th, and then I’ll be traveling to Westchester for the ceremony in your neck of the woods. I’m excited! It’s a wonderful opportunity to come together as a community.
LENA: We encourage our teen Writopians to practice submitting their writing, and Scholastic is a great way to do that. It’s an opportunity to put ourselves out there! After all, we apply to all sorts of things as we grow — summer programs, colleges, jobs — so tell me Peter, what was Writopia representation like this year at the Scholastic Awards?
PETER: I am super proud of all of our Writopians who submitted this year. Over sixty of our writers earned recognition, many of them winning multiple awards! Some received honorable mentions, some received silver keys, and more than twenty received Gold Keys— including four senior portfolios!
LENA: Yes! Seniors Sophia Alvarez, Arava Chaiken, Sydney Davis, and Tara Prakash all received Gold Keys for their Portfolios! And what about American Voice Nominations?
PETER: Oh right! American Voice Nominations are extremely competitive, with only five works being chosen from each region being chosen among thousands of submissions. This year, two Writopians have the honor of their work receiving a nomination. Tara Prakash from DC and Mia Bornstein from the H2H region each had a piece selected.
LENA: I know both of them worked so hard on those pieces. Being nominated is huge by itself! We’re so thrilled for all our writers who completed pieces, revised, and put themselves out there this year in various writing recognition programs. Onward and upward!
Writopians Represent! (If you received an award and you are not listed here, please let us know!)
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 other, their friends, and their families. The chatbox and Zoom room were filled with supportive comments, excited reactions, and pleas to keep reading.
Congratulations to the 15 contributors who read and shared their pieces at this event!
Nefeli Antonogiannakis
Ethan Boies
Levon Broderick
Zachary Cho
Liam Chung
Riya Doshi
Olivia Jones
Naomi Katz-Moss
Ella Kinsbruner
Henry Lomma
Teal Meyers
Eva Riegel
Peyton Schleef
Makela Shen
Devin Wong
William Zhang
The celebratory reading marks the end of the 2024 Halloween Story contest season. But how did we get here? Well, this past October, we launched a call to submissions for stories, poems and comics inspired by Halloween-themed prompts. We were met with so much excitement, joy and creativity from the community and received over 180 submissions. All 180 submissions were read and adjudicated by a team of ten published writers, authors, and playwrights.
The adjudication process led to a stunning collection of 72 selected stories that were edited, then produced into a beautifully designed anthology. Each and every story in the anthology is thought provoking, hair-raising, and spooktacular in its own way.
Congratulations to all the selected published contributors, and the winners of the Halloween story contest (in bold).
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 and dedication to critical thinking were already evident in their essay submissions, and they went above and beyond to be part of one of our favorite annual events.
When we opened our call for submissions in December, we asked writers to submit essays that take risks, either in content, format, or both. Young writers really took to the challenge and submitted surprising, interesting, empathetic, compassionate, philosophical, and risky essays, leading to discussions at our conference about culture, gender, love, philosophy, and how to protect humanity and the world we inhabit. We curated their essays into panels that tied their essays together and, after they presented the abstracts and excerpts, asked each essayist questions that led us into a discussion about their topics. Essayists also answered questions presented to their whole panel about their connected theme.
Writers spoke eloquently, with grace and respect for their fellow writers. They impressed us with how they rose up to the challenge of answering questions extemporaneously in front of a crowd of their peers, family, and friends. We opened up questions to the audience, which continued panel discussions further and allowed the essayists to share their knowledge and experience in the topics they researched, or even—in the case of many of the personal essays—lived.
Thank you to all the participants for such interesting, emotional, and timely discussions that we will be taking with us. For a glimpse at the panels and essays, take a look at the list of topics we covered below!
DC Panels and Panelists
Personal Identity and Pop Culture
This panel will explore how film, literature, and fashion can help us better understand ourselves both as individuals and as part of a larger culture.
“The Snap-Back: Spy Kids and Self Improvement” by Ruth Pournelle
“To Be a Lolita” by Darcy Hoffpauir
“On Waiting” by Zoe Becker
“Burden” by Camille Crawford Galvani
Protecting Our Planet, Our People, and Our Past
These panelists look across oceans, into the atmosphere, and into deep cuts of history to explore how we can create a more informed, inclusive world and preserve knowledge thoughtfully and ethically.
“Things we think are sustainable… that actually aren’t” by Viraaj Raofield
“British Museum: Are They Thieves?” by Nala Delgado
“Angel from Bethesda” by Eleanor Woodworth
“Alchemy and Elemental Philosophy: The Scientific Origins of the Fantastical” by Fenley Scurlock
“Risking Peace: A Case Study of U.S.- Iran Relations” by Christopher Park
Faith, Doubt, and Education
Growing up in a community with a strong religious or cultural identity, what happens when you start to question what you’ve been taught? These panelists each present an empathetic and nuanced account of defining their own beliefs.
