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!
On Tuesday, November 26th, 2024, we sent our community of young writers, parents, guardians, supporters, and educators a set of prompts and received dozens of lines of poetry in response. From all of that magic, we curated this holiday poem… by you and for you. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
“This Thanksgiving, I Am Not Alone” By You
I am a flowering cactus, a human being, with my feet rooted in the Earth, my eyes facing the sky and my arms wrapped around my beautiful family– blood and chosen. I am a proud and happy father and grandfather, a speck of dust at the center of my world
I am happy, loved, proud of who I am and have managed to both become and remain through trying times And for soft tissues while I have a cold And for everyone who pushed me to keep going For my mother’s wrinkled hands catching me… still… although my hair is grey
I am thankful, thankful for a kid who loves to write as much as I do. Thankful for having a good home, for my family and friends Thankful for living in this country, in this city, in this community. For my tribe.
I love the morning’s scent of mist And so I will keep believing in the possibility And will laugh out loud and dance with abandon in the forest And I will never stop writing
I believe love flows through space and time bathing us in inextinguishable light and changing us forever. I believe that everyone has something good about them, that the world is a wonderful place, we just need to be a good community member I believe we are all born with dignity That everyone should be loved
I remember the sacrifices made by my family to get me here I remember what our babies looked like when they first came home I remember when I wasn’t able to be independent. (And I am thankful for my parents who always care about me.) I remember family gatherings with a “kids table” I love laughter at the table. I believe in laughter. And the taste of sweet potatoes, the smell of lavender and eucalyptus, the touch of my husband’s hand
I hope for a world of peace and understanding that we all are different and those differences are what make for an interesting world That we all drink a healing juice I believe everyone has the strength to make a difference I hope for good change, and my ability to create it I remember being scared Because I love the spare ochre horizons of the American southwest And I love the beach And am still figuring it all out.
I love your hand in mine, your mirth bubbling up in my consciousness I am thankful for the ability to learn through a time when education is more vital than ever I remember when my father used to remember my name I believe in us… and will strive to keep an open heart along with an open mind I will be kind
I remember the smell of my grandmother’s perfume as she held me tight when I was a little girl I know that better times are coming, not in some hoped-for world to come, but here, right here on this green earth. I will do what I can to help make this world better than it was when I entered it.
I am spiced, baked, crispy, roasted, fluffed, mashed, sliced, deliciously awaiting I am a tennis-loving dancer, I am a wind light in the words of the garden I am stronger than I ever feel like I am I will always be happy
I love my community, my family, my friends And the feeling of light from commiserating in a shared darkness I will celebrate Christmas with my friends this year I love watching my children and grandchildren learn, grow, and expand their horizons I will strive to be even more grateful
I remember my first Broadway show – Aladdin! I hope for snow this Christmas, and for a nice break I hope I will grow this year And that I will be successful.
I love drawing, painting, reading, and writing, And pie, And sleep I hope everyone takes care of their well-being I believe in goodness, despite evidence to the contrary, I believe in innate goodness of all humanity. Love comes naturally I love my neighbors. All 8 billion. You should too! You have to be taught how to hate We all need to lead by example
I hope I can continue to express myself freely. I believe that everyone can obtain their goals if they want to I hope love will always be stronger than fear, that the world will be more welcoming, inclusive and nurturing for our future generations I believe we should break more bread together And I hope there is a purpose and a meaning I cannot see now
I know it will be a good wrap-up to the year! I will be nice I will continue to stand tall against oppression I will remain optimistic, when it becomes difficult I know who I am or who I would like to be
Mostly, I am thankful for the night To breathe against the midnight moon Because I am thankful for being alive in a web of writers and for drifting to sleep at each day’s end
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 rigorous platforms, publications, and publishing houses.
We are thrilled to share some of their exciting news below. (Below, “medals” are national awards, “keys” are regional awards.)
