An Interview with Lisa

We are so excited to celebrate Lisa Hartsgrove’s 10th anniversary with Project Write Now! We consider Lisa the “heartbeat” of PWN because without her joy, passion, and many, many talents, we would not be able to do the work we do.

We thought it would be fun for our executive director, Jennifer Chauhan, to sit down with Lisa and share some moments from the past 10 years.

JEN: Congratulations, Lisa, on 10 years! I remember the first time we met and how you first joined PWN. How about we share that story?

LISA: Sure! It actually started at Goddard College, in Vermont, at a graduate program. I met Allison Tevald, who is a phenomenal writer, and she also happened to be from New Jersey. She told me she knew this person, Jennifer, who was starting a creative writing nonprofit, and she told me when we got back home, she would love for me to meet her. So this is where the story gets very funny. Allison and I already had a rapport, but Jennifer and I had not met yet. So on my way to meet Jennifer (it was in our old space on Bridge Avenue) I got very, very lost and then panicked and got upset because I thought, what a great opportunity and oh my goodness, I’m going to be late and mess everything up on my first day. I came in with that energy and Jennifer was so kind and fully listened to me and then we had a great conversation. And in that conversation, she asked what I did. I said, ‘I teach Jedi Academy for children through the Monmouth County Park System.’ I feel like you can jump into the story here, Jen … 

JEN: Well, I’m such a Star Wars nerd, so then I said …

LISA: You’re hired! 

JEN: I know we joke about this but really I could instantly feel your passion and energy and we had an immediate connection. I knew I wanted you here with Project Write Now. And then my other favorite beginning story was the year 2015 when we were doing a Giving Poetry Tuesday all-day event in Red Bank. We popped up in different places—the train station, Robinson’s Ale House, Riverview Medical Center—and had people reading poetry on the spot that we recorded. You were reading in Rook and I was videoing but then when we got to the car, I realized I didn’t hit record. And you were so cool about it and we went back in and rerecorded your poem. It was actually one of my favorite days ever and I spent the entire day with you from like 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. just inviting people to read poetry. We’re going to have to do that again sometime.

LISA: It was such a great introduction to my new career here at Project Write Now. There were so many different experiences that were really important and valuable and I also look back on that day a lot and smile. 

JEN: What are some of your favorite memories from the early years? 

LISA: Looking back, a lot of my favorite memories are around Halloween. I feel like previous to the pandemic, we celebrated it in a different way than we do now, especially because we were in-person. We had a Halloween party for teens back in, I think, 2016 or 2017, and that is one of my favorite memories ever because we filled the house. So we had a little studio space on Bridge Avenue and we had probably over 30 people show up for this party. We did writing prompts. We did fun games and activities. We all dressed up. Everybody was in costume. There were people from age 12 all the way up to us adults. It was one of my favorite times ever where we all just came together in community and had a blast together with writing involved and it didn’t feel like a class, though, it was a party. It was a writing party. And in that same vein, one of my first classes that I ever taught was called the Macabre & Supernatural. It was for teens and I had a wonderful weird group of teens (that I say with so much passion and love because I’m also weird. We own our weirdness.) And our passions and interests came out in that class in the best ways. I still think about the stories that they shared there. We were always trying to outdo one another and make it scarier than the next person. It was just so much joy! And then most of those teens stayed with us. I’m still working with some of them today and that’s just amazing. 

JEN: I think that was the very first class you taught. Which is awesome! And what about favorite moments in the past year or so?

LISA: There’s so many things that we’ve done this year—our Community Celebration, Firefly—that were top of the charts, but for me personally, it was True Colors: A Storytelling Celebration in partnership with Monmouth Arts. It was showcasing LGBTQ+ voices. Of course, everybody was invited. It was for the whole community, but it felt really special to have a platform for voices that are often marginalized, that don’t always get heard. That was just so meaningful to me. And then also, if anybody knows me, you know I’m a huge cat lover. It was probably five or six years ago that we partnered with Catsbury Park for Cat Tales, and that’s always one of my favorite events. That happened again this year. We got into a room at Catsbury Park with 25 cats and we all wrote and shared together and it’s just like there’s something really special about being in a room with other writers always, but then knowing that they’re also cat lovers and there’s cats that are walking over your pages and hitting your keys on your keyboard … 

JEN: Oh, I love that so much. Both of those events just speak so much to who you are and being able to embrace what you love and are passionate about. And I think that speaks so much to Project Write Now and how we create spaces where you can just come and be yourself and write in community.

