teacher ambassador membership
- 2019/2020
- yearly membership
Project Write Now is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization transforming individuals, organizations, and communities through writing.
By taking a class, you help support our community outreach programs.
announcements
upcoming classes
Tween Writing Group
- (ages 11-13)
- SIX WEEKS
- Nov 6 - Dec 18
- (No Class Nov 27)
- Wednesdays, 5 to 6:30 p.m.
- with Lisa Hartsgrove
Teen Writing Group
- (ages 14-18)
- FIVE WEEKS
- Nov 7 - Dec 19
- (No Class Nov 14 & Nov 28)
- Thursdays, 5:30 to 7 p.m.
- moderated by Lisa Hartsgrove
Songwriting Studio
- (ages 11-14)
- FIVE WEEKS
- Nov 15 - Dec 20
- (No Class Nov 29)
- Fridays, 4:30 to 6 p.m.
- with Mimi Cross
recent news
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october community outreach
Red Bank Middle School: This month, to help generate ideas in our notebooks, we focused our weekly writing workshops with our 7th and 8th grade AVID students on topics we are familiar with and places that are special to us. We kicked off the month drafting stories about our names and the impact they have on our lives after reading “My Name” from The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros.
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september community outreach
We LOVE the start of a new school year! It was a short month, but we accomplished a lot …
Red Bank Middle School: We are so excited to be back writing with the 7th and 8th grade AVID students at RBMS! Our 8th graders were thrilled to see us again–some even ran up to give us hugs and high fives! And the 7th graders seemed just as happy to start writing with us. … -
celebrating five years!
Five years ago this month, we opened our doors with a bold plan: to help people become better writers. We had one small classroom on the second floor of a cool, industrial-style building in Red Bank and a staff of four. We were excited to share our mission and our passion for writing. At the time, we had no idea how life-changing the writing experiences would be—not only for our students but also for our own organization.
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august community outreach
Summer is coming to an end, and although we are sad to say goodbye to students in our summer programs, we are excited for the new school year. We are gearing up to head back to our Tuesday writing sessions at Red Bank Middle School and our Monday afternoon program with the 21st Century Community Learning Center in Long Branch. And we are ready to provide college essay support to select groups at Red Bank Regional, Long Branch High School, and the Poseidon Early College High School.
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july community outreach
We can’t believe July is over! We have been so busy with our summer programs, we’ve hardly had a chance to remember that it is, in fact, SUMMERTIME! Here’s a little of what we’ve been up to: Teen Internship Program: Teaching Assistants: During training, our teaching assistant interns created lesson plans to teach in our summer programs. But first, they practiced those lessons on us and one another!
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Sports Writing Q&A
Discover your voice and make meaningful friendships! Our Teen Summer Workshops (for 11-14-year-olds) provides students with an intensive…
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june community outreach
The end of the school year is always bittersweet. We have to say goodbye to the students we’ve been writing with throughout the year. At Red Bank Middle School, we get to see the culmination of their hard work both in the publication of their writing in anthologies and through our Writers Celebration. We are so grateful to have had the opportunity to work with these talented young writers!
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Songwriting Studio Q&A
Discover your voice and make meaningful friendships! Our Teen Summer Workshops (for 11-14 year olds) provide students with an intensive…
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Fantastic Voyage Q&A
Discover your voice and make meaningful friendships! Our Teen Summer Workshops (for 11-14 year olds) provide students with an intensive…
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Your Voice Matters Q&A
Discover your voice and make meaningful friendships! Our Teen Summer Workshops (for 11-14 year olds) provide students with an intensive…
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The Power of Visualization
As much as I love words, my mind operates in images. When I was a little girl, movie reels of stories from my imagination played constantly in my…
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Graphic Novel Writing Q&A
Discover your voice and make meaningful friendships! Our Teen Summer Workshops (for 11-14 year olds) provide students with an intensive…
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Inked It Up!