Writopia Writers News
Awards & Publications
Adiyah Parham—We are thrilled to share and congratulate Adiyah Parham for winning the most prestigious writing award for teens in the nation, The Scholastic Awards’ Gold Medal for her Writing Portfolio. Of the thousands of writing portfolios submitted from across the country, only seven seniors win this prestigious $12,500 scholarship award. Adiyah has taken part in Writopia’s selective Creative Portfolio program for three years, and won a production in Writopia’s 2022 Worldwide Plays festival in New York City! Adiyah, we are so proud of your dedication to your craft and for the talent you have elevated with grace, wisdom, and passion.
Tara Prakash—became Maryland’s First State Youth Poet Laureate and won eight Scholastic gold keys, seven silver keys, and eleven honorable mentions for poetry, personal essay, critical essay, flash fiction, and short story. Other awards she received: 2024 Montgomery County Youth Poet Laureate; National YoungArts Awards in Creative Nonfiction; Leonard L. Milberg ’53 High School Poetry Prize; DePaul’s Blue Book Best American High School Writing. She was also published in Blue Marble Review. Congratulations on all!
Dina Lusztig Noyes—who has been selected to participate in Writopia’s Advanced Writing Seminar (AWS) at the New School and this summer at Pratt became Santa Cruz’s First Youth Poet Laureate! We are so proud of your dedication, passion, community engagement, and talent!
Maria Rojas—was awarded a Gold and Silver Key from the Scholastic Awards and selected as a student speaker to present at the Gold Key Award Ceremony in New York City. She was also published in The Literary Kaleidoscope, her school’s literary magazine, and served as the co-creative designer and editor of her school’s literary publication. Congratulations on an amazing year!
Maria Rojas speaking at the Scholastic Awards Ceremony.
“Every Monday night, Maria comes with a smile from her workshop. She has built a fantastic community at Writopia Lab and made friends with her classmates and instructor. She has had the chance to submit her writing to multiple places, learning the lesson of what rejection feels like as well as acceptance. She won a Gold and Silver key at the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and she thanks her instructor Amy because she supported her with the submission process. Amy also supported her as she wrote and memorized a speech to give at the ceremony. Maria now wishes to minor in poetry in her college career. So, thank you all for allowing so many teens to have the chance to create their fondness for writing. Maria would never have known this side of herself without the support of Writopia Lab!” – Vilma, Maria’s mom
Cora Anderson’s piece “First Snow of the Year” was published in The New York Times as a winner of the Teen Tiny Memoirs Contest. Her piece “California” was published in Rust & Moth.
Emi Shapiro was a finalist for The New York Times’ Teen Tiny Memoirs Contest.
Sonali Browning was featured as a rising poet in the online newspaper The Mamaroneck Observer; two silver keys and one honorable mention in poetry; and also won first place in the Lifting Up Westchester Essay Contest and received $500. Sonali also had a poem featured in the Floodwaters Documentary created by Westchester’s poet laureate BK Fischer, and three poems accepted for publication in Creative Communications, and her poems and stories were selected for publication in two Writopia publications: Turning the Page anthology and Frightopia.
Shreya Ganguly won a Scholastic Gold Key for her senior writing portfolio. Her poem “We Sit Close” was published in Parallax, and other works have been published in Interlochen Review and is forthcoming in GSU’s Anthology of Outstanding High School Writing, Fledge and Writopia’s social justice anthology Turning the Page, We, the Treasured.
(From left to right) Sonali Browning, Aravah Chaiken, James Plummer, and Shreya Ganguly on the train to DC for the Creative Portfolio Retreat!
Ava Barcelona won a Scholastic Gold Medal for “ISANG BANSA, DALAWANG DIWA (ONE NATION, TWO SPIRITS).”
Nicola Bailey won a Scholastic Silver Medal for “Boxes.”
James Blenko won a Scholastic Gold Medal for “The Foreigner.”
Wyatt Foster won a Scholastic Gold Medal in Critical Essay for his nuclear semiotics project.
Gabe Horowitz won a Scholastic Silver Medal for “Porcine Psychopathy: Peppa Pig’s Mosaic of Evil.”
