The spring issue of the magazine, out now, features a special section on Writing Through Trauma, in which writers in the schools from programs nationwide to describe their work with children and adults whose lives have been changed by violence, illness, the death of a loved one, or other tragedies. In the wake of the violence that occurred this past December at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, we asked these writers to offer their insights into how words can help comfort and heal in the face of grief.  Last week we posted a piece by teaching artist Autumn Hayes, from WITS Houston. In this third excerpt,  Peter Markus, from InsideOut Literary Arts Project of Detroit, describes how he helps his students translate grief into words.

Holding On, Letting Go , Making Use: Writing as Remembering

by Peter Markus

The act of remembering, I often tell my students, is most often an act of love. When someone we love leaves us, is taken from us—by the hand of God, or by a hand holding a gun—we can keep their spirit and story alive through the power of words. We can write them back into a world—the poem that the page can sometimes become—that we can hold forever in the palms of our own hands. Be empowered by that, I say. Reach back, with the pen in your hand, and hold on, as did Miguel Rodriguez, the young Detroit poet behind these words, when he wrote down what he could not otherwise get himself to say:

Crushed

Your hands
make a stone man
turn soft.

I am heavy
with the memory
of your touch.

When I invite students to write about loss, I let them know that no one in the room is exempt from the experience and the absence that remains in its wake. The older we get, the more we live and love, the more these losses accumulate. But as the poet Jack Gilbert wrote, he himself no stranger to love and the losses that come with it: “There will be music despite everything.”

Our purpose, as teaching artists in the schools, is to show students that there is a song to be sung. It may be out of sorrow, yes, but poetry allows us to celebrate what is lost even as we mourn.

As someone who believes that language has the power to restore and even redeem us, I encourage my students to reclaim that which has been taken away, to make use of experiences that can sometimes beat us and hold us down.

No one is fenced off from the violence that is our world. A mother is taken by a drunk driver. A brother meets with a bullet over a leather jacket. A classmate walks out of school on a Friday afternoon and doesn’t come back.  We use poems to tell these stories. We use stories to help us make sense.

“And then he was gone, like so many of us to follow, leaving behind the stories we’d tell—until even those disappeared into the dark emptiness between our throat & our tongues.” So writes poet Sean Thomas Dougherty in “Clay,” a poem of metaphor and remembrance that I hand out to students when it comes time to show them that memory can be a form of prayer.

He was the sun streaming on a late April
afternoon, a dead pigeon’s claws upturned above
the park’s broken glass.
He was the park’s broken glass.
He was street.
He was the fire hydrant’s cooling waters streaming
onto a mid-July sidewalk & the splash made by the
callused soles of little children’s feet.

I’ve read from and used this poem (the above is just an excerpt) to help students categorize and define the images of their own grief when presence gives way to absence, when a person moves from a state of “is” to “was.” One of my students wrote the following poem in response.

Gold Dragon

Stefanie Wilson

Jay was rollerblades & loaded guns.
He was the gold dragon dangling from around my neck.

Remember when we were five and we were at the
park down in Tennessee and we jumped off the
monkey bars and both broke our arms?

Remember how we used to jump off that bluff, over
the one-lane road of cars, down into the Tennessee river?

Remember how we used to go hunting in the
mountains and the woods, that time you threw
your jackknife and killed a jackrabbit?

I remember.

I remember Jay’s hands, strong, gentle hands.
And Jay’s hair: it was like night.

I remember how he never liked to be inside his
house unless it was to sleep.

I had seen guns before. I’d seen guns in Jay’s
hands. I watched as he walked back over by the
door and then I watched him lift the gun up to his head.

I got down on my knees, beside Jay, and I held
onto his hand. His hand felt like there was nothing
there.

Stefanie used the power of words, of story, to transform a moment of “nothing there,” a sort of paralysis, into a moment of action, of making something that she could own instead of being owned by. This, too, is a function of language: translating experience into words so that we might move ourselves from grief into reconciliation, and sometimes even forgiveness.

Peter Markus is the senior writer with the InsideOut Literary Arts Project of Detroit. He is also a 2012 Kresge Arts in Detroit Fellow. He is the author of the novel Bob, or Man on Boat, along with three books of short fiction, the most recent of which is We Make Mud. A new book, The Fish and the Not Fish, is forthcoming in 2014.