“I Have Never Been to Israel” by Zoe Becker
“Religion” by Gabriela Quesenberry
Representation and Misrepresentation
These panelists tackle issues of racism, sexism, and ableism in medical systems, the media, and microaggressions.
“Terms and Conditions May Apply” by Anya Nehra
“AFRICA, MY FAVORITE COUNTRY: The problem with menacing misrepresentation” by Amanda-Pearl OmoiguiGrenham
“Bridging the Gap: an Exploration of the Hidden Factors Behind Minority Health Inequalities” by Abeni Smith
“Redefining Worth: A Journey Through Neurodivergence” by Kai Grenha
NYC Panels and Panelists
Panel 1
The Impact of Culture On Individual Identity
How does culture affect and inform our identity? The following essays explore how relationships, food, language and physical spaces play a role in shaping our understanding of our values and character. During this panel, we’ll discuss questions and have conversations around concepts of identity, belonging and upbringing.
“The Weight of Translation” by Ziyi Feng
“Exactly Like Your Mother” by Liah Igel
“An Elaborate Home Cooked Meal” by Juliette Moore
“My Culture” by Dylan Macer
“The Effect of Music on the Mind” by Hayden Chung
Panel 2
What is Gender? An Exploration of Gender Expectations and Language
These essays about feminism, hypermasculinity, and what “gender” means discuss how gender is integrated into our society. Everyone benefits from conversations about gender. Gender norms and expectations permeate our politics, culture, and everyday lives, sometimes in the least expected ways.
“Defining a Word the Doesn’t Exist” by Tamsin Coulthard
“The Definition of Feminism” by Araceli Flores
“Great Expectations: Gen Z and Hypermasculinity” by Jonathan Zhang
“Deconstructing Gender” by Ronin Herrmann
“Shakespeare’s Facade” by Dylan Oh
“What One Conversation in PE Revealed” by Daniela Avrekh
“Sexual Violence Laws: Culture and Rationalizing Sexual Violence” by Edward Lee
Panel 3
Protecting Our Planet, Our People, and Our Past
Learning from past triumphs and mistakes, this panel will examine specific cultural and global moments and discuss best practices to benefit humanity and the world we inhabit.
“The Media’s Oversimplification of Culture is a Threat to Everyone’s History” by Alice Campbell
“Incense and Insights: Delving Into Maya Culture Through Archaeology” by Olivia Campbell
“Mutterings with Montesquieu” by Jack Aronian
“Two Sides of the Same Coin: Wildfire vs Forest Fire” by William Zhang
“Climate Change Effect Challenges” by Ayun Roh
Panel 4
Love, Family, and Community: How to Navigate Your Relationship with Yourself and Others
These personal essays take a deep look at love and relationships. They explore loss, grief, working as a team, family dynamics, and how to love both those around you and yourself. During this panel we will discuss the ever-burning question “what is love?” and have a conversation about the ways we can use community, communication, and teamwork to help and heal each other.
“The Equinox of Love” by Eleni Piniros
“The Flavor of Loss” by Surya Das
“Unspoken Rules: The Silence that Speaks Volumes” by Nathan Lionetti
“A Voice Stolen and Taken Back” by Eliana Genitrini
“Adolescence: Searching Past Murky Waters and Masked Faces” by Stella Burns
Panel 5
Philosophy, Art and Media: How Creating and Consuming Contributes to Self-Reflection and Growth
Resistance, hope, power, perception: each of these essays use personal stories, stories from art, literature, and media, to analyze our existential experiences. How do we exist in a world where we are so similar, and sometimes so different, from each other? What do we need to remember, thrive for, and practice, to live a peaceful and meaningful life among 8 billion other unique minds?
“The Defiant Weight Against Existence” by Aiden Ashcraft
“Who Gets to Be Seen: Power and Perception in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man” by Olivia Meyer
“My Personal Essay” by Aidan Inwood
“Thing That Disappear” by Serena Lin
“Why the Curtains are Never Just Blue” by Beatrix Gruver
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 guest Epistle forever so I am very appreciative of Lena just giving me free reign, haha.
Zoe Becker
One concept I wanted to focus on that’s been on my mind a lot lately is imagination. I’ve been thinking about it in two main contexts.
First, in the context of writing. Its application here is self explanatory–we need our imaginations to write (no matter whether you’re writing fiction, non-fiction, or a hybrid). While that sounds pretty obvious, it’s been something I’ve had to make an intentional effort to remind myself of, lately. As Junior year relentlessly goes on, it’s really easy to fall into a bit of a doom spiral about school, college, life, and so on and so forth. For me, that spiral has targeted writing specifically. I dread opening my laptop and spend outsized amounts of time just focused on tailoring my work to a specific contest or summer program. It is exhausting and demoralizing. And while there’s certainly a time and place for chasing prestige, a recent conversation with my mom reminded me why I started writing as a little kid in the first place. I did not start writing to win contests or arbitrarily earn a spot on a college campus the summer after Junior year. I started writing because I love it. I love the freedom to come up with any story in the world and then make it come alive. I love being allowed to just imagine. So, if you too are in the Junior year (or Freshman, Sophomore, or Senior, for that matter) rut, my first piece of advice would just be to return to imagination.