Yoonsuh Kim won a Scholastic Gold Medal for “Pigeon Clouds” and a Silver Medal for “Letters to my Mother.”
Olivia Romano won a Scholastic Gold Medal for “Capirotada Recipe” and a Silver Medal for “Car Radio.”
Twyla Shand won a Scholastic Silver Medal for “Empty-Handed.”
Ruby Sinder won a Scholastic Silver Medal for “Always”; two Scholastic gold keys, one silver key, and two honorable mentions for her poetry; and was published in Millennium High School’s lit mag.
Annabel Zhou won a Scholastic Gold Medal for “Miracles.”
Hollyn Alpert’s poem “Gold to Gray,” won the Society of Young Inklings book contest and will be published in an anthology; and won a gold key in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.
Carmen Ashworth won a Scholastic silver key for her science fiction and fantasy piece.
Zoe Becker won a Scholastic gold key for her personal essay and two honorable mentions for her short story and flash fiction piece.
Claire Breslow won a Scholastic silver key in short story and three honorable mentions in poetry, flash fiction, and novel writing.
Olivia Brown’s poetry was recognized in a school poetry contest.
Isabella Cai won a Scholastic silver key in poetry and personal essay, as well as an honorable mention for humor.
Dakota Cameron won three Scholastic honorable mentions for flash fiction, short story, and personal essay and memoir.
Aravah Chaiken won a Scholastic gold key for critical essay, two silver keys for short story, and one honorable mention for science fiction and fantasy.
Alexis Chase: The prologue to a novella in progress was published in Alexis’ school’s literary magazine, the Eidolon, and in the newsletter of the Washington Writers’ Publishing House.
Nell Choi won a Scholastic gold key for personal essay and an honorable mention for flash fiction. Nell is a published author, an artist, and an activist. Check her out here.
Blake Feinstein won a Scholastic silver key in humor and an honorable mention in personal essay and memoir.
Michaela Frey won three honorable mentions from the Scholastic Awards for Poetry; and had four of her poems and stories accepted and published in Teen Ink.
Devra Goldhaber won a Scholastic silver key for flash fiction, as well as a silver key and two honorable mentions for poetry.
Ananya Govind won a Scholastic honorable mention for her short story.
Sanja Greenawalt won a Scholastic gold key in critical essay and novel writing, as well as a silver key in personal essay and memoir.
Stephanie Groves won an honorable mention for her Scholastic writing portfolio.
Thuy Holder-Vinh received an Honorable Mention from the Brooklyn Public Library’s 2024 Teen Writing Contest & Ned Vizzini Prize for her short story, “Wonderland.” [Story available at BPL branches this summer.]
Naomi Jeske won one Scholastic gold key, three silver keys, and four honorable mentions for poetry.
Lea Karian won a Scholastic silver key for her writing portfolio; a silver key in personal essay and memoir; and one gold key, one silver key and five honorable mentions for poetry.
Samantha Katz won a Scholastic silver key for short story and an honorable mention for novel writing.
Katie Kim won a Scholastic gold key in short story, a gold key and honorable mention in science fiction, a silver key and honorable mention in poetry, and an honorable mention in novel writing.
Zack Lam won two Scholastic silver keys and an honorable mention for his poetry and critical essay.
Emma Laurence won a Scholastic silver key in poetry.
Chloe Lee won a Scholastic gold key, a silver key, and three honorable mentions for poetry.
Koi Lerner’s poem “Slaughter” was published in Teen Ink.
Henry Lomma’s short story “Trish” was published in Blue Marble Review; “Count George” published in the Frightopia anthology.
Nick Marino won a Scholastic gold key and honorable mention in science fiction and fantasy, a silver key and honorable mention in dramatic script, and two honorable mentions in flash fiction.
Oona McPhearson won a Scholastic gold key and silver key for short story.
Andrew Nam won a Scholastic gold key for critical essay.
Izzy Oh won two Scholastic silver keys and an honorable mention for her poetry, flash fiction, and critical essay; and won second place in the Mary Ann Hutchinson Memorial Youth Story Contest.
