W.o.o.t.s.

“It’s important to know that all stories have been told, but you can bring something new to them. Inspiration comes from everything; it isn’t something magical. You sit in front of the computer and you hope the writing happens.” Chimamanda Adichie offered this straightforward truth to a group of over one hundred students and faculty [...]

The day after MCing Verselandia! Portland’s first city-wide poetry slam for high school students, World Poetry Slam champion Anis Mojgani visited the Roosevelt High School writing center and met with fifty Rough Riders.  ”Do you ever run into people who don’t take art and poetry seriously as a job?” asked a student.  ”All the time,” said [...]

“Geography is destiny; Napoleon said that, ” Abraham Verghese recites to a group of Jefferson High School students. He proceeds to describe how this maxim had proved true in his own life. His parents, both Indian teachers living in the Southern state of Kerala, had met and married in Ethiopia, where they had been recruited [...]

Last Wednesday, WITS writers convened at Literary Arts to eat Ethiopian food cart fare and talk shop. The dinner conversation covered such topics as how to continue your writing practice when you’re teaching, writing groups in Portland, and how to share your writing process with students. Teaching came up too, of course–from the best lesson [...]

Chaos reigned under the marquee Tuesday as precisely 794 book-crazed teenagers, high on fiction and spoiling for a lecture, stormed the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. They came from as far away as Corbett High School in the Gorge to hear Heidi Durrow talk about her Bellwether Prize-winning novel, and this year’s Everybody Reads book, The [...]

Local graphic artist and WITS writer Nicole Georges will be contributing illustrations to Portlandia’s “Most Portland Thing Ever” contest. The show’s creators picked five submissions from many and asked Nicole to provide illustrations to accompany the hilarious Portland stories. Read the whole story here.

WITS writers and cartoonists John Isaacson and Nicole Georges have contributed art to an upcoming series of comic books recounting Oregon’s illustrious history. Oregon History Comics Vol. 1-10 recounts historical topics near and dear to Oregon’s heart, such as: the Vanport Flood, the streets of Chinatown, and the damning of Celilo Falls. The release will be [...]

    Hello to all of our W.O.O.T.S. readers. My name is Acacia     Blackwell, and I, along with Kaitlyn, work as an intern with Writers in the Schools. I am currently a senior at Lewis and Clark College, majoring in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. My own writing, inspired by my lovably neurotic family, [...]

 The fourth annual Youth Nature Writing Contest at Lewis and Clark National Historic Park is calling for submissions from young nature writers in grades 9-12. The contest is open to all Oregon and Washington high school students.  Submit your 500 word non-fiction essay about a hiking experience you’ve had. It could be a muddy hike, [...]

Hi! I’m Kaitlyn the PSU WITS intern.  I’m a second year student in the Fiction MFA program.  My thesis is my main focus of study right now which means I am (supposed to be) writing a lot. I’ve gotten to take some excellent workshops and seminars about the craft of writing.  My fiction has appeared [...]