Young Writers Read at Fort Greene Park Summer Literary Festival
Anjelika Amog, 16, stood on the ledge of the Fort Greene Park Prison Ship Martyrs Monument and shared a deep, heartfelt story at the annual Summer Literary Festival on Aug. 24. The piece, written during this summer’s youth writing workshops offered by the New York Writers Coalition, was an introspective look at her perfectionism in school, among other personal issues.
Amog, a Stuyvesant High School student, started attending the workshops seven years ago. At first, she said, she didn’t even know that she could write. But during the sessions, her thoughts began pouring out. “Emotional distress is debilitating for my sanity, but lovely for my art,” Amog said about her writing.
The festival was the culmination of six workshops held in the park on Saturday mornings in July and August. During the workshops, four groups of students – from 7-year-olds to teenagers – sat on blankets with notebooks and pens. Their teachers provided prompts, which some students used to get their writing juices flowing, according to Nancy Weber, program director of the New York Writers Coalition. Some of the prompts were quirky, such as a describing a battle between a dinosaur and tupperware, Amog said.
“The kids aren’t often given the chance to speak from their heart, to listen to their own voice, writing not just a five-paragraph essay,” said Erin Hopkins, the development manager of the New York Writer’s Coalition.
Hopkins told The Nabe about a boy who attended the writing workshops for years. At first he had severe stage fright when he anticipated performing at the festival. A few years later, Hopkins said, the boy read a piece outlining one truth and one lie about himself.
“I am stage fright,” the boy said into the microphone. The audience assumed he was reading the true statement. To their surprise, he followed it with, “That’s the lie,” Hopkins recalled.
“It’s amazing,” said Aaron Zimmerman, the executive director of the New York Writer’s Coalition. “Some of the kids seem nervous, but they’re owning it. They have a sense of craft and they really love it.”
Zimmerman helped start the writing workshops and the literary fest nine years ago. He hoped that the workshops would help kids develop a creative voice and provide a contrast to a classroom atmosphere, where they are graded on technical aspects of their writing, such as spelling.
“Quite a few of the teens are on the cusp of taking writing to another level,” Zimmerman said.
Tema Regist, 17, is one of them. Regist, a Midwood High School senior who plans to study English and nursing in college, said that she was afraid to go on stage at first. But she has blossomed since then: She read a moving poem about abortion at the festival, and told The Nabe she recently wrote another piece in response to the Trayvon Martin verdict. Her siblings, Tristan, 14, Talaia, 12 and Tayon, 10, also participated in the summer workshops and read their pieces at the festival.
Nina Sedares, 10, who attends Community Roots Charter School in Fort Greene, read an imaginative short story inspired by one of her friends, in which the friend finds an elephant truck in her window.
“I’m really glad because I really like to perform my work,” Sedares said. “The only people I shared my writing with [before] were my parents and my brother.”
The young scribes shared the stage with established writers, including Chris Adrian, who has published short stories and three novels; Timothy Small, a former journalist working on a novel; and Jackson Taylor, a poet, novelist and anthologist.
“I make no distinction between young writers and myself,” Taylor said during the festival after-party at Greenlight Bookstore. “We all pursue a practice that is skill-based and seek to earn a legitimate voice and legitimate form of power.”