September Community Outreach
Dear Friends of Project Write Now:
There’s something incredibly empowering about stepping onto a stage, feeling the lights on your face and sharing your truth with a live audience.
It’s affirmation that your voice, your experiences, and your story matters.
We are so proud of our young adult writers—Nathalia Garcia, Bethaney Clarke, Oliver Tiro, and Alexandra Santiago—for taking the stage as part of the Two River Theater’s Crossing Borders Festival, an annual celebration of new plays by Latine playwrights.
Nathalia, Bethaney, Oliver, and Alexandra wrote and performed pieces illuminating themes in the plays—the complexity of relationships, family, and grief but also the joy of connection and following your dreams.
As we get ready to celebrate 10 YEARS, (yes, 10 YEARS!), we are even more grateful for our community partners who embrace and support our mission, allowing us to bring creative, expressive writing programs to a wider audience.
And we are SO grateful for YOU! You make these life-changing programs possible!
Whether you’ve taken a class, signed your child up for a class, participated in one of our events, or given a generous gift, YOU help us provide meaningful writing experiences that foster authenticity, connection, and empathy.
We are especially GRATEFUL to our 2023-2024 partners (September 2023-August 2024) for your generous gifts that helped make all of our community outreach programs possible this year!
Thank you to our 2023-2024 partners!
With love & gratitude,
The Project Write Now Team
Here’s what else we’ve been up to this month. If you are interested in bringing a program to your school or organization, email executive director Jennifer Chauhan at jennifer@projectwritenow.org.
Bridge Ink: Volume 8, Issue 5
We are so excited to release our latest issue of Bridge Ink. This issue features two collaborative poems written by 2024 PWN Teen interns as well as teen writing and art from South Korea, India, California, Washington, Virginia, Georgia, and New Jersey! We are always so impressed by the talent of our teen writers and so proud to share their words with you. Check it out now!
Family-Based Services
We spent Tuesday nights in August with the young writers at Family-Based Services. We read “Fibers” by Ashley Caspermeyer and discussed what ekphrastic writing is. Then we tried it ourselves using the same art—“Take Heart” by Bonnie Riedinger—as inspiration. We made lists of all the things we saw, felt, and imagined in the art and then used our lists to inspire original stories. We then made art of our own to use as inspiration for our words. We had a blast being creative together!
Kaleidoscope: Ink & Identity (teen open mic)
We are so grateful to all the teen writers who came out for our Kaleidoscope: Ink & Identity open mic this month! We moved to the porch of The Woman’s Club of Red Bank to share our words on such a gorgeous evening. The pieces shared were so inspiring and we were blown away by the talents of our teen writers. Extra thanks go to intern Bernice for MCing the event! Writers, don’t forget to submit your words to bridgeink.org so we can share them with the world!
Long Branch High School
We returned to Long Branch High School for their Summer Learning Institute and provided a three-hour professional development workshop on “Engaging Students in Authentic Writing.” During the first part of the session, we wrote in response to the poem “Night at the Roller Palace” by January Gill O’Neil. We looked back on our summer and reflected on small moments of “wins” and “glimmers.” Then we looked forward and wrote about ways we could carry the “summer vibe” into the school year. For the second part, we focused on our mentors, the writers or teachers of writing who have inspired us. It was an incredible session of sharing in community, and we walked away excited to bring more expressive writing into our classrooms.
Lunchtime Write-In
On Fridays, we host a one-hour writing workshop on Zoom during which we write in response to themed prompts. This month, we explored the themes: “Nerve,” “Nothing,” and “Something.” Though writers never have to share, we always enjoy hearing one another’s pieces and have formed an incredible, supportive community. Join us for our next Lunchtime Write-In to see what our upcoming themes will be!
The Power of Journaling (Brookdale Community College)
We were honored to be invited back to Brookdale Community College’s Lifelong Learning Program to facilitate The Power of Journaling workshop this month. We discussed the positive impacts of journaling both on our mental and physical well-being, and then we invited guests into a guided meditation. We read “Night at the Roller Palace” by January Gill O’Neil and then used both lines and ideas from the poem as writing prompts. We were thrilled when every participant chose to share their story! We all came in as strangers but left as friends. And THAT is the power of journaling!
PWN India
With our PWN Adult Journaling Club, we wrote in response to the poem “Greeness,” by Angelina Weld Krimké. We use prompts from the poem such as “Tell me is there anything lovelier than …” and “the heart that beats.” Or we pisces a color and write about a part of nature that represents it. Even though we are half a world apart, our stories connect us every time we meet.
Shore House
As summer winds to an end, Shore House focused on the ways that growth can take root. Inspired by the herb, flower, and vegetable gardens on the property, writers began getting curious about planning longer writing pieces—be it essays, poetry, or fictional stories that are related to planting, nurturing, resilience, harvesting, and the enjoyment of the ways in which we can be intentional gardeners of our right-now and future selves. These drafts and the editing of this work will continue into the beginning of the Fall season and will be published as collaborative work for residents to enjoy!
