In This Issue

Workshops
Fellowships
Magazine

WORKSHOPS

T&W Launches a New Year of School-based Creative Writing Programs

Now that we’ve arrived at the start of another school year, it’s time to open the minds of young people to new poems and new stories. T&W writers guide students through reading and writing activities that prompt young people to explore and experiment with language and to learn new tools and strategies for giving voice in writing to their personal experiences and ideas.

In 2008-2009, T&W writers worked in more than 40 schools in neighborhoods throughout New York City’s five boroughs. We continued multi-year partnerships with schools from Astoria to Brownsville, and from the Upper West Side to Staten Island. T&W writers led a variety of programs across the city, including:

• A dual language program for middle school students in Manhattan;
• A Saturday program for early elementary students in North Corona, Queens;
• A poetry program in Marine Park, Brooklyn, that included students writing lyrical tributes to their first ancestors to arrive in North America;
• A college-essay writing program for high school students in Harlem;
• A program for high school students with special needs in the Bronx that included writing letters to national officials and poetry about community health issues;
• Creative writing programs for gifted and talented students at four schools in Manhattan and Queens;
• A writing and editing program at a GED/Learning to Work site in Murray Hill on the East Side of Manhattan.

As students and educators start the 2009-2010 school year, T&W writers are ready to help young people write the next lines of their poems and the next chapters of their stories, and to help students build and hone their writing skills. Last spring, T&W writer Melanie Maria Goodreaux described this process in the introduction to The Space of a Moment, an anthology of writing by students at IS 278K in Brooklyn. Addressing her students, Goodreaux wrote:

While editing this anthology, I was touched by the seriousness you applied to these writing exercises. You were personal, honest, and displayed genuine gumption and expertise on the mechanics and honesty it takes to write a good poem . . . Writing poetry allows us all to take a stand on what’s happening in our imaginations, and to write about what may be bothering us with truthfulness and bravery. I hope that you will continue to think deeply about the smallest moments in your lives-because each of them matter.

If you are a school administrator, teacher, or parent of a young person attending school in the New York City area, T&W would look forward to talking with you about bringing the excitement and challenge of the writing Goodreaux describes to students in your school. To discuss a possible partnership with T&W, please contact Amy Swauger at 212-691-6590 or workshops@twc.org.

FELLOWSHIPS

T&W Selects Carla Ching and Charles Conley for 2009-2010 Fellowships

Playwright Carla Ching and fiction writer Charles Conley have been selected as the 2009-2010 T&W Fellows. The fellowship program, which supports talented early-career writers, is made possible by a generous grant from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

In addition to time to work on their own projects, T&W Fellows receive:

• A $20,000 stipend and the opportunity to apply for an additional small stipend to support research or travel
• Office space and resources (e.g., computer, supplies) at T&W
• Opportunities to meet with experienced professionals from publishing, literary arts, theater, or other fields related to the fellow’s work
• Exposure to all aspects of T&W’s work, including writing residencies, publications, and the 2020 Visions reading series

Ching and Conley will begin the nine-month fellowship in mid-September. In addition to organizing and hosting T&W’s reading series, they will write for Teachers & Writers magazine, develop resources for the T&W website, observe and lead school- and community-based creative writing programs, and assist in preparing anthologies of student work for publication. Bios of the new fellows can be read on the T&W website at www.twc.org/about/tw-fellowship.

For more information about the T&W Fellowship program, call 212-691-6590 or e-mail fellowship@twc.org.

TEACHERS & WRITERS MAGAZINE

Fall Issue of Teachers & Writers Offers Ideas for the New School Year

The fall issue of Teachers & Writers magazine is out, and offers an exciting mix of articles to kick off the new school year. We open with a conversation on writing and teaching with the poet Kevin Young, whose soulful explorations of “memory, and home, and history” are a lifelong attempt, he says, “to describe what is impossible to convey.” Merna Ann Hecht follows with a wonderful primer on using the work of poet Naomi Shihab Nye to inspire the poetry of middle school students. In her smart and funny essay on life in a second language, Rachel DeWoskin tells of the pitfalls and surprising gifts she’s found-in her own life and in her work as a teacher-in the territory between the old language and the new. A pair of essays by T&W teaching artist David Stoler and high school student Angel Contrera show how teaching artists and classroom teachers at an inner-city school came together to develop a highly successful approach to teaching the personal essay. And closing the issue is a piece by Michael Copperman on the surprising connection he made with a particularly difficult student.

We think you’ll find plenty of ideas and inspiration in these pages for this season of new beginnings. Sample the issue online at www.twc.org, or order a subscription to the magazine at www.twc.org/publications/magazine.