The spring issue of the magazine is now out, and features a special section on Writing Through Trauma.  In this special section we asked writers in the schools from programs nationwide to describe their work with children and adults whose lives have been changed by violence, illness, the death of a loved one, or other tragedies. In the wake of the violence that occurred this past December at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, we asked these writers to offer their insights into how words can help comfort and heal in the face of grief.  Last week we posted a piece by T&W teaching artist David Surface on working with veterans in a writing workshop. In this second excerpt, teaching artist Autumn Hayes, from WITS Houston describes a lesson in which she had elementary school students write new year’s wishes to the children of Newtown Connecticut.

Reaching for Others: Writing New Year’s Wishes to Newtown Students
by Autumn Hayes

But—how do I know what they want?” Armarde asked, his face a dervish of anxiety. “I really want them to like it.”

I couldn’t blame him. I was at Lockhart-Turner Elementary School in Houston, Texas, working with Armarde and his fellow fourth-graders on an understandably daunting task: each child was to write and illustrate a New Year’s wish for the students of Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Connecticut. The tragic shooting there was only six days behind them—fewer for students I’d already visited at Kelso Elementary—and I had made it clear that these wishes would be mailed out to real people in real pain.

The idea started this September, with an exhibit entitled “Dear John and Dominique: Letters and Drawings from the Menil Archives.” I work at the Menil with Writers in the Schools in Houston, Texas, and I was particularly struck by a series of hand-painted New Year’s cards from artist Niki de Saint Phalle. The gorgeous, full-page artworks, splashed with whimsical watercolors, wished pleasures like “friendly monsters in your dreams,” and I knew—in a world of snark and online bullying—I wanted students to see and emulate such kindness, tenderness, and creativity.

Then Sandy Hook happened, and I faced the choice to: (a) pretend that this didn’t affect us and teach revision as planned, or (b) walk the walk and engage 160 children in the messiness of reaching for others.

Fortunately, each class had discussed the events beforehand. Some students immediately struck the meat of the matter: “I wish that Connecticut was here because we are family,” Aniyah wrote. But others, like Armarde, hesitated. What could he, or any of us, offer children so far away, confronting so much fear, confusion, and trauma? What would the children of Newtown really want from us?

Well, nothing. No amount of pretty words or kind sentiments can erase the terrifying memories or bring back lost loved ones, friends, and teachers. But kind words and hopeful sentiments can, I believe, part the dark curtains of loneliness. They can bring small reminders to the survivors—that happiness and life still await them when they are ready, beckoning in tiny, concrete experiences.

And so we talked about this, acknowledged it, for those afraid. We talked about how students in Connecticut are people—people who likely love SpongeBob and grandparents and sticky, sweet things, too—and about how we don’t have to have all the answers, or any. We don’t have to fix things. We can’t. All we have to do is notice each other and show it, to look at each other steadily through all the chaos and say—however possible—“I see you. I care.”

For some, that means sending flowers, gifts, or donations. For others, that means listening. For our band of fourth-graders, that meant sending forward bits of ourselves, our delights, our comforts and hilarities. It meant sending forward wishes for “homemade apple juice to drink when it’s a hot, hot day,” for “a nice little bit of music,” for “a warm sun deep down inside you.” It meant play and poems and prayers. It meant simple compassion—the best, if not the only, thing any of us can really offer in the face of tragedy.

The spring issue of the magazine is now out, and features a special section on Writing Through Trauma.   Each day of the week, here in New York City and across the country, teaching artists walk into classrooms to share their passion for writing. Too often, the stories their students have to tell are of lives disrupted by circumstances beyond their control. What can these teaching artists offer in response to a child who is sick, a teen who has lost a friend to gun violence, a veteran plagued by the war he left behind? What can the act of writing give to those who are suffering? The violence that occurred this past December at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, put these questions in stark relief, but they are questions teaching artists struggle with often. In this special section we asked writers in the schools from programs nationwide to describe their work with children and adults whose lives have been changed by violence, illness, the death of a loved one, or other tragedies. Each of their experiences is unique, but together their stories offer insight into how words can help comfort and heal in the face of grief.  

In the following excerpt, T&W teaching artist David Surface describe his work in a writing workshop for veterans.

The Story We Tell Ourselves Afterward: At the Veterans Writing Workshop
by David Surface

When I tell people that I work with military veterans, one of the first things they say is, It must help them to talk about their experiences, or, It must be good for them to get those terrible things off their chest.

