2013 SCHOLASTIC WRITING AWARDS
 Of the 25,000 submissions from across the country, our Writopia writer won the top scholarship! Congratulations...
- Isabella Giovannini for winning the Scholastic Award's National Gold Medal Portfolio and $10,000 scholarship!
Congratulations to all of Writopia's 2013 National Medalists, grades 7-12: Olivia Alcabes, Rachel Calnek-Sugin, Sarah Cooke, Gillian Page, Lillie Lainoff, Clara Olshansky, Eva Shapiro, Katherine Snoddy, Altana Elings-Haynie, John Lhota, Alec Montgomery, Allegra Brogard, Emma Koosis, Alice Markham-Cantor, and Clea Woodbury.
And congratulations to the 146 Writopia writers who won recognition on the regional level, and to every single writer of all ages at Writopia who inspire and entertain us each day--we love you for it!
- Alice Markham-Cantor, "Best of Borough" in Poetry.
- May Treuhaft-Ali, Honorable Mention in Poetry.
Our college essay students won admissions to top schools along with top scholarships!
Congratulations: May Treuhaft-Ali, Yale; Layla Treuhaft-Ali, Wesleyan; Matthew Arbess, Brown; Julie Byrnes, winner of a Questbridge
 scholarship and admittance to Vassar; Katie Hartman, University of Pennsylvania; Nora Miller, Hampshire College; Isabella Giovannini, Yale; Sarah Cooke, Brown; Lillie Lainoff, Yale; Cecilia Laguarda, Princeton;Alice Markham-Cantor, Weslyan; Fard Shabazz, BMCC; Akiva Schick, Yeshiva University; Jessica Zeng, Bennington College, and to so many more of you!!
Please welcome Writopia Chicago! Writopia workshops will appear for the first time in the midwest this August. We are thrilled that author Trish Cooke is spearheading this branch.
Please welcome Writopia Long Island! Workshops began this past spring, run by comedy writer Whitney Meers. Donna Sheeler (yes; Danielle's mother) is the branch manager.
Please welcome Writopia Hudson Valley! Veteran Writopia instructor, Rachel Ephraim is spearheading this branch. Camps in this area begin this August!
Writopia was featured in a segment for Voice of America!
 We did it! At our annual benefit in March, we raised $50,000 to expand our outreach and scholarship programs.
Thank you to Stephen Dubner and Nicole Krauss, who read, spoke, and led our fundraising efforts.
The Worldwide Plays Festival has grown! Over the 2012-2013 school-year, we produced over 80 plays in our series of staged readings, and in our Off-Broadway festival May 8th through May 12th.
Congratulations to our accomplished playwrights! Several playwrights received media attention for their works:
In 2012, Writopia began a new partnership with theNew York Public Library. We now run free workshops in public libraries throughout New York City. Enrichment doesn't end the last day of those workshops. Writopia's Driven to Write initiative ensures that we commit to chaparoning at least one writer from each NYPL workshop to Writopia's NYC locations on a regular basis.
This summer, we will run a writing camp withHomes for the Homeless at the Saratoga Family Inn, conducting a full summer of workshops for children and teens who reside at this shelter.
In addition to our sliding-scale fees, 18% of writers who participated in Writopia workshops attended using full scholarships.
Support from our wonderful community allows all of these programs to develop. If you would like to get involved, please contact us!
 At Writopia's Annual Benefit, we honored several of our young writers for their incredible writing and for their work with the Writopia community.
Isabella Giovannini and Alice Markham-Cantor (High School) -- The Susan Cain Award for Humility, Commitment, and Outstanding Work
Grant Gordon (Middle School)-- The Susan Cain Award for Humility, Commitment, and Outstanding Work
Annelie Hyatt (Elementary School)-- The Susan Cain Award for Humility, Commitment, and Outstanding Work
Katie Hartman and Rebecca Teich -- Outstanding Dedication to Craft, Service, and Excellence Award
Teddy Becker-Jacobs-- Community and Development Award
Rachel Calnek-Sugin, Akiva Schick, and Clea Woodbury-- Community and Mentorship Award
Margaret Heftler, Abigail Sylvor Greenberg, and Jaiden Robinson -- Changing Worlds with Poetry Award
Matt Arbess -- Changing Worlds with Personal, Outstanding Work
Ian Sherman and Ali Levinson-- Changing Worlds with Exemplary Dramatic Scripts.
Alice Markham-Cantor, who has been writing at Writopia since 2008, was honored by Mayor Bloomberg at the inaugural NYC Literary Honors, along with Toni Morrison, John Ashbery, Calvin Trillin, Jon Scieszka, and Jules Feiffer
, for the excellence and breadth of her writing collection. Congratulations, Alice!
