Tap into those sensory details: pine needles under feet, the smell of resin, the crash of the ocean, woodland creature scurrying across the forest floor–write your experience with nature! All contest details, rules, and how to enter can be found at

 www.nps.gov/lewi 

Click on “Youth Nature Writing Contest” for more information

Beyond writing I am also a dancer, dance teacher, and choreographer. I love seeing how the two art forms intersect, how you can tell a story through movement.  I’m hoping to grow as a writer, reader, and teacher through my experience with WITS. See you around!

Students in Marie Pearson’s 3-D Design class at Wilson High School wrote puppet shows with WITS writer Cindy Williams Gutierrez and performed their plays (with the puppets they designed) for their next door neighbors at Rieke Elementary.

Interested artists should email a CV outlining why they’d like to be in the course; they should include any collaborative experiences they’ve had.  Applications must be submitted to danae.hutson@pam.org by Feb. 1st.

For more information go to: http://portlandartmuseum.org/page.aspx?pid=439

With such interactive pieces, the audience had questions for students about the process behind their creating. Each piece had been inspired by an in-class assignment. One student from Emily Harris’ class told about selecting a “boring” item from a sack and then writing about it, in this case a rock. The subsequent broadcast piece was amazingly textured, with a sensory description of a rock that the audience could virtually smell and feel as the student described it. In Nicole Georges class, students chose “weird” headlines and created a comic about them. Again, students displayed impressive creativity, building a multi-page story around a deceptively simple phrase.

It was certainly an entertaining evening for everyone involved. Many thanks to Broadway Books for hosting and to all those who came and participated!

On Tuesday December 6, Powell’s City of Books hosted the release party for the 2010-2011 WITS anthology of student writing, No One Carries an Umbrella Here. More than 130 students, family members and other community members came out to celebrate student writers reading their poems, plays, prose and comics from the anthology.

The above photo features Lincoln student Lexi Walker reading “A Voice That Darkened with Age.”  Audience members may have recognized another student writer, Jin Mei McMahon from Cleveland High School, who read a piece titled “Her Logic.”  Jin Mei was this year’s winner of the Glimmer Train Prize for Prose.  She “opened” for biographer Stacy Schiff at her Portland Arts and Lectures event this fall.

Stephen Kennedy reading his comic at Powell's

WITS writers Hunt Holman, Mark Pomeroy and Donna Prinzmetal read pieces for students who were not able to attend the event.

Thank you to all the students, teachers, and writers who contributed to the WITS anthology.  A big thank you to Powell’s for hosting!

Tom Brokaw fields questions from Wilson High students.

Tom Brokaw made time during a busy Portland visit to meet with students from Wilson High School at the new Literary Arts event space downtown. He told the student journalists they are coming of age at a critical time. While the future of print journalism is uncertain, Brokaw said he remains optimistic that “the culture of journalism, that of informing US citizens of what is being said around the world in their name, will not change.” Then he opened the floor for student questions, “or answers.”

One visitor remarked that when listening to coverage of the Pearl Harbor attack, she was struck by the emotion in the correspondent’s voice. Asked to name an event that had a similar effect on him, Brokaw said, “9/11. We were as unprepared for 9/11 as they were for Pearl Harbor. Nobody knew what was coming next.” He remembered being focused on getting through the next hour, and telling the audience what was known, without adding speculation.

Students arrived at the meeting with questions already prepared. They had read in class copies of Brokaw’s book, The Greatest Generation, supplied by Literary Arts’ Students to the Schnitz program. They were on their way to his appearance at the Schnitzer that night. After a lively discussion, Brokaw offered his signature advice to those aspiring to a career in journalism, “Have you thought about medicine?”