The truth is that there are many other places where veterans can share difficult experiences. Group and individual counseling, as well as veterans’ support or “rap” groups, all provide camaraderie and an emo- tional outlet. The question is, does writing and the writing workshop experience offer anything more?

Most everyone agrees that creative or “expressive” writing can have positive effects for people who have experienced trauma. How this works is much less clear. In my experience, the explanation is to be found not in the language of psychology or neuroscience, but in the language of the writing process itself. I believe the key word in understanding how the writing process can help people living with trauma is revision.

As every writer or teacher of writing knows, revision can be painful. To revise, and revise well, we need to stop seeing our first drafts as something fixed and inflexible, and start seeing them a something malleable that we have power over and can change for the better.

When I met Frank M., he was living in a residence facility for homeless veterans and had just “graduated” from a Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) counseling program. His counselor had encouraged him to join the writing workshop I was running. “She says it’ll be good for me,” Frank said, shrugging.

Frank’s trauma had occurred not on the battlefield but on home ground, during his time as a military policeman on a naval base in California, although none of his fellow veterans at the workshop knew what had happened.

Week after week, Frank continued to work his way toward the incident he’d come to the workshop to write about. I never pushed him. This was not, as I’d explained, a “writing therapy” group—this was a writing workshop, and our goal was to create the very best stories we could write.

Finally, Frank brought in the pages he’d struggled so hard to complete. With his friend Eddie’s hand on his shoulder for support, Frank read to us about the day he’d gone out on a call to search for a missing child.

After ten minutes that felt like ten hours, I decided to go into the house myself. As I walked up the steps, something at the left of the entrance caught my eye. It was a medium-sized Coleman cooler with the lid closed. I walked up to the cooler and opened it up on a hunch. To my shock and dismay, the little boy was in there, his ball lying right next to his hand. The odor was overwhelming and his skin was clammy and gray. Instinctively, I reached into the cooler and pulled him out.

Taking deep, shaky breaths between words, Frank read about his unsuccessful attempts to revive the child, his subsequent realization that he could no longer be a policeman, and the hard-won wisdom he’d come away with.

It would be years before I accepted the fact that there was not anything I could have done to prevent that child from dying like that. As I look back now, I realize that there are things that happen in life that you cannot control.

Critics may say that for people living with the effects of trauma, the kind of “control” that writing offers is illusory because it can’t change what happened, nor can it prevent bad things from happening in the future. But the fact is it’s not the experience itself that causes us suffering—it’s the story we tell ourselves about the experience afterward, what we think it means about the world and about ourselves. And as writers and teachers of writing, that is something we can change.

 For more information, visit www.veteranswritingworkshop.org

Elementary School

Harriet Riley
Write a letter. Write to your grandmother in Guatemala or to your favorite football player or your favorite singer. Tell them about what you are doing this summer and what your interests are. If you are writing to someone you don’t know,  tell them why you admire them. Then be sure to get an envelope and stamp from your parents,  and address and mail the letter. The best part is you might just get a letter back from someone.

Explore alliteration by making a list of words that all start with the same letter. Just choose a letter and create a word avalanche—use nouns,  adjectives,  verbs,  adverbs,  anything. Just list all you can think of. Then order the words into a poem. Think shape and line breaks,  think meaning or be as silly as you can. Have fun with it!

Maya Pindyck
If you find yourself at a beach,  a lake,  a river,  or a stream,  look for five stones on the shore that you consider to be special or beautiful in some way. Sit down with those stones—either right where you are or back home—and study each one very closely. Come up with a different metaphor for each stone. Then write an “Ode to the Stone” that explores one or more of the metaphors you came up with.

Anthony Calypso
Ask an adult in your family for a photo that was taken before you were born. Do not ask any details about the picture. Instead,  take the picture and create a very short story based on the details you see in it. When you are finished,  return the photo to the adult and show what you wrote about it.

Susan Buttenwieser
Write a list of all the games that you play. Your list should include at least ten games,  and they can be anything: card games,  imaginary games,  sports,  and games you play at recess. Pick one and write about it in as much detail as possible. Pretend you are describing it to a space alien who has never been to earth,  and you need to explain absolutely every single step. Don’t leave anything out. Please include where to play your game,  how many people you need,  what time of day is best for playing it,  what things you need to play your game,  and even what is good to eat or drink with your game.

