In this Issue

T&W Books
Bechtel
Magazine
Ellen Levine Fund

T&W BOOKS

New T&W Book, Our Difficult Sunlight, Available Now!

“I dove into Our Difficult Sunlight as a colleague, eager to exercise in the refreshing intelligence and heart of Popoff and Lansana-hoping to discover new teaching approaches, new tools to open up literacy and redress cultural inequity, renewed excitement about the power of art. I got all that and more in the generous, abundant, fierce gifts that fill every page.”
-Eric Booth, author of The Music Teaching Artist’s Bible and The Everyday Work of Art

In the new book from Teachers & Writers Collaborative, Georgia Ann Popoff and Quraysh Ali Lansana demonstrate the power of poetry in the K-12 classroom. Our Difficult Sunlight: A Guide to Poetry, Literacy, & Social Justice in Classroom & Community offers an exploration of the terrain of the 21st-century public school along with strategies for using the reading and creation of poetry to improve students’ reading comprehension and writing skills.

The best practices, exercises, and anecdotes in the book emerged from the authors’ individual teaching histories and their partnership in providing professional development for teachers and teaching artists. Drawing on their experiences as a Chicago-based African American poet/professor and a Caucasian poet/educator from upstate New York, Lansana and Popoff offer insights into how engaging young people in writing and sharing poetry can break down barriers to learning, aid in exploration of critical issues, and foster connections among students and teachers from very different backgrounds.

The information and lesson plans included in Our Difficult Sunlight will be supplemented in the next few months by additional resources on the T&W website (www.twc.org/sunlight). Teachers and teaching artists will be able to download additional exercises from the site, share lesson plans that they have developed, and ask questions about challenges faced in the classroom.

In the meantime, go to www.twc.org/resources/haiku-interviews to read Lansana’s and Popoff’s thoughts on their work as poets and teachers.

T&W books are available from Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and other retailers. (Please note that books can no longer be ordered through the T&W website.)

BECHTEL

Submission Guidelines Available for 2011 Bechtel Prize

Since 2004, Teachers & Writers Collaborative (T&W) has honored the author of an exemplary essay on literary arts education with the annual Bechtel Prize. Submissions for the award address important issues in creative writing education and/or literary studies.

The 2011 Bechtel Prize will be judged by Patricia Hampl. Hampl’s most recent book is The Florist’s Daughter, winner of numerous “best” and “year-end” awards, including the New York Times “100 Notable Books of the Year” and the 2008 Minnesota Book Award for Memoir and Creative Nonfiction. Hampl first won recognition for A Romantic Education, her memoir about her Czech heritage, awarded a Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship. This book and subsequent works have established her as an influential figure in the rise of autobiographical writing in the past 25 years. Hampl is Regents Professor of English at the University of Minnesota and serves on the T&W Board of Directors.

The essay selected to receive the Bechtel Prize appears in Teachers & Writers Magazine and on the T&W website, and the author receives a $1,000 honorarium. Honoraria totaling $500 are shared by the authors of entries selected as finalists for the prize, which may also be published in Teachers & Writers Magazine.

Possible topics for Bechtel Prize submissions include contemporary issues in classroom teaching, innovative approaches to teaching literary forms and genres, and the intersection between literature and imaginative writing. The previous winners of the Bechtel Prize can be found at www.twc.org/publications/bechtel-prize/bechtel-prize-winners.

The submission deadline for the 2011 Bechtel Prize is 5:00 PM (Eastern), Thursday, June 30, 2011. To review the Bechtel Prize submission guidelines, please go to
www.twc.org/publications/bechtel-prize. For additional information, call 212-691-6590 or e-mail bechtel@twc.org.

MAGAZINE

Highlights from Spring Issue of Teachers & Writers Magazine

The spring issue of Teachers & Writers Magazine, a special issue on translation, is now out, and in it you’ll find a great mix of articles on how the art and practice of translation is opening up new worlds for students of writing across the country.

In her opening essay, Rachel DeWoskin describes how her work tutoring Siran, a sixth-grader visiting the U.S. from China-and her own experience learning Chinese-taught her how “the best possibility for bringing a sense of community to our globalizing world is to exchange words.”

Our feature on Poetry Inside Out explores an innovative curriculum from the Center for the Art of Translation that teaches students to translate poems from around the world and then compose their own poetry. T&W teaching artist Sari Wilson and two classroom teachers give us a glimpse of the program in action in their New York City school.

From across the country in Washington State, Merna Ann Hecht chronicles her work helping immigrant and refugee students to acclimate to the enormous upheavals in their lives by having them write about their experiences in their new language and then share their stories with each other and with the larger community.

Mark Statman describes how Lorca’s Poet in New York serves as a model for his students, college freshmen just arrived in New York, as they, like Lorca, translate their experience of the city into poetry.

Rounding out the issue is a look at an intriguing project in which American poets of all ages responded to drawings of war and peace by Vietnamese schoolchildren, and a brief excerpt from Phillip Lopate’s Being With Children on an unusual-and wonderfully successful-” mistranslation” project.

To view an excerpt from this issue online, order a copy, or subscribe to the magazine, please go to: http://www.twc.org/publications/magazine/magazine-sample. We hope you enjoy the issue!

ELLEN LEVINE FUND FOR WRITERS

May 2 Deadline for Ellen Levine Fund for Writers Award

Teachers & Writers Collaborative (T&W) has once again been invited to nominate a fiction book for the Ellen Levine Fund for Writers award, which is administered by the New York Community Trust.

The annual award is given to an author who has previously published (not self-published) a print edition of one or two books of fiction, and who doesn’t currently have a publishing contract for a second or third fiction book. The winner of the Ellen Levine Fund for Writers award receives $7,500.

In 2008, the first year of the award, one of T&W’s nominees, Gabriel Brownstein, won the award for his novel I Was Here, But I Disappeared. In 2009, Kathleen Lee received the award for her novel Taxi to Elsewhere. The 2010 Ellen Levine Fund for Writers Award went to Travis Holland for a novel in progress, Windsor Park.

Submissions to be considered for nomination by T&W should include contact information for the author (mailing address, e-mail address, and phone number(s)), a brief bio of the author listing the one or two works of fiction already published, an outline of the book, and 75-80 pages of the manuscript. Submissions should be mailed or hand-delivered to:

Amy Swauger
Teachers & Writers Collaborative
520 Eighth Ave., Ste. 2020
New York, NY 10018

Submissions will not be accepted via e-mail or fax. Incomplete submissions will not be reviewed.

The deadline for submitting work to T&W is 5:00 PM (Eastern), Monday, May 2, 2011. T&W will review submissions and select one to nominate for the award. The winner of the 2011 award will be notified by the New York Community Trust in late summer/early fall.

Please send questions regarding the 2011 Ellen Levine Fund for Writers award to aswauger@twc.org, or call 212-691-6590.