W.o.o.t.s.

Whether it was the hand of destiny that brought me here, or mere luck, as soon as I heard about an opportunity to work for Literary Arts, I jumped on it.  Then, I winded myself by jumping more when I received the phone call letting me know I had been chosen as one of their summer interns.  Even now, I sometimes have to fight the urge to jump like an excited little kid when I think about the work I am able to do.

Besides the fact that it has been good for my cardiovascular fitness, I believe that the experience of working here for a summer has been invaluable for me as a writer.  It has reinforced the belief that I have always held:  if you do what you love, the rest will fall into place.

I remember being discouraged earlier in the year when I was searching for a job, any job, related to my major.  Again and again, I came up with nada, zilch, nothing.  I kept wondering what an English major actually does.  A whole new world of possibilities has been opened to me, and I will be forever grateful to Literary Arts for doing this.

Not only have I been able to be a major part of the publishing process of the WITS Anthology, but I have become acquainted with many awesome people who are as passionate about literature as I am.  To me, there is nothing more noble than encouraging high school kids to exercise their creativity.  Maybe some of them will discover a love and a talent for writing just as I was able to.

Literary Arts trusted me with a great amount of freedom when they handed me an assignment to create an annual report for WITS.  I was given basic information to include and instructions to make it interesting and fun.  I was excited to utilize my creativity and push myself.  This was a learning experience, because I had no previous exposure to Adobe Indesign.  With the help of Kelly, the other WITS intern, and some good feedback, I completed the report!

The directions I was given to get to the office for my interview sum up perfectly my unique experience, “Go past Blue Hour, and you will see giant, silver doors.  Go through these, then up the stairs by the big, wooden beaver.  Then, use the red phone to call up to Literary Arts and someone will meet you.”  Although baffling at the time, as soon as I hung up the phone, I thought “Holy wow, this sounds like a cool place.”

Natalie Oaks, WITS Intern

Hello, my name is Mel, and I’m addicted to written words. You can laugh, but I’m serious. I have friends who hide their magazines when I come over because I get sucked into the articles and stop paying attention to the conversation. I’ve stumbled into classes or work with puffy, bloodshot eyes and zero attention span not because I was partying all night, but because I’d found a book that I simply could not put down. It’s embarrassing.

On the other hand, books saved my life. No, I wasn’t shot in the back and the bullet was stopped by a hardcover in my bag (although that would be kind of awesome). Nor had I decided to pull a Virginia Woolf until I read a passage by my favorite author and decided life was worth living. Sometimes I wish it was that cleanly dramatic. Instead, books taught me how to breathe when it felt as though life was drowning me.

My attempt to explain: I believe that everyone feels like a lonely oddball sometimes (as someone who hit 5’10” in 6^th grade, I’m well acquainted with awkward).  Books gave me a chance to see the world through someone else’s eyes—to try on other people’s perspectives—as I was figuring out my own story. The more I read, the more I realized that everyone, everywhere, is making things up as they go, and that I could write my own story however I wished. This drawn-out epiphany handed me a get-out-of-jail-free card and has made me a passionate believer in the power of storytelling.

Books also led me to my current position at Literary Arts, specifically as an assistant to Mary, the WITS Program Director. I’m excited to be here…like doing-cartwheels-when-the-boss-isn’t-looking excited. My job includes a little of everything (office management, social marketing, editing, and event planning, to name a few) but best part is working with people who are fun, wicked smart, and dedicated to nurturing the literary community in Portland. I can’t wait to see a fresh group of students learning to see and tell about their world in new ways. I’m excited to learn what they have to tell.

When a roomful of creative, intrepid leaders begins talking about their successes in teaching youth about writing, it’s hard to resist their enthusiasm. At the recent WITS Summit, every seat was filled by representatives from organizations working around the state with one goal in mind: nurturing the next generation through writing education.

Many shared feedback from their students, eliciting both laughter and impressed murmurs as they read excerpts aloud. But at times the tone darkened. Most groups are already running on shoestring budgets and dedicated volunteers, and they’re facing tough decisions as grants and other support for the arts dwindles. But even amid frank discussions about financial strategies and cuts, the conversation continued to focus on how to best serve everyone’s local communities. Their priorities were clear.

“You make a difference,” said BJ Blake, a principal from Eugene. Her words silenced the shuffle of paper and shifting of bodies in seats. “What you do matters.”

Instead of a glitzy swag bag, each participant left with new fundraising ideas, impressive samples of student work, inspiring contact with colleagues, and the warm buzz of optimism that Oregon continues to be a great place for both writers and students of writing.

Check out the participants and see how you can get involved:

Fishtrap

The Gorge Writing Project

Jefferson Nature Center

The Nature of Words (NOW)

Salem Art Association (SAA)

Silverton Poetry Association

Wordstock

Writers in the Schools (WITS)

Young Writers Association (YWA)

In high school, besides conversations with my very best friend (whom I talked to about everything I read, heard, did, and ate, so it doesn’t really count), I never really talked with my peers about books. We’d say whether we liked the novels we read for class or not, and then go over the SparkNotes characters page in the hallway before class Monday morning, but that was about it.

This changed when I bought my used copy of the Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, at a used bookstore in Ashland, Oregon, where I went to get away from the less interesting, more close-minded Southern Oregon town where I actually lived. I started reading the book in the park and couldn’t stop. I read it twice, and preceded to lend it to everyone I knew until it became old and frayed (just like that picture up there!). I lent it to my sister, and it became the gift she gave to everyone she cared about, saying “You HAVE to read it.”

The Perks was published by MTV press in 1999, and doesn’t try to be too literary. It is about being young and confused, dealing with social pressures, drugs, sexuality, and finding your place in the world. Sounds stereotypical and angsty, and it might be (just a little), but the way that Chbosky writes just works.