Curious about the artwork and writing we create in our Ink It Up! camp? There are no limits to where our imaginations can take us as we stencil…
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Using What Kids Love to Inspire Writing
I remember when my kids were little they had things they were obsessed with, mesmerized with, and simply in love with. They went through…
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Animal Tales Q&A
We make writing fun! Join us this summer for a creative, enriching writing experience that allows children to explore their imaginations…
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Girls Write Now Q&A
We make writing fun! Join us this summer for a creative, enriching writing experience that allows children to explore their imaginations…
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Reflections on Visiting Writer Katie Arnold
Last week, Katie Arnold, author of the memoir Running Home, joined us for lunch at the studio to talk about her work.
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Storybook Studio Q&A
We make writing fun! Join us this summer for a creative, enriching writing experience that allows children to explore their imaginations while building confidence and literacy skills.
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A Q&A with our Teen Intern
Strengthen your leadership and communication skills with an inspiring summer teen internship. We offer two tracks: Teaching Assistant & The Interview Project.
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Ink It Up! Q&A
We make writing fun! Join us this summer for a creative, enriching writing experience that allows children to explore their imaginations while building confidence…
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You’re the Expert! Q&A
We make writing fun! Join us this summer for a creative, enriching writing experience that allows children to explore their imaginations while building confidence…
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Q & A with Gravity Goldberg
We are honored to have author and educator Gravity Goldberg present at our third annual “Writing on the River: A Spring Retreat for Teachers,” to be held Sunday…
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Q&A with Ray Brunt, PWN’s Newest Instructor
Project Write Now is excited to announce a new addition to our pool of instructors. Ray Brunt has been around Project Write Now for a while now, participating in events…
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Teacher Feature: Mimi Cross
As summer camps are in session, we’re highlighting our last (but certainly not least!) fabulous instructor. The tenth and final is Mimi Cross, who teaches Songwriting Studio…
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Teacher Feature: Jason Kady
As summer camps approach, we’ve decided to highlight one of our fabulous instructors each week, giving you a glimpse into who they are and why they LOVE teaching writing. The ninth is…
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Teacher Feature: Jim McConville
As summer camps approach, we’ve decided to highlight one of our fabulous instructors each week, giving you a glimpse into who they are and why they LOVE teaching writing. The eighth is…
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Teacher Feature: Jennifer Shields
As summer camps approach, we’ve decided to highlight one of our fabulous instructors each week, giving you a glimpse into who they are and why they LOVE teaching writing. The seventh is…
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Teacher Feature: Sami Strauss
As summer camps approach, we’ve decided to highlight one of our fabulous instructors each week, giving you a glimpse into who they are and why they LOVE teaching writing. The sixth is…
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Teacher Feature: Colleen Doogan
As summer camps approach, we’ve decided to highlight one of our fabulous instructors each week, giving you a glimpse into who they are and why they LOVE teaching writing. The fifth is…
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Teacher Feature: Christa Teter
As summer camps approach, we’ve decided to highlight one of our fabulous instructors each week, giving you a glimpse into who they are and why they LOVE teaching writing. The fourth is…
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Behind the Summer Camp Scenes
As the Project Write Now team came together to discuss our next blog post, we thought—what better way to showcase our summer camps than to hear from one of our students? So Lisa…
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Teacher Feature: Leah Mermelstein
As summer camps approach, we’ve decided to highlight one of our fabulous instructors each week, giving you a glimpse into who they are and why they LOVE teaching writing. The third is…
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Teacher Feature: Joy Newcomb
As summer camps approach, we’ve decided to highlight one of our fabulous instructors each week, giving you a glimpse into who they are and why they LOVE teaching writing. The second is…
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Embracing Rejection
At eight months’ pregnant, the trip from my apartment to the mailboxes in the lobby felt long. Every day, I trudged down the foil-wallpapered hallway in flip flops because my feet were…
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Teacher Feature: Lisa Hartsgrove
As summer camps approach, we’ve decided to highlight one of our fabulous instructors each week, giving you a glimpse into who they are and why they LOVE teaching writing. The first is…
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Low Stakes, Lasting Impact in a Summer Writing Camp
Some people wonder if it is possible for parents and teachers to make writing enjoyable, as well as deeply engaging for kids. Not only is it is possible, but it’s one of the MOST important…
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Why Kids Need to Joy Write
As someone who has loved writing since I was a little kid, I used to imagine my own children—now ages 12, 11, and 9—walking around with decorated notebooks in hand, ready to scribble…
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On the Importance Of Writers Groups
During the summer between 8th grade and high school, I decided to leave my bedroom. Prior to this, I believed writers were supposed to be alone. I spent a great deal of my time by…
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It’s Coming Together!
