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.

If your school or organization is interested in learning more about our outreach programming, please email Jennifer Chauhan at jennifer@projectwritenow.org.

Ink It Up! with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Monmouth County (Red Bank)

During the first week in August, we ran a private “Ink It Up!” four-day workshop for students in the Red Bank Unit of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Monmouth County. On the second day, we invited graffiti artist Jermaine Johnson to help us with lettering. We started the day by making up words for things that currently cannot be defined by one word. For instance, when you really want a bug to disappear, we called that “bugsappear!” Then Mr. Jermaine took over, allowing the students to experiment with graffiti-lettering the words they just created or other words they felt drawn to. After some practice, we all created pages of graffiti art in our own unique styles. We also collaborated on a graffiti PWN sign that now hangs here in our studio! We loved getting to know these young artists and hope to host them again next summer!

We had so much fun partnering with The Pilates Project in Red Bank for their Project Girl Power program! After doing pilates, we broke into our notebooks and started writing about the experience. Then we read “Courage,” by Bernard Waber, and wrote a list of what courage means to us. We pulled one line from that list and then wrote the story that lies beneath it. One student wrote “courage is jumping in” and then she shared the story of how she jumps from the lifeguard stand into the ocean. We are so grateful for this experience and partnership and look forward to more workshops in the future! We also thank The Pilates Project for their recent generous donation!

Every summer, we look forward to writing with the teens from Family Based Services Association of NJ. We met for three two-hour sessions and explored the different ways we can tell our stories–through short anecdotes, poetry, illustration, and discussion. We wrote stories using prompts from Joe Brainard’s memoir “I Remember” and Bernard Waber’s poem “Courage.” These sparked memories about summer camps, late-night talks with friends, and game-winning home runs. We also read poetry, sharing words and images that are meaningful to us, and created our own poems using black-out poetry. Each week, students shared their work and encouraged one another to tell their stories. We are already looking forward to next summer with them!

Writers Showcase & Open Mic
We are so grateful to all who came out for our adult Writers Showcase & Open Mic on Tuesday, August 20! We’d like to thank The Studio @ The Grove for giving us the gorgeous space to host this event and all of the PWN staff and volunteers who helped bring everything together. Our readers were brave, bold, and powerfully vulnerable. We are still talking about your pieces today! We will be hosting another open mic soon, so stay tuned for details!

Senior Space
Senior Space writers at the Woman’s Club of Red Bank are diving into the idea of memoir as moments of a life, not the entire life. At a recent session, we gathered around a series of photos, some dating back to the 1800s, depicting all manner of moments. We wrote in response to a photo that pulled us in, a photo that spoke to us, reminding us of our own moments. The stories that emerged ranged from an experience in a monastery in Nepal to being stuck in a carnival fun house to a street hockey game for boys only. We love working with this group and can’t wait to see where our next session takes them.

On August 8, we had eleven Shore House members write with us! After a short freewrite, we read “Cooking Out,” a 1973 summer essay by Toni Morrison. We celebrated Morrison’s life by using her essay as inspiration for our writing. We wrote about our favorite traditions–what brings those we love together? Stories were shared about birthday parties, online friend forums, playing music, and food! Then we started our lesson on August 22 by freewriting a list of expectations others hold of us. We read “When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities,” by Chen Chen, and then we wrote letters to people who hold those expectations of us, telling them how we feel. It was not a requirement to share or send the letters, but almost all shared anyway, saying that it felt good to get this out. One student is planning on mailing her letter, too! We are so proud of these writers!