W.o.o.t.s.

Congrats to all the students who read their work at BiPartisan cafe last Thursday night! The space was packed to standing-room-only with friends, parents, siblings, teachers, WITS writers, and the students courageous enough to share their writing. We’re looking forward to receiving submissions for the WITS anthology!

Despite being interrupted by a fire alarm and having to evacuate the museum into the park blocks, Lincoln students and their fans (including parents, siblings, teachers, and friends) had a great end-of-residency reading. At the end, the Lincoln teachers presented WITS writer Laura Moulton with a book of found poems they had made with their [...]

Thirty students from all the PPS high schools rocked the Mission Theater during the first city-wide slam poetry competition, Verselandia! Three students from each school (who had won their school’s playoffs) had three minutes each to perform an original poem. Names were drawn at random from a fishbowl and a panel of five judges held [...]

On the afternoon before her lecture at the Schnitz, the 2012 Everybody Reads author Heidi Durrow returned to her alma mater for the first time since she graduated from Jefferson High School. “I have so many memories here,” she said as we walked through the auditorium.           In the sunlit band [...]

On the heels of a sold-out show at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall on February 7, renowned New York-based storytelling group The Moth brought its MothShop workshop to Benson High School. Four Benson students met with The Moth producers to prepare their own stories for performance before an audience of their peers. For those who [...]

Parents, friends, teachers and writers packed into Annie Bloom’s Books to see Wilson students read  poetry, prose, and drama written during the previous semester with a WITS writer-in-residence. The classes hosting a writer included Creative Writing, 3D Design, and US History. WITS writer Cindy Williams Gutierrez spoke of creating art from books and writing poems [...]

It was certainly a 21st-century reading at Broadway books on Wednesday night, with students reading their comics projected onto a screen and playing radio pieces they had pre-recorded for broadcast. The pieces were produced in two residencies at Benson High School this past semester: graphic novelist Nicole Georges taught in Dave Mylet’s classroom, and journalist [...]

As a follow-up to our fall essay mentoring event at Franklin High School, last week we reconvened juniors and the mentors who had helped them. In the fall, students brainstormed topics and mentors helped them begin working on an essay for their college and scholarship applications. This time, students came with an essay they had [...]

In our final WITS reading for Spring 2011, Franklin and Portland Night High School students read to a (packed!) audience at BiPartisan Cafe. It was one of our largest readings yet, and it was wonderful to see so many friends and parents attending. Each student, teacher, and writer did a fantastic job, and we’re already [...]

First, thanks to Girasole Pizza for hosting an awesome reading last night! The sunny room was packed with students, teachers, WITS writers, parents, and Literary Arts board who enjoyed wood-fired pizzas and both listened and watched students read their work. We had a projector for those who’d drawn comics, and the applause for everyone was [...]