august community outreach

Dear Friends of Project Write Now:

Stories Transform Us. Stories Connect Us. Stories Build Community. ✨

In our world today, storytelling feels more vital than ever. Stories spark empathy, laughter, reflection, and connection in ways nothing else can.

This month, we experienced that magic twice at the Two River Theater in Red Bank. At the annual Crossing Borders Festival, our young adult writers—Arely Carrillo-Reyes, Kenny Grant, and Maria L. Mejia-Tizatl—took the stage with original pieces exploring themes of family, identity, and intergenerational connection in response to the staged readings by Latine playwrights. We were also thrilled to have our 7th and 8th grade Red Bank Middle School AVID students share work from our published anthologies during the inaugural Stories From the Heart event.

Just a few days later, we returned to the theater for the reemergence of Firefly: Stories Out Loud. Eight storytellers lit up the stage with true stories on the theme of HEAT—making us laugh, tear up, and celebrate our shared humanity. We’ll be returning for our next Firefly show on Tuesday, November 18.

We are so grateful for our ongoing partnership with the Two River Theater. By opening their doors and inviting our writers onto their stage, they share in our belief that storytelling fosters empathy, connection, and a stronger community.

Moments like these are also sustained by our community of supporters who believe in the power of writing and storytelling. 

As we prepare for our 2025–2026 Community Outreach Programs, we invite you to help us expand access to transformative writing and storytelling experiences.

Your support today makes it possible for more people—of all ages and backgrounds—to share their voices and be heard.

With love & gratitude,

The Project Write Now Team

Bridge Ink 9.5 – PWN India

We are delighted to present this special edition of Bridge Ink, featuring the powerful voices of young writers from our PWN India program. Yes, India—the country! Since 2021, we’ve been providing multiweek writing programs for children, teens, and adults in India, thanks to the dedication and talent of our PWN India intern, Khushreet kaur Bhatia. This issue features pieces from writers ages 7 to 22. We are so grateful that they opened their notebooks and their hearts—sharing stories, poems, and reflections that are spirited, honest, and imaginative. At Project Write Now, we believe in the transformative power of words to connect us across cultures and continents. This issue is a celebration of that belief—a chance for our global community to come together through the creativity and vision of young people.

Community Playmaking

We kicked off our third Community Playmaking program in collaboration with the Two River Theater with members of the Asbury Park Library. We’ve been gathering in the beautiful Bradley Room, generating ideas and sketching characters for our 10-minute plays. These plays will be produced and directed by the Two River Theater with professional actors on Thursday, September 25. All are welcome to attend! We’ve also had fun reading plays by previous program participants from Lunch Break and Shore House.We are grateful to the Two River Theater for including Project Write Now in this incredible initiative that brings playmaking to people who may not have had the opportunity otherwise.

Crossing Borders Festival

We are so proud of our young adult writers—Arely Carrillo-Reyes, Kenny Grant, and Maria L. Mejia-Tizatl—who stepped onto the stage during Two River Theater’s Crossing Borders Festival, an annual celebration of new plays by Latine playwrights. Arely, Kenny, and Maria wrote and performed pieces illuminating themes from the plays—exploring the complexity of parental dynamics and intergenerational connections. Their words moved and inspired everyone in the audience. Thank you to the Two River Theater for once again inviting us into this magical celebration and for sharing your stage with our young writers.

Firefly: Stories Out Loud

We hosted our first-ever Firefly: Stories Out Loud event at the Two River Theater in Red Bank this month. It was an incredible evening of live storytelling and community! We laughed. We teared up. We were reminded of our shared humanity. Eight amazing “fireflies” shined their lights so bright up on that stage, sharing their true first-person stories from the heart. Thank you to everyone who helped make it such a special show! From the venue staff to the storytellers to the audience and volunteers, everyone was absolutely incredible! We are so grateful and appreciative of this important community partnership and outlet for live, creative expression and look forward to doing it again in the fall. Join us as Firefly returns to the Two River Theater on Tuesday, November 18. We look forward to packing the house again! Until then, shine on.

Lunchtime Write-In

Every Friday, writers meet on Zoom to write and share our stories. This month, we explored the themes: “Goose,” “Eight,” “Number,” and “Step.” We love the writing community that has formed in this weekly group. Join us for our next Lunchtime Write-In to see what our upcoming theme will be!