At a time when my emotions were at a dazzling but vulnerable high, I read this book and clicked with the narrator Charlie’s feelings so well it sometimes made me cry. While some of the themes are heavy (it is a banned book in many states because of the issues it covers and the rawness of detail), it also relays the pure happiness you can feel from making the perfect mixtape, or meeting the person who you know will become your best friend. In my favorite scene, Charlie rides in the bed of a truck, the wind in his face, his best friends in the cab, feeling “INFINITE.”

One warning: This book is kind of like your own diary—it is beautifully raw and truthful, but when you read it again five years later you may cringe. Read it now, when you are Charlie’s age, feeling what he feels.

A couple of quotes from the book:

“So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I’m still trying to figure out how that could be.”

“I am very interested and fascinated by how everyone loves each other, but no one really likes each other.”

Another reason you should read this book in your last month or so of summer: I’ve seen a rather large stack of much-loved used copies at Powells.

-Kelly, WITS intern

I’ve spent the past couple of weeks reading through WITS students’ writing, preparing to pick the pieces for the 2009-2010 anthology. The truthfulness of the students’ work, and the pictures they create move me more than I ever expected, and when I heard Matthew Dickman read in a mosquito-y amphitheatre at Reed in July as a part of the Tin House Writers Conference reading series, I realized why.

Matthew Dickman’s reading was placed between those of two fiction writers, Jon Raymond and Antonya Nelson. For me, this brought out the fact that Matthew Dickman writes mostly about himself and his life: about the Lents district where he grew up, about the people who sit next to him in coffee shops, about the ankles of the woman he currently loves. These are the same types of things that the students’ writing focuses on, the things that really matter to them.

Many times, as I have found myself writing about moments that might mean nothing to anyone but me, I have felt a bit self-obsessed. David Shields, another writer who was at the Tin House Conference, wrote an entire book about why non-fiction writing is infinitely more important than fiction. A couple of the statements in this book, Reality Hunger, made me feel differently about writing for myself. Shields sees the world as a very lonely place, where we are all trapped within our walled little consciousnesses. Non-fiction writing, he says, provides a bridge between your consciousness and others.

This is exactly what I appreciate about Matthew Dickman, and about the student writers whose consciousnesses will soon grace the pages of the 2009-2010 WITS anthology.

Go to: http://www.fishousepoems.org/archives/matthew_dickman/ to read some of Matthew Dickman’s poems from his wonderful book All-American Poem (one of my favorite books of all time.)

Please comment on this post with writers who you feel share these qualities, or influence your own ability to write about what you live and think.

-Kelly, WITS intern

In fall 2008 Billy Pham participated in a Writers in the Schools residency at Benson High School with poet Carlos Reyes. Last year Billy’s poem “Silenced Fantasies” was published in the WITS Anthology A Whole New Subject and chosen by TriMet for the Poetry in Motion program.  You can read Billy’s poem on buses and on MAX throughout Portland and you can hear him talk about his writing (and rapping) with Emily Harris, the host of OPB’s Think Out Loud on July 1 at 9 am.

For the first time ever, WITS started an eight week after school writing club at Beverly Cleary for 6th – 8th graders.

Only four 7th graders signed up, but even with such a small class, instructors Joanna Rose and Jenny Chu had a blast!

They did everything from free writes while listening to music, pantoum and cinquain poems,  journey pieces in a form called haibun, writing about trash on Earth Day, to drawing a character named Ogoo Erval – which each person, along with the instructors, had a hand in creating.

During the last two weeks, the kids created ‘zines to publish the pieces they wrote.

On the last day they had a reading party where parents were the audience. There were words, laughter, cupcakes and the feeling that writing is incredibly creative and fun at any age!

The picture below shows the Beverly Cleary After School Writing Club holding up their finished ‘zines on the last day.

Over 75 students from SEIS on the Roosevelt campus in North Portland attended the Isabel Allende lecture at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in downtown Portland on May 11.  The event was a partnership between Literary Arts, Powell’s Books and the Miracle Theatre.  Tickets and transportation were provided to the SEIS community through Literary Arts’ Writers in the Schools program.

SEIS students read Allende’s The Stories of Eva Luna to prepare for the event and asked some of the evening’s best questions, including, “What makes a good ending for a story?”  After the lecture, students reported that seeing Allende in person added to their understanding of her work.  One SEIS student, Angel, said, “Allende wants the reader to be part of the story; she leaves her endings open on purpose, so we make our own stories as well.”

When: May 18, 6:30 pm
Where: Midland Library/large meeting room (805 Southeast 122nd Avenue) 
Who: Students from Marshall Campus (Biz Tech, Linus Pauling and Renaissance Arts High Schools)
     w/ WITS writers: Natalie Serber & Cindy Williams Gutierrez

When: May 20, 7:00 pm 
Where: Ladybug Organic Coffee Co. (8438 N Lombard Street)  
Who: Students from Roosevelt Campus (SEIS, ACT, POWER High Schools)
     w/ WITS writers: Carmen Bernier-Grand, Emma Oliver & Chris Cotrell

When: May 21, 7:00 pm 
Where: Portland Art Museum/Marion L. Miller Gallery (1219 SW Park Ave)
Who: Students from Lincoln High School
     w/ WITS writers: Laura Moulton & John Isaacson

When: May 26, 6:00 pm 
Where: Talking Drum Bookstore/Reflections Cafe (446 NE Killingsworth) 
Who: Students from Jefferson High School
     w/ WITS writers: Renee Mitchell & Nicole Georges

When: May 27, 7:00 pm 
Where: BiPartisan Cafe (7901 SE Stark Street) 
Who: Students from Franklin High School
     w/ WITS writers: Alexis Nelson & Hunt Holman