Viraaj Raofield won three Scholastic honorable mentions for novel writing and poetry.
Nina Rogers won a 2024 Honorable Mention from the Scholastic Writing Awards for her short story Pete & Madeline.
Annalise Ross won a Scholastic silver key in personal essay and memoir as well as dramatic script.
Zahra Sadoughi won a Scholastic gold key and American Voices Nomination for her poetry and a silver key for her personal essay and memoir.
Hana Sakr won three Scholastic silver keys for poetry.
Fenley Scurlock won a Scholastic gold key and honorable mention for humor and science fiction & fantasy.
Emi Shapiro won two Scholastic silver keys for her short story and personal essay, as well as an honorable mention for critical essay.
Divya Sharma won a Scholastic silver and honorable mention in critical essay.
Emily Shull won a silver key for flash fiction and two honorable mentions for critical essay.
Avantika Singh won a Scholastic silver key in critical essay.
Lucy Steward won two Scholastic silver keys and an honorable mention for critical essay as well as a silver key and honorable mention for poetry.
Alexandra Steyn won three Scholastic silver keys for critical essay, a silver key for short story, a silver key and honorable mention for flash fiction, and an honorable mention for personal essay and memoir.
Hugh Vickery won a Scholastic gold key for his poetry.
Jo Wallace-Segall has two pieces of literary fiction, “There,” and “Coconut Juice” to be published in the forthcoming issue of The Center School’s literary magazine.
Maxanne Wallace-Segall won one Scholastic gold key and one honorable mention for journalism and one gold key for her fiction. Her opinion pieces, “Are You Ok?: Muslim & Jewish Connection,” “Peace is Possible,” and “How to Celebrate Passover During a War,” were published in The Spectator.
Lilia Werve won an honorable mention from the 2024 Scholastic Awards for her poetry (and a Gold Medal last year!)
Shout out to the dedicated Eva Djordjevic for completing her second year of Creative Portfolio while Zooming in from Spain!
College Bound!
Congratulations to our seniors for completing an incredible four years of school and Writopia! Shout out to Léna Roy, our Director of Teen Programs, for spearheading the fabulous Creative Portfolio program, publications, and trips! And a special shout out to our Creative Portfolio and WriCampia seniors who have dedicated hours of writing, interning, editing, organizing, and traveling with us over the years:
Eliot Ageura y Arcas
Sahara Asher
Allie B.
Isabella Cai
Kayla Caruso
Alexis Chase
Ella Davis
Paloma Divina
Freda Dong
Josh Lancman
Jamie Landeau
Charlotte Lipman
Lea Karian
Nour Mokbel
Indira Moshi
Roxie Nelson
Givi Fleuristal-Muheto
Shreya Ganguly
Sanja Greenawalt
Stephanie Groves
Jonah Gulisano
Camil Piperni
James Plummer
Eli Prager
Soap Robinson
Annalise Ross
Franny Shaloum
Ruby Sinder
Ricky Smith
Julia Volpp
Emma Wasserman
Celeste Wilbur
Bernice Zhao
We have loved EVERY second of supporting your creative writing and college essay writing processes. So far, our college essay writers have shared with us that they will be freshmen at the following amazing institutions in the fall:
Berkeley
Boston College
Bucknell, Arts Merit Scholarship in Creative Writing
Chapman (Screenwriting)
George Washington University (Honors Program)
Hampshire
McGill
Muhlenberg
Northwestern
NYU Tisch Dramatic Script
Pace
Pomona
Princeton
Smith
Stanford
SUNY Oneonta
SUNY Purchase
Tufts
University of Chicago
University of Toronto
Vanderbilt University (Posse Scholar)
Vassar
Yale
Each year since 2020, we have published an increasing number of books including works from our own programs (at our labs and schools) in addition to the works of students from Title 1 schools that come to us to provide publication as a service to their schools. Shout out to Will Bond who makes publication possible for hundreds of students each year!
