Monday, April 09, 2007
Writopia
It could be spring and all the fresh activity (snow flurries be damned), but I seem to be building a theme around new developments from my writer friends.
My workshop teacher, mentor and friend Rebecca Segall has launched writopian.org.
I found Rebecca on Craig’s List a few years ago, when she advertised her new nonfiction writing workshop. To my huge relief she had great credentials and a social white bunny hopping around in her apartment. Over the next two years, Rebecca and few other serious babes that became workshop friends helped to harness my work, and kept me going.
If only I had their help here for the rushed, split-attention blog posting of which I’m guilty. I tend to write in stealth mode while doing 27 other things and come back later to find typos, redundancies, and nonsensical babbling. Actually, maybe I’m glad they don’t read my blog and offer criticism. Scary thought, that. The writing in workshop was the clearest picture I can manage, while for various reasons my dear mintjelly is an image made with a pinhole camera… from a shoe box… that’s not held perfectly still.
Participating her workshop was one of the most productive and organized things I’ve done with myself since moving to NYC. Saying that doesn’t describe the transcendent nature of the workshopping experience or quality of pieces that came from it.
People don’t often transcend on blogs and as I write this, God’s not exactly walking through the room, but I’m happy for that experience and grateful for the excellent things have come of it.
I just got this in an email from her, and feel it’s an announcement worth posting:
Writopia‘s award-winning young writers (ages 12-15) will be reading their original memoirs, op-eds, short stories, and poetry at Barnes & Noble at Lincoln Center at 5:00pm on Thursday, May 10th. PLEASE COME! Our kids labored over their creative work for months and are so excited to share their polished pieces with you!!! (All of the readers have won silver or gold regional and national awards from the prestigious 2007 Scholastic Artist & Writers Awards.)
Writopia (www.writopian.org) is the Upper West Side’s community of young writers, ages 12-17. We are a nonprofit organization that seeks to:
- Enable New York City’s young writers to find each other and form a community of like-minded peers
- Provide an open, safe, and nurturing space for teens who are highly engaged in creative and intellectual endeavors
- Identify ways that creative youth can use their gifts to further their academic success
- Connect teens (via memoir exchanges) across the city, throughout the country, and around the world who are learning to write about personal experiences and challenges. (i.e., our summer memoirists have the opportunity to participate in the Iraq/U.S. Youth Memoir Exchange Project.)
[correction: when i posted this i inadvertently closed the blockquote tag after the next paragraph, indicating that the words below were from someone other than myself. the below is my experience and what i know of her summer workshop for young writers]
One of the best things Rebecca did for our workshop was limit the size of our group and then over time, preserve the atmosphere by keeping it to specific individuals and myself, who made complimentary work and who knew each other’s stories (literal and figuratively). She made a place that was safe enough to write honestly, combined that with legitimate critique, geared towards creating something publishable. In my experience her methods and advice are spot-on, and I have published work made in her workshop (thank the gods for nom de plumes).
Her summer youth writing workshop different from others in that they invite a maximum of only six participants, meet daily, place a strong emphasis on completing and polishing award-winning and publishable stories.
Also, I have a feeling there’s an excellent combo of brain and heart, and they don’t busy themselves with being snarky and elitist and lame, nor myopic, obtuse and lame.
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