Teen Writing Space
We had a great time in Teen Writing Space this month at the Woman’s Club of Red Bank! Each week, a new teen leader took over. We started with Josh and his amazing collaborative lesson where we wrote stories together sentence by sentence and then created characters for each other to write about. Then it was Navya’s turn and she did such a great job inspiring everyone. We wrote “Dear Diary” entries from the POV of historical characters, then we used the Wheel of Prompts to give us fantasy elements we had to include in our next story. Next up was Skyla with a closer look at poetry. We did a metaphor writing exercise and then we expanded off of that to write original poems of our own. Then we used magazines and newspapers to make blackout poetry. We ended with Josh again, this time writing about causes we care about and then writing open letters to make change. It was such a powerful session and we are so grateful to all of our interns for their incredible leadership!
The Write Time (for teachers)
Every Tuesday morning, we meet (with cups of coffee/tea and in PJs) for one hour of quiet journaling. We started off each session writing about a “win” or “glimmer” from the week. Then we dove into our writing activities. We used January Gill O’Neil’s “Night at the Roller Palace” to write about the people, places, or things we are obsessed with. We also wrote about courage using the picture book Courage by Bernard Waber as inspiration. And we ended our time together reflecting on the summer moments that mattered to us and exploring how we could keep the “summer vibe” going throughout the school year. We will be back with a slightly revamped Teacher Writing Collaborative that will meet monthly starting in October. More info coming soon!
Trusting the Process
Local teens participated in this special two-hour workshop at Wild & Free Painting in Belmar, which included writing, painting, and drawing as forms of artistic expression. Their creativity flourished in the studio, as they participated in a variety of exercises and journaling prompts. One of the focused topics was “love.” We have been delighted to co-host Trusting the Process with Elissa Arbeitman of Wild & Free Painting and are excited to announce she’s joined the PWN team as an instructor. We are super grateful and excited to welcome Elissa aboard!
What Would Taylor Do?
We had a great time this summer in our songwriting workshop: What Would Taylor Do? We met three afternoons in a row, and each of our sessions was two hours long so we had a chance to really dig into Taylor Swift’s music. We started by making a list of our favorite Taylor songs, did some listening, and then some singing. The room we used at the Woman’s Club has such phenomenal acoustics we didn’t even need amplification! We sang songs with Taylor Swift recordings, and then with instrumental track, so it was just us on vocals. We warmed up our voices and took turns singing as a group and singing solo. We alternated these activities with starting songs of our own, and as we wrote, we asked ourselves, what would Taylor do? For example, if you’re writing a song about a relationship, and one character in the song hasn’t seen the other in a while, the question might be: how long is ‘a while’ in real life? A while in real life might be a week, or maybe a month—or just a while! But in a Taylor Swift song, ‘a while’ is going to be something more dramatic. We chose the word ‘century.’ So our lyrics read: I haven’t seen him in a century. Much more interesting than ‘a while’ don’t you agree?
Words & Herbs
What a magical experience it was to spend a sunny and stormy Sunday evening together in community while connecting our love of writing and nature! The evening started with a seated circle journaling check-in next to the garden, followed by a private tour of the Global Roots Garden at Calgo Gardens, then a medicinal herbal tea meditation in a tent – with the soothing sounds of the rain – and culminated with some journaling prompts and powerful group sharing. Four medicinal herbs were showcased and attendees left with clippings of each of them, as well as educational information about their healing properties. This special workshop was co-facilitated by Michele of MotMot Collective and PWN’s Meredith Avakian, birthed by a creative idea at our Writing on the River Retreat. They will be leading a similar workshop at the next Poetry & Plants, which will be held at Kula Urban Farms on Sunday, Oct. 6 from 3-5 p.m.
Write Out Loud
We had such a great time in Write Out Loud at the Asbury Book Cooperative this month. To honor our proximity to the beach and celebrate summer, we each selected a seashell and then introduced ourselves to each other by explaining why the shell appealed to us. We followed that with a passage from “Gift From the Sea” by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. The writing prompts were: “The shell I am shedding …” OR “What is the shape of my life?” We shared our writing and then listened to outside writing. We had some new faces and a mix of generations adding to a wide variety of voices but also found common ground. Join us for our next Write Out Loud on September 10!
Scholarship Seats
Through our mission as a nonprofit organization, we remove barriers to participating in our fee-based classes by providing full and partial scholarship seats as well as payment plans. Since 2020, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in the need for financial assistance and therefore have met that need by offering more scholarship seats. For 2023, we awarded 48 seats totaling $17,205. For 2024, we have already provided 44 seats totaling $10,503. For information about our scholarship program or to become a valuable donor providing these seats, please email Jennifer Chauhan at jennifer@projectwritenow.org.
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