Last night, I drove home up the Garden State Parkway in a euphoric daze singing along to, of all things, “Party in the USA,” by Miley Cyrus. I had just left Project Write Now’s studio,…
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Dear College Essay Writer
Dear College Essay Writer, You are about to go through a huge transformation. All that stress you’re feeling about writing the most important essay of your life? It’s going to be gone. One day, a…
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Why Being a Writer Is Essential to Being a Teacher
I have always loved to write. As a kid I kept journals, chronicling the day-to-day ups and downs. In middle school, I was captured by Sweet Valley High romance novels and wrote my own sequels.…
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Life Stories: Keep Delivering
My mom died last summer. Her sister, my Aunt Mary, died nine months before that. Eight months before that, her other sister, my Aunt Doris, died. In the span of a year and a half,…
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Just Another Day at PWN
The first assignment was to find love poems — short ones. Having just graduated with a degree in literature, hewing close in my studies to brief lyric poetry (not out of aesthetic concerns so much…
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For Our Young Writers: Telling Their Stories Is Key
The inimitable Toni Morrison once said, “If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it.” I’ve carried this adage with…
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The “I Love” Epic Poem
This poem is the culmination of The Red Envelope Project, a community project about spreading love and gratitude as far and wide as it can go. During the month of February, Project Write Now team…
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The Red Envelope Project: Spreading Love & Gratitude
The other night in class, I drew a big heart on the whiteboard and asked my teen students to name some of the things they love. As I began filling in the heart with their…
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How Project Write Now Changed My Life
One summer morning, not long after my high school graduation, I googled local writing workshops. I had been accepted to Emerson College, but it was deferred until January 2017. I knew I needed a place…
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When Memories Are Shared
I love Thanksgiving. It’s always been my favorite holiday. I remember as a kid being so excited to go to my Aunt Carol and Uncle Joe’s house, an hour’s drive away on the North Shore…
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The Universal Writing Prompt: I Remember
In my third semester of graduate school, I became seriously stuck in my writing. I was avoiding the blank page, afraid that what I wrote would suck and need to be scrapped, or, worse, that…
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Love, Loss & Everything In-Between: My Interview Experience
Imagine you’re 85-years-old and no one has ever asked you to sit down and talk about your life experiences. Think of all of the things you’re dying to say and the things in life…
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Fight for your Write: Girl Power
They didn’t know what to expect. Neither did I. What might come out of a “girls only” writing group? Their experiences were all bound to be very different from one another; what was too sensitive…
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The College Essay: What an Application Reader Has to Say
One of my favorite jobs at Project Write Now is coaching the college essay. It’s a moment when seniors can take a break from the frenzy of selecting colleges, studying for the SATs, and boosting…
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Sending Them Off With Something More
Recently Allison Tevald and I said goodbye (for now) to a special group of young writers. They were the first class to welcome us at Red Bank Middle School in January 2015, and last week…
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Supporters of PWN Experience PWN
Saturday, June 18, Beth Herbruck arranged a Good Folk Supper Club dinner that started in our studio at Project Write Now. We facilitated a writing activity, people shared their written memories…
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What a Teacher Discovers in Her Summer Writing Camps
Last year was our first summer of writing camps at Project Write Now. I must say that at first, I was skeptical. All of my classes at the studio had been an hour or an…
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Voices of the In-Between
I remember being 13 like it was just yesterday. It was the hardest year of my life. Hormones at their highest. Starting a new school. Constantly judging my self-worth against others. My parents not listening…
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Why I’m Signing My Children Up for Summer Writing Camps
My son has never liked sitting quietly and coloring or painting. The closest he came to working his fine-motor skills―which his pre-K teachers said were lacking―was making his toy trains and cars go vrooom. I…