THE LARRY NEAL AWARDS
The Larry Neal Writers' Competition commemorates the artistic legacy and vision of Larry Neal, the renowned author, academic, and former Executive Director of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (DCCAH). Congratulations to our DC writers and instructors who were honored with these awards!
YOUTH CATEGORIES:
Poetry Finalist: Sophia Diggs-Galligan
Fiction Finalists: Celia Doherty, Naomi Steinglass
Essay Finalist: Raya Kenney
TEEN CATEGORIES:
Fiction Finalists: Bridget Dease, Lucy Rose Freshour
ADULT CATEGORIES:
Fiction Finalist: Kathy Crutcher (Writopia Lab DC director & instructor)
Dramatic Writing Finalist: Norman Allen (Writopia instructor)
Congratulations to our teens on these accomplishments:
- Rebecca Teich, recipient of the Telluride Association Summer Program Scholarship (TASP)--a full scholarship to attend a 6 week seminar at the University of Michigan sponsored by the Telluride Association. Rebecca was also awarded the Knopf Poetry Prize (Honorable Mention City College of New York, Poetry Outreach Center), as part of their City-Wide Poetry Contest and Festival.
- Ian Sherman attended the New England's Young Writers Conference at Bread Loaf this past spring. Ian will also be published in Ginosko's 13th e-mag issue this year, and the Creative Communications Spring 2013 Anthology 2013, and was the Silver Award Winner of YVNV's 2013 "Write a Dream." As a result, his play "Finding My Voice" is being produced at the 201Alliance 3 Theatre Education Black Box at the Woodruff Arts Center in downtown Atlanta, Georgia.
- Congratulations to Riley Pearsall and Joe Polsky for their acceptance into the Iowa Young Writers' Studio! And to Ian Sherman and Rachel Calnek-Sugin who will be attending Kenyon's Young Writer's Studio Workshop this summer.
- Congratulations to Annelie Hyatt for writing an award winning essay on "What the American Flag means to me" for the Forest Hills Gardens Corporations.
- Jordana Frankel's debut novel, The Ward, was published in April.
- Stephanie Strohm's new novel Confederates Don't Wear Couture, will be released on June 4th.
- Jane Kelly will be the Thurber House Children's Writer in Residence of 2013.
- Dan Kitrosser's play The Mumblings will be part of the New York International Fringe Festival this summer.
- Playwright Stephen Cedars, Winner of Theater Masters Visionary Playwright Award and a finalist for Stella Adler Playwright-in-Residence Program.
- Hannah Wolf, teaching assistant and the Associate Artistic Director of the Worldwide Plays Fetival, will be spending 2013-14 in Bucharest, Romania on a Fulbright Grant, awarded by the US State Department. There she'll be directing new plays and collaborating with emerging Romanian playwrights to translate new American plays in Romanian, and will be creating new works with these emerging Romanian playwrights.
- Chris Tarry's short story collection How to Carry Bigfoot Home will be published by Red Hen Press in early 2015.
- Cristin Terrill's debut young adult novel All Our Yesterdays, will be published by Disney-Hyperion on September 3rd. The book recentely received a starred review from Kirkus, and has been optioned for film by Gold Circle Films and Global Produce.
- Kathleen McCleary’s third novel, Leaving Haven is due out Oct. 1, 2013 from HarperCollins. Her second novel, A Simple Thing (HarperCollins 2012) was recently nominated for the Library of Virginia Literary Awards in fiction.
- Tony Mancus has two forthcoming chapbooks: Bye Sea (Tree Light Books) and Diplomancy (Horse Less Press), and his poems have appeared this year or are forthcoming in numerous literary magazine, including Radioactive Moat, Horse Less Review, Phantom Limb, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Thrush Poetry Journal, and others.
- Jessica Spotswood went on a Penguin Books for Young Readers East Coast tour in February to celebrate the paperback release of Born Wicked: Book One in the Cahill Witch Chronicles. Book Two, Star Cursed, will be out in hardback on June 18.
- Christie Hauser's debut novel, Maritime,will be published by William Morrow in 2014.
 Over the past year, Writopia Lab has joined in on the national debate on writing education and the new common core standards. Rebecca Wallace-Segall, Writopia Lab's Executive Director Founder, wrote op-eds for The Atlantic and for TakePart. She has also made the case for the value of creative writing instruction in schools in her TedxYouth talk, and in her TedxDESA talk.
We have loved every moment of this past school year (check out the pictures!), and we are looking forward to a fantastic summer of writing workshops and camps. Join us!
THANK YOU!
 Thank you to all Writopians for inspiring us with your writing every day. And thank you parents, guardians, and community supporters for reading and celebrating our news with us, and for helping us blossom into the most socioeconomically diverse creative writing youth community in New York--and the most exciting writing program in the country!
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1 comment:
This is gorgeous!
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