Featuring nine new college essays by Writopia alumni: Eli Berliner, Daniela Brillon, Ella Davis, Sophia Hall, Eliana Herzog, Ailynn O’Neill, Camil Piperni, Eli Prager, & Sophia Rubin.
Finding Writopia: Where Craft Meets Joy (forthcoming)
by Rebecca Wallace-Segall, Léna Roy, Yael Schick, and Danielle Sheeler, with guest contributors Elsa Bermudez, Rita Feinstein, Tasnim Hussain, Matthew Jellison, and Janelle Williams, and a Foreword by Writopia Board of Directors Member, Kevin R Free and Founder of Writopia’s Worldwide Plays Festival, Dan Kitrosser.
We, the Treasured (forthcoming Turning the Page Anthology)
Elsa Bermúdez had “Two short comics and art published in Brown Sugar Lit (Shanille’s magazine!); comics “The Sky is Bluer” and “Gum” published in Issue #8 The Eleventh Hour; illustrations “My Tongue is My Crown,” “Speaking (in Tongues),” “Fable,” and “From a Distance” published in Issue #9 Magic Hour.
Ivory Butler’s YA murder mystery, Unreliable, is now being submitted to publishers.
Jordan Casomar’s book How to Lose a Best Friend is forthcoming from MTV Books in September.
Amy Dupcak is now Editor-in-Chief of the literary journal Cagibi. She read her prose at the Apartment Party performance series and at the long-running bi-monthly series Lyrics, Lit & Liquor (for which she writes original themed trivia).
Niki Fakhoori is the author of ”A Dream Of Your Own: The Formulas of Unova” published on PokeCommunity Daily.
Camryn Garrett’s 4th book, her debut middle-grade novel called The Forgotten Summer of Seneca, will be published by Abrams in 2025.
Sophia N. Lee published her books, “Holding On” and “Lolo’s Sari-sari Store”. “Holding On” received the following honors: Yellowhammer Picture Book Award (Top 10) Given by the Alabama School Library Association (2023-2024); Read Aloud Indiana Award Winner (Ageless Category ) Given by the Indiana Library Federation (2023). “Lolo’s Sari-sari Store” was chosen as: a Best Picture Book of 2023 by the School Library Journal; a Notable Children’s Social Studies Book by the Children’s Book Council (2023); a Bank Street Best Picture Book of 2023 by the Bank Street Library; an Award Winner by the Rhode Island Children’s Book Award.
Matthew Jellison wrote this beautiful piece about three of our amazing instructors and their moms — all of whom are retired reading and writing teachers! (See the video below from the Hard Skills training that their mothers spoke at!)
Sam Schnell’s poetrywas published in Sonora Review, The Argyle Literary Magazine, Atlanta Review, and Bicoastal Review.
Carly Sorenson’s “Butch Drag Tango: The Life and Lyrics of Azucena Maizani,” a historical deep dive into a cross-dressing singer from the Golden Age of Tango, broadcast by Montez Press Radio on May 25th, 2024. Textile art titled “Watch Me” on display at the Roosevelt Island Visual Art Association Gallery as part of their Safe Space exhibit for Pride from May 30th – June 23rd, 2024. Poetry and dance performance titled “Safe Space” at the Roosevelt Island Visual Art Association Gallery on June 9. Carly will be reading from her work (including a short story called “Peel” and the artist’s statement for her textile art “Watch Me”) while dancers perform choreography inspired by her writing.
Paulina Tesnow graduated from Sarah Lawrence in May with an MFA in Creative Nonfiction.
Bianca Turetsky published three personal essays with TODAY.com.
Noah Wilson: “The Old Kind of Memory,” short story (Orca – Issue #16, June 2024); “The Mind Like Water,” flash fiction (Chautauqua: Rooted and Growing – Issue #21, January 2024); “One Hundred Characters at an Amusement Park” short story (Third Street Review – Issue #2, June 2023); “Solo Piano Vol. 1” EP (All music streaming platforms, May 2024); “Hold Out Thirst 2” single (All music streaming platforms, May 2024).