Morning Pages

Like that persistent train (The Little Engine That Could), Morning Pages is the little accountability group that could! This month, for an hour every weekday, at 8 a.m. ET, committed writers showed up on Zoom to write together. Our mantra: “words.on.a.page.” Want to join us? Sign up for September’s Morning Pages! 

PWN India (8th Grade)

We finished our seven-week program with 8th graders in India this month by writing about gratitude. We read “When Giving Is All We Have” by Alberto Ríos and then made lists of what we are grateful for, including: people, animals, places, things, activities, seasons, moments, and more. We used those lists to inspire the stories we really wanted to share. Then we invited all participants to submit their favorite works from our time together for a special 8th grade India issue of Bridge Ink.

PWN India (Adults)

August in our PWN India adult journaling program was all about writing in response to poems that evoked feelings of summer and nature. We read “De Jure Sanguinis” by Kiki Petrosino, “Naming the Heartbeats,” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and “Rain,” by Tove Ditlevsen to inspire our writing. We love the different approaches and perspectives in our writing and also enjoy spending time sharing tidbits from our own lives. We are grateful that we’ve built such a beautiful community together.

Teen Internships 

Our summer teen interns have done a fabulous job on our team. Our teaching assistants helped out in a number of our programs including Red Bank Regional’s Summer Slam, Teen Writing Space, Write & Reverie, and a private youth camp. Our editorial assistants have written inspiring articles for our Real Voices Write Now magazine, taken over our teen Instagram, created video content on our social media platforms, and helped behind the scenes for Write & Reverie (creating playlists and recommending activities). Those participating in The Interview Project are finishing their interviews with members of Trinity Church in Asbury Park, highlighting the church’s inspiring Saturday Soup Kitchen community outreach program. We look forward to sharing these pieces in a feature Bridge Ink issue, coming soon. We love our teen interns and greatly appreciate all they do for PWN!

Teen Writing Space 

Teen Writing Space has been a BLAST this month with teen leaders Alex and Skyla guiding the program. In our first class, we read “Love Poem Beginning with a Yellow Cab” by José Olivarez and “The Swan” by Mary Oliver. We used old books and magazines to inspire ideas for writing, we talked about our favorite movies, and we either rewrote the endings or wrote ode poems to those stories. We ended by opening the floor for our writers to share anything they’ve previously written. In our second class, we read “Fireflies” by Julie Brinckloe. We worked on zooming in on a moment by breaking a memory from this summer into six parts, being sure to include sensory details and emotions. In our third class, we read “Cyrus & the Snakes” by Ada Limón and then we worked on making our own powerful metaphors. We also read an excerpt from “The Waves” by Virginia Woolf and an excerpt from Rupi Kaur’s “The Sun and Her Flowers” and then did some stream of consciousness writing using random objects to guide us. In our fourth and final class of the session, we created collages to represent our light and dark sides. Then we used those collages to inspire super heroes and villains. Teen Writing Space returns virtually on October 2. Join us!

Write & Reverie

This month, we hosted our first ever Write & Reverie teen networking event in partnership with Over The Moon Art Studios. We want to give a HUGE SHOUT OUT to intern Skyla for making this connection and coming up with the idea for this event! We’d like to thank all of the interns who came together to make this night so incredible—from set up to break down, photography, table engagement, MCing the open mic, and more. We are SO PROUD of our teen interns! We’d also like to thank our amazing table partners: 180 Turning Lives Around—thank you for raising awareness and offering opportunities to our teens; Asbury Park Public Library—thank you for providing valuable information on how to get involved in the community; Nikki Nordquist—thank you for giving thoughtful advice and encouragement; and of course Over The Moon Art Studios—thank for generously gifting us such an inspiring space for this event! The collective contributions of all involved is what made this event so memorable and meaningful. We are so grateful and look forward to hosting more teen networking events like this soon!

Write Out Loud

This month’s Write Out Loud workshop at the Asbury Book Cooperative opened with a lively warm-up prompt designed to break the ice and let participants introduce themselves by answering three questions. Once everyone had their pens moving, the group shifted into a playful exercise built around “famous first lines.” Each participant randomly drew an opening line from a novel, memoir, or Shakespeare play and used it as a springboard for a short piece of writing. These borrowed beginnings sparked creativity and highlighted how a single line can inspire vastly different voices and stories. Join us for our next Write Out Loud in September!

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. So far this year, we’ve provided 33 seats totaling $10,609. For information about our scholarship program or to become a valuable donor providing these seats, please email Jennifer Chauhan at jennifer@projectwritenow.org.