So, Lisa, you are our program director for PWN Teen, which grew out of the pandemic. I remember when the world shut down, you and I reached out to all of our teens and said, let’s come together, let’s talk about what you need right now. And our wonderful teens put together the PWN Teen department, the website, all of it, and with that, you have really stepped into a leadership role. So I’d love to know, what do you love about working with, writing with, and inspiring teens? 

LISA: I love working with all writers, but teens are especially special. They still have their innocence, but they’re also coming into the world and they’re seeing things with fresh eyes. They’re really vulnerable. They’re open to being themselves. They don’t have that barrier that we build as adults, that wall that says, I can’t say the things I want to say. They just say it, and to be able to be in a space where I can tell them that’s okay and foster that is super cool. I don’t have any children myself and it feels really special that I get to know these kids so well through storytelling. It’s a really deep connection. I feel like they’re kind of my kids, especially as I watch them grow up and I see them go off into the world. I’m so proud of them. 

JEN: Why do you think it’s so important for teens to have spaces to write expressively and creatively?

LISA: I’m not going to speak for teens generally. I’m going to speak for myself as a teen because I can’t speak for everybody, but I do think there’s a bit of a universal truth in my experience. I didn’t have an outlet and so therefore I internalized a lot of things that I probably didn’t need to as a teenager. I would think every single thing was my fault. I beat myself up a lot because I didn’t have a safe space to express all of these feelings and realize, oh, other people feel this too. It’s okay. And so that’s why I feel it’s so important that we’re fostering these spaces. So what happened to me doesn’t happen to other teens. So we can say, it’s okay to have these feelings. You have an outlet, you can let it out and see there’s community. We all feel the same and you’re not weird. I mean, maybe you are weird, but in the best way.

JEN: What are you excited about for next year? 

LISA: I mean, I’m always excited for Cringefest. That’s our big annual fundraiser, so I’m very excited to see what’ll happen in this year’s show. I’m excited to do more with Catsbury Park. We’re going to try to make that happen more than twice a year. I have a lot of dreams … I don’t know if this is going to be the year, but I will say I hope someday we have a Teen Literary Festival and I’m very excited to make that happen, whether it’s 2026, 2027, it will happen. 

JEN: And what about your own personal writing? What are you working on right now?

LISA: I’m mostly working on flash pieces and poetry, but I have finished a novel-in-verse. It took way too long. Over ten years I worked on this book, but I finally submitted it out into the world. Right now I am waiting eagerly, fingers crossed. So I’m very happy I finally completed a book. 

JEN: Congratulations on that accomplishment! It was so wonderful chatting with you and sharing how grateful I am, Project Write Now is, to have you be who you are, sharing your voice and your many, many talents. I just have to give a shout out to your visual art. Please follow Lisa on Instagram @spillingmyart. I’m a huge advocate of all the ways that you show up as an artist in our world and just so grateful for you, so we’re so happy to celebrate you! 

LISA: If I could just add one more thing … Project Write Now has always fostered my passion and it’s one of the things that I love about being in this career. It’s not just creative writing, although creative writing is fantastic, but it’s all the parts. It’s my love of cats, right? It’s my love of art. I can bring in all of my passions and find a way to link them through this organization, which is so great.

JEN: Ha—that was the question I missed. What do you love about working at Project Write Now?

LISA: I love the community. I love the support and the community and that sounds so simple to say, but I really mean it. Like it feels like we are all in this together. So every success does not feel like, ah, they made it and I didn’t, which I know it can feel that way on the outside, but when you’re in it, it feels more like, ah, yay, they made it one step closer. We’re all in this together!

JEN: Absolutely! And you, Lisa, are a big part of why our community operates this way. So thank you! And I double-checked while I was doing this to make sure I hit the record button because that would have been hilarious if I didn’t. But luckily I did. Thank you, Lisa!