Jane Young’s Short story “Vehicle,” upcoming in Rock and a Hard Place, Issue #13.
An instructor training featuring three Writopia staff moms!
Theater Productions
Lizz Mangan: “And the Lights of the Borealis Were Shining” at The Tank (February 2023); “Eyes and Teeth” at American Stage Theatre Company (October 2023), “Icarus and Amelia Earhart Had Tea This Morning” at Hobart and William Smith Colleges (April 2024); Finalist – INKubator, Arthouse Productions. Summer 2024 Playwriting Resident with First Kiss Theatre; Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers Conference.
Amalia Oliva Rojas’s play In the Bronx Brown Girls Can See Stars Too was performed at Columbia University at the Schapiro Theatre and wrote her first adaptation titled Are you going to find your way out Uncle Vanya? performed at Columbia University at the Studio Theatre. She also had her playwriting international debut with It’s Not So Bad In My Brain as part of the Festival Alternativo de Teatro in Bogota, Colombia this past March. Finally, this month, she was awarded the Lydia Mendoza Graduate Fellowship on behalf of CFE International and The CUNY Institute of Mexican Studies!
Cassandra Rose’s play “Skyflint” was produced as part of Director’s Haven 7 at Haven Chicago; staged reading of “Billy to His Friends” was produced by Celebration Theatre.
Sam Stone’s play Finding Olive, was produced by the SheNYC Festival 2023, at The Connelly Theatre. Script to be licensed by SheNYC for regional productions nationwide.
Susan Yassky is a Seven Devils Playwriting Conference semi-finalist.
Creative Writing Youth Development Leadership
Watch Tasnim’s PASEsetters speech!
Awards—Tasnim Hussain, 2024 PASEsetters Award Winner.
In February, over 500 guests joined the Partnership for After School Education for their 2024 PASEsetter Awards Benefit, celebrating five NYC outstanding youth development educators, including the one and only Tasnim Hussain!
Conferences — National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)
In the fall of 2023, Yael Schick, Matthew Jellison, and Malcolm Knowles attended the NCTE annual conference and presented a panel at the Conference of English Leadership called “Writing Workshops as the Gateway to Empathy, Critical Thinking, and Transformation”.
In 2024, Writopia will be running two panels at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE):
Connecting Across Cultures: Jewish and Muslim Teens Share Their Stories During the Israel-Hamas War: the panel produced and led by Rebecca Wallace-Segall, Tasnim Hussain, Yael Schick, and CAC teens, Anniyah Rizvi and Lenny Metlitsky.
The Work of Play in the Classroom: Open-Ended Student-Centered Prompts and Games to Transform Your Writing Classroom.
Professional Development: Marrying Joy & Rigor in New Innovative Trainings
This year Matthew Jellison designed and ran our most intensive “Hard Skills Week,” including a special forum with some incredible staff moms! Click here for more info.
Events News
Worldwide Plays Festival 2024
Congratulations to all of the selected teen Festival Fellows who worked and wrote so beautifully with their partner young playwrights:
Scholastic Awards Ceremonies in Westchester and DC
Congratulations to Peter Quinn-Jacobs, Michaela Florio, Léna Roy, and all of our amazing support staff, for spearheading the production of the DC and Westchester Scholastic Awards Ceremonies!
Essay Writing Conferences / Online and in DC
Congratulations to all the selected youth presenters (below) and to Elsa Bermúdez, Rita Feinstein, Michaela Florio, Tasnim Hussain, and Matthew Jellison for running another beautiful year of essay writing celebration.
Isaac Abraham, Laurel Aronian, Chloe Bryant, David Cao, Vicky Chen, Catherine Fenlon, Daniel Freidland, Shrishti Ghosh, Allison Kim, Sophie Kim, David Lee, Noelle Lee, Caleigh McAteer, Jackie McVorran, Grace Molla, Sinead Molony, Alisa Montrose, Kate Quach, Aureliano Ruiz-Halpert, Cordelia Scoville, Nirupama Shivakumar, James Song, Abigail Sterner, Devan Tatlow, Laurentia Woo, Anthony Xu, Edwin Yoo, Johnathan Zhang, & Bernice Zhao
Writopia International Debate Tournaments
Congratulations to Shanille Martin who has been spearheading this super exciting, competitive Wrtiopia program.