Imagination as a concept, though, is much more broadly applicable. Like I mentioned, it’s a weird time to be in DC right now. And I’m not going to beat around the bush here. I will say with my full chest that what is happening in the West Wing is terrifying. Just today, the White House threatened the fate of the Kennedy Center which I have treasured for years (and which has had an indelible impact on my artistic upbringing). Doom is not the answer though. I’m not saying this to be cheesy. I’m saying this from a pragmatist’s point of view, actually. There’s some fascinating research about how overexposure to so-called “disaster news” can literally wear down our adrenal glands and fray our nervous system such that we become increasingly depressed and apathetic. The most immediate solution though, the one that we really all have access to, is political and social imagination. Political and social imagination are academic terms that describe exactly what they sound like: the ability to understand our reality and conceive of new ones. If we can focus our energy on imagining a better future rather than a catastrophic one, that is progress.
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 main purpose is to create an Anthology based around a certain theme touching on social justice. They are tasked with doing everything from promotion to reading and discussing submissions, to laying out the book. This year is being led by sophomore Sonali Browning and senior Emi Shapiro (Dartmouth ‘29) with twelve other Creative Portfolians — Sophia Alvarez, Emily Appleyard, Nola Brooks (UChicago, ‘29), Nell Choi, Rory Frasch (Bryn Mawr, ‘29), Thuy Holder-Vinh, Bee Kanofsky, Annika Lamberti, Serine Lee, Mai McKelvey-Pham, Berrit Nordlander-Borowski, Lili Sella, Margalo Teich—who contribute to our meetings every Tuesday night.
Turning the Page leaders are creating buzz for their upcoming annual Anthology called SPECTRA. They are looking for submissions (fiction, poetry, personal essay, art, photography, etc.) that have something to do with opposite ends of the spectrum and the dialectics around meeting in the middle. They are accepting submissions for SPECTRA through March 31st, 2025.
Sonali hosted Saturday’s event, and in attendance were Annika Lamberti, Robbie Kruger, Bee Kanofsky, Nola Brooks, Margaret Torrey, Emily Appleyard, Naomi Jeske, and Emi Shapiro. Sonali encouraged everyone to create a Moodboard (on shared Google Slides) to explore this idea of spectrum. Here are just a few of the plethora of spectrum guidelines that TtP came up with beforehand.
Nostalgia (from past to present)
Belief (from atheism to profound faith)
Trust (from distrust to trust)
Time (from past to future)
Bias (from uninvolved to influenced)
Visibility (from invisible to visible)
Normality (from normal to unusual)
Loneliness (from accompanied to alone)
Comfort (from comfort to discomfort)
Perspective (from narrow to open-minded)
Freedom (from free to confined)
Color (from monochrome to spectrum)
After sharing the moodboards, and deepening our discussion of ways to look at things from the perspective of a spectrum, Emi created a super fun game of Kahoot for the group, with all writerly/ Writopia questions. A wonderful time was had by all.
Written by Shanille Martin, Head of Writopia Lab’s Debate Program
Writopia alongside our partner’s Debate Spaces hosted another one of our international debate tournaments on Saturday, February 1st, 2025. Rounds began at 8 AM Eastern Time. Debaters argued topics like whether voting should be mandatory, the sale of unhealthy foods to minors, public service, and freedom of speech. Writopia aims to combine our methodology of bringing joy and fun to the arts with the competitiveness of debate. Our debaters learn to have fun with the form but to challenge themselves and push past their fears.
What makes this an international tournament? Our tournaments feature teams from all over the world! Our debaters compete against debaters from cities and countries like Prague, Athens, Nairobi, Manila, India, and more.
Writopia had many first-time debaters participate in this tournament, including Grace Browning, Yasmina Zaidi, Veer Belani, and Sanah Sabharwal, who all currently attend novice debate workshops at Writopia. Sanah received one of the highest scores of all the new debaters, a super impressive feat!
Writopia debater Nirali Ydendra was among the top speakers with one of the highest scores in the tournament. Nirali was joined by her teammates Nathalie Rostek-Weretka and Ethan Atallah.
One of our teams, Writopia Nation, placed in the top teams with only one loss out of 3 rounds. Their team consisted of Jonathan Zhang, Sanah Sabharwal, Veer Belani, and Ayana Alamgir.
Seasoned debaters Iman Abdhur Rahman and Hudson Antoniewicz gave strong speeches in their rounds and have been appointed top speakers in other tournaments.
We are so proud of all our debaters! We hope this experience will help them learn their strengths as speakers and leaders.
Stay tuned for our next tournament on March 15th, 2025!
