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!

On a sunny Monday evening, students read their work at Girasole Pizza in St. Johns for an audience of parents, teachers, WITS writers, and other fans.

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 [...]

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 [...]

Our second year of matching volunteer mentors with high school students at Franklin High School was a great success! Student interest was even higher this year, with 37 students receiving one-on-one help with their college and scholarship application essays. We’re excited to be expanding the program to Madison High School this year, with a mentoring [...]

Our report for the 2010-11 WITS program has just been released and is available to read online. Click here to read and learn more about what we’ve been up to this past year!

We’ve just made all of our digital chapbooks–past and present–available online through Issuu.com, an online reader. These are tons more fun to read than ordinary PDFs (they actually look and feel like books!), so please check them out! To view our library, you can visit our profile at http://www.issuu.com/literary-arts.

Our annual WITS Summit was held in Hood River, Oregon, this year and the attendance and enthusiasm were at their highest yet. The Columbia Gorge Arts in Education hosted the event, and participants came from organizations around the state, including Fishtrap, The Nature of Words, professor Marjorie Sandor and four students from Oregon State University’s [...]