From the June 8th, 2024 tournament:
Two Writopia teams placed in the top teams with 2 wins out of their 3 rounds:
Team Witty Wizards: Peyton Yaffee, Nirali Ydenra, Carter Wang, and Michelle Batson-Greenberg.
Team PEIPINVAL: Peichi Che, Pinwei Che, and Valentina Mafaro.
Four Writopians placed in the top 10 speakers with the highest scores:
Peichi Che, Pinewi Che, Valentina Mafaro, and Nirali Ydendra.
From the January 27th, 2024 tournament:
Top speakers from Writopia:
Nirali Ydendra
Samrajya Singh
Diana Davidson
Esther Motia
Manya Guatam
Reading at New York Society for Ethical Culture
Open Mic Series at P&T Knitwear
Organizational News
We launched our first parent portal and we hope you love it! Shoutout to our brilliant operations team that dedicated a year to designing and coding: Jeremy Wallace-Segall, Peter Quinn-Jacobs, Rob Roy, and Rachel Aronson!
WriCampia
WriCampia moved to Camp Danbee in 2023 and we love it there!
Thank you Supergoop for sponsoring two 2024 WriCampia scholarships along with extra sunscreen for the entire camp!
“It is the only sunscreen I use, I’m not kidding. This is great!” —Tasnim Hussain
Thank you Amy Smith and the Allan S. Gordon Foundation for your generous donations as well. We would not be able to bring all of our writers to camp without you all!
East Coast and West Coast Retreats
Elsa Bermudez and Michaela Florio launched Writopia’s first West Coast Winter Retreat!
2023-2024 Partnerships
Thanks to The Pinkerton Foundation, we had another amazing year working with the wonderful writers at Goddard Riverside sites and Homes for the Homeless, and providing about 50 writers on full scholarship for workshops and private sessions at our Manhattan and Brooklyn locations. In addition, we were able to run super fun workshops for youth development staff at both organizational sites! In addition, we loved running admissions writing programs through the year at schools funded by the NYCDOE Chancellor’s Office and with many more partner schools and CBOS.
We are especially excited to welcome three new partnership programs this past spring and this coming summer:
Bronx Excellence
Shoutout to founder and CEO Charlene Floyd for supporting her school families with an amazing new program for PARENTS run by Writopia’s brilliant and deeply caring Malcolm Knowles who helped 20 Bronx Excellence parents reflect and write beautiful parent application essays for private school high school admissions!
Amsterdam Houses at the NY Society for Ethical Culture
Thanks to Writopia grandmother Marlene Williamson at Ethical Culture, our 2023 gala donors, and the Pinkerton Foundation, we were able to run a free workshop last summer at Ethical for children from Amsterdam Public Houses.
SEO Scholars Program
Shoutout to Randy M. Frazer, Associate Director of Programs & Student Success at SEO Scholars Program, for seeking early college essay support for the nearly 200 rising juniors their program will support this summer. We’re excited to familiarize these students with personal essay writing in order to prepare them to write college essays in the upcoming years.
Ten teen writers — five Jewish and five Muslim — from across the US were selected from a pool of dozens of high level applicants to take part in a free six week writing and sharing program. The next round is partially funded by The Pinkerton Foundation.
Most of us are witnessing a decline in reading among youth. But in a 2024 parent survey, almost half of our families reported that their children became more engaged in reading as a result of their growing connection to the writing process. So we became inspired to create a fun community-driven workshop for both reading and writing to have the most impact!
Writopia is a safe space for a diverse range of writers and young people. We are so happy to finally honor, beginning this summer, our sports lovers with a workshop where they can dig into their passion for the game through a writer’s lens.