Peter Markus
In your imagination transport yourself to an exotic place—a place you’ve never been to,  though a place that you’d like one day to go to—and write a postcard to yourself that captures the essence of that place.

Norene Cashen Smith
When you get into a car,  whether it’s for a drive to the local market or hundreds of miles away to a vacation destination,  imagine a vacation without limits. Where do you go? What do you see? What do you do? How do you get back home? Compose a poem that takes the reader on an amazing trip with sights,  feelings,  and sounds.

Middle School

Sarah LaBrie
First: Purchase a notebook. The notebook should be about the size of your hand. If it’s too small,  you might lose it. If it’s too big,  it will be difficult to carry around. Put some thought into the color,  and to whether you want a blank cover or a decorated one. This is a piece of equipment you should want to keep with you for a while.

Second: Open the notebook. Write the day’s date on top of the first page. Underneath that,  write anything. Write about what you had for breakfast. Write about your most recent crush. Write sentences you think you might like to use in a short story or novel. Come up with a list of people (famous or not) with whom you would like to have tea. Think about the weather and then write down those thoughts. No matter what you write,  make sure you fill up at least one page.

Third: The next day,  at the same time,  repeat this process exactly. The point is to get yourself into the habit of producing words for a certain amount of time every day. Learning how to write daily is the first step to becoming a writer.

For help getting started,  check out The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole,  Aged 13 and ¾ by Sue Townsend and The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky.

Karen Benke
Drape over a chair,  your bed,  across your desk. Hang in a forward bend. You can’t do this stretchy-bendy stuff wrong. Ditto creating a poem. Just consider all things that stretch: a wishful thought,  revengeful lie,  the truth,  history,  rubber bands,  a parent’s indecision,  your curfew… Really let your mind stretch into the truth—whatever the truth is to you—of right now. This includes noisy demands,  itchy worries,  rash-like anxieties. Invite it all to crawl out and stretch across the page. Then leap off into writing,  using the following lines: Life keeps giving me… Here’s why I stay… Why I leave… Here’s what lights me up… What can darken my heart…

Kanishk Tharoor
Look at a map of the world. Find three countries you don’t know anything about. Only on the basis of the sound of the country’s name,  the shape of the country,  and where the country is on the map,  write a paragraph speculating on what that country is like (the way people live, the languages they speak, the things they eat, what they believe in, and so on). After you’re done,  check your speculative paragraphs against the Wikipedia entries for each of those countries.

Rachel M. Simon
Write a list of sensory details from a place that is important to you (your summer camp, kindergarten cubby closet, your grandparents’ porch, your bed, your favorite chair, your favorite country, etc.). Be sure to include all five senses. Then write a poem or story that includes all of those sensory details.

Harriet Riley
Write a poem or essay using this line,  “I don’t mind being woken , up for…”

Mark Twain once said,  “Water,  taken in moderation,  cannot hurt anybody.” Since it’s summer there’s a good chance you are thinking about jumping in the water,  or drinking a cool sip of water,  or the relief of a cool rain shower,  so why not try writing about water? You can write a poem or short essay about swimming,  or a trip to the beach,  or the joy of your bath,  or taking a drink of water— anything about water.

Susan Buttenwieser
Cut out photographs from newspapers and magazines and write about them. Make up stories about what is happening in the picture. Make up names for the people in the photographs. Write about what happened right before the picture was taken and what will happen next.

Take a notebook outside and sketch with words. Write down an overheard conversation,  or descriptions of street scenes,  the park,  playground,  library,  swimming pool,  beach—anywhere you find yourself. Be sure to include descriptions of people and the setting.

Gary Earl Ross
With a group of your friends,  use poster board to create a Scrabble-type grid. Use Post-it notes (of varying colors if preferred) to create enough letters of the alphabet that each player may have 7-14 letters. Each player takes a turn or two placing his or her letters on the board. Once the letters are all used up,  everybody writes a poem using the words created on the board,  then reads their poem aloud.

High School

Maya Pindyck
Ride the subway (or the bus) five stops in any direction. Write down everything you observe on this subway or bus ride: the sounds around you,  the people,  the motion,  the seats,  the advertisements,  anything you notice at all—don’t stop writing until the five stops are over. Then get off the subway or bus and take it back home. On the ride back to your home,  look at your observations and write a short story,  essay,  or poem that describes this particular experience. Try to finish a first draft by the time you reach your stop!

Susan Buttenwieser
Rewrite a fairy tale from a different character’s point of view. For example,  re-write “Little Red Riding Hood” from the wolf’s perspective or the grandmother’s.

Kanishk Tharoor
Read about the Voyager 1 and 2 space probes. Look at some of the pictures that nasa keeps on the probes in case of contact with extraterrestrial intelligence (voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/scenes.html). Think about why nasa might have chosen those pictures to represent our civilization. Then imagine your own fantasy world/civilization. Describe five images that would be kept on a space probe sent from your fantasy world. What do they convey about your fantasy world?

Rachel M. Simon
Write a poem in two voices. Consider giving the voices very different attitudes and be sure the reader is able to determine where one voice stops and the other starts.

Use a random line from a book,  personal ad,  billboard,  or overheard conversation as the first line of a poem.

Go to a bookstore or library and sit in the poetry section. Read a few poems from a book by a poet you’ve never heard of and then become a poetry thief. Steal your favorite title (you can even read only the table of contents) and write your own poem or story.

Write a free-verse poem that takes its title from a headline that appears in a tabloid newspaper. You are not required to purchase the tabloid to complete this assignment. Feel free to use the supermarket check-out line as a mini-library.

Jason Leahey
Ride the train or bus (or, if you’re out in the wilds of America and thus not in a public transit city, ride your bike or catch a ride from a buddy) to a stop/neighborhood you’ve never been to before. Once you get there there,  eavesdrop on a few conversations. Write down ten lines of dialogue from at least two people. Make notes about the scene: the people,  the colors,  the smells,  the businesses,  the advertisements,  the looks on the faces of the people passing by. Drink a cup of coffee or eat an orange and hang out for a bit. Then write a scene (or story) in which one character wants to leave the neighborhood and another,  who loves the ‘hood,  tries to persuade him/her to stay. Use at least four lines of the dialogue you noted as a snoop.

 Liz Arnold
Before you visit a new place (anywhere, from the zoo to the Jersey Shore to a new friend’s house) make a list of the sensory impressions you think you’ll experience there. What will you see there? What do you think the place you are going will smell like? What sounds will you hear? What will you taste there? What will you feel? Be specific: The sound of buses or a ferry on the waves,  the smell of exhaust fumes,  the pebbly or soft texture of the sand…. You can make a list of words,  phrases,  or sentences,  or string them together to write a poem or a fictional story. After the trip,  make another list of sensory impressions,  this time of the things you actually experienced on your visit. Then,  use your strongest,  or most interesting or surprising impressions to write another poem or story.

Merna Ann Hecht
Find at least one or two writing partners and create your own summer writing group. Make a commitment to meet once a week at a different spot that defines summer for you. Each week,  take ten to fifteen minutes to record the sensory details of what and who you observe in your surroundings. From this,  create a series of place poems about your neighborhood,  your  town,  or your city. Think of yourself as a street poet or city poet,  with your artistic eye and “see-all” camera lens focused on your surroundings.

You can pattern your poems after writers who have written about their surroundings,  such as “I Am New York City” by Jayne Cortez. Also check out the “Nature & Place” section in From Totems to Hip-Hop edited by Ishmael Reed,  Gary Soto’s poem “Saturday at the Canal, ”  Francisco Alarcon’s poem “Boricua—at the Annual Puerto Rican Parade in New York, ” and “An Excerpt from con flama, ” by Sharon Bridgeforth,  from Naomi Shihab Nye’s collection Is This Forever or What: Poems & Paintings from Texas. Soto’s book Neighborhood Odes might inspire younger writers.

You might want to read or display your place poems in a community center or library for your summer writing finale.

Harriet Riley
Pick any book in your house or at the library. The only deal is that it has to be a book you haven’t read. Copy down the first line of that book. Then use that line as the first line of a story or a poem.