New Titles
Part of the joy of working at Writopia is the ongoing opportunity to learn and grow from our writers and from each other, and the ability to channel and elevate our new insights into our work. Please help us congratulate our staff for another incredible year, including those who have earned new titles:
Rebecca Wallace-Segall is now Chief Executive Officer.
Yael Schick is now Executive Director.
Matthew Jellison is now Associate Director of Education.
Elsa Bermúdez is now Associate Director of Specialty Programs and Brooklyn Regional Manager (Interim).
Michaela Florio is now Regional Manager, The Bay Area.
Alex Minier is now Office Manager and Accounting Specialist .
Shanille Martin is now Program Manager.
Jem Werner is now Registration and Overnight Programs Coordinator.
Carly Sorenson is now Registration Coordinator.
Bianca Turetsky, Associate Director of Programs and Brooklyn Regional Manager, will be taking a one-year leave to pursue her Masters in Education Leadership, Organizations, and Entrepreneurship at the Harvard School of Education. We are so excited to learn from her upon her return in June 2025!
Board of Directors News
Each year, our Board of Directors meets quarterly to review financials and address Writopia Lab’s overall organizational needs. This super smart, dedicated, and skilled group of individuals brings publishing, education, theater arts, fundraising, compliance, legal, and leadership expertise to us on an ongoing basis. We are so grateful to them! We are especially are excited to welcome three new members:
Warren Hrung, Chair, Audit Committee
John Plummer, Member, Fundraising Committee
Amy Smith, Member, Executive Committee
Alumni Spotlight
Alumni Education Spotlights
Congratulations Mrinalini Sisodia Wadhwar, Columbia College ’24, Salutatorian, and Writopia’s first alumna that we know of to become a Rhodes Scholar! Her history thesis also won departmental honors as well as the Albert Marion Elsberg Prize.
Congratulations Maya Mitrasinovic, who also just graduated from Columbia University, after serving as the City News Editor at the University newspaper, The Spectator. What’s next? Congratulations on winning a Fulbright grant to study in Cyprus!
Congratulations to Jessica Zhao, who had run and contributed political pieces and features to our WriCampia newspaper for years, and who just graduated from George Washington University! She is currently looking for a position on Capitol Hill and we recommend her with the highest praise to anyone looking for a hard-working, super dedicated, and smart staffer!
Congratulations Sophie Nelson, who just graduated from Oberlin, recently co-authored a philosophy paper, now forthcoming in the Journal of Consciousness Studies.
Alumni Career Spotlights
Follow Emma Goldberg and Nico Grant at The New York Times for brilliant features on business and technology, Sam Levine who writes on politics for The Guardian, and Sneha Day, who is an education reporter for the Texas Tribune! We are also excited to share that poet Nora Miller is editor-in-chief of a journal and small press called Ghost Proposal, Maxine Charles is a book editor at Flatiron Books (Macmillan Big 5 publishing), and Hannah Reale is serving as Associate Digital Editor for GBH, Boston’s chapter of NPR.
And our biggest alumni shoutouts of all go to the creative writing youth development experts in our midst: the amazing Jem Werner, Carly Sorenson, Zoe Donovan, Eunju Namkung, and Lil Gellman who bring creative writing inspiration and organizational leadership to our workshops and camps throughout the year!
Special thank you to Matthew Jellison and Literary Submissions Intern Naomi Jeske for researching and curating our monthly submissions opportunities newsletter! Each year, dozens of our students and staff have the added thrill of winning recognition for their dedication and fine skill through these outlets.
Do you have any exciting awards or publication news to share that we didn’t know about? Fill out this form and we will include it here.
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.
From left to right: Yael and her mom Robin, Matthew and his mom Claudine, and Malcolm and his mom Reggy.
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.
Students in a creative writing workshop and playing games during break time.
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.
Students in the graphic novel and filmmaking electives.
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.”
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.
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, publishedthroughBrain Mill Press.
John Manuel Arias’ debut novel, Where There Was Fire, was accepted for publicationby 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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