Contributors

Liz Arnold’s essays have been recognized in prose contests held by Georgetown Review and The Atlantic. She writes about design for The Guardian, The New York Times, Interior Design, and others, and has a blog called Homebodies about the people she visits. She taught her first residency through t&w this spring. www.liz-arnold.com  

Karen Benke is the author of Rip The Page! Adventures in Creative Writing (Shambhala, 2013) and a forthcoming book for tweens, Leap Write In! Adventures in Creative Writing to Stretch & Surprise Your One-of-a-Kind Mind (Shambhala, 2013), from which this writing experiment is excerpted. A California Poet in the Schools, visit her at www.karenbenke.com.  

Susan Buttenwieser is a teaching artist with Teachers & Writers Collaborative and with Community-Word Project; She also teaches creative writing workshops with incarcerated women. Her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Failbetter, Epiphany, Bound Off, and other publications.  

Anthony Calypso, a t&w teaching artist, is a writer, filmmaker, and actor from Nyack, New York. He has published short fiction and nonfiction essays in several publications including The Caribbean Writer and the anthology The Butterfly’s Way, edited by Edwidge Danticat, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Calypso also teaches creative nonfiction at The New School.  

Merna Ann Hecht, storyteller, poet, and essayist, teaches creative writing and humanities at the University of Washington Tacoma. For the past nine years, she was a teaching artist for the Seattle Writers in the Schools program. Hecht directs a poetry project with immigrant and refugee youth. Her poems and essays appear in Kaleidoscope, The Storytelling Classroom, Drash: Northwest Mosaic, and other books and journals.  

Sarah LaBrie is a Writers in the Public Schools Fellow at New York University. She taught creative writing and fantasy fiction as a t&w writer-in-residence to students at ps 110 Florence Nightingale School for the 2011–2012 school year.   

Jason Leahey’s fiction, nonfiction, and music journalism have appeared in literary journals, national and international magazines, and local and international newspapers. He has taught creative writing at New York University, where he earned an MFA, and through which he became a two-time Starworks Foundation Fellow, providing creative-writing therapy services at children’s hospitals across New York City and Long Island. After his mfa, Jason moved to Cambodia, where he wrote for the country’s English-language newspaper and taught English at a Buddhist monastery.  

Peter Markus, known in local classrooms as “Mr. Pete,” is a senior writer-in-residence with InsideOut Literary Arts Project in Detroit. He’s a poet and the author of the novel Bob, or Man on Boat (2008), as well as three books of short fiction, Good, Brother (2001), The Moon Is a Lighthouse (2003), and The Singing Fish (2006). A new book of stories, We Make Mud, was released in July 2011.   

Maya Pindyck, a T&W teaching artist, teaches critical writing and reading skills with Sponsors for Educational Opportunity, and is a former New York City Teaching Fellow. She is the author of Friend Among Stones, a collection of poems published by New Rivers Press, and the chapbook Locket, Master, which received a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. Her poems have been widely published in such places as Poets and Artists, Sycamore Review, Bellingham Review, Mississippi Review, and Tusculum Review.   

Harriet Riley is a freelance writer and a writer-in-residence with wits Houston, working in inner-city elementary schools in Houston, Texas. She has taught undergraduate writing classes at the University of West Florida in Pensacola, and has also worked as a non-profit director, hospital marketing director, and newspaper reporter.   

Gary Earl Ross is a novelist, playwright, public radio essayist, and University at Buffalo professor. His books and plays include The Wheel of Desire, Shimmerville, Sleepwalker, Picture Perfect, Blackbird Rising, Murder Squared, and Matter of Intent, winner of the Edgar Award from Mystery Writers of America. He is a past board member of the Just Buffalo Literary Center, which sponsors adult workshops and readings, places writers in classrooms through Writing with Light, and brings international writers to western New York through its Babel program.  

Rachel M. Simon is the author of the poetry collections Theory of Orange and Marginal Road. She teaches writing, gender studies, and film courses at suny Purchase College, Pace University, Bedford Hills Prison, and Poets House.  

Norene Cashen Smith, a writer-in-residence with InsideOut Literary Arts in Detroit, is the contributing editor for the journal Dispatch Detroit and writes about literature and the arts for Detroit’s Metro Times. Her first collection of poems, The Reverse Is also True, was published by Doorjamb Press in 2007.  

Kanishk Tharoor is the Writers in the Public Schools Fellow at New York University. His fiction, which includes publications in the Virginia Quarterly Review and a Penguin India anthology, has won several prizes and been nominated for the National Magazine Award. With Teachers & Writers, he recently taught elementary school students in ps 110 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.