September Community Outreach
Dear Friends of Project Write Now:
We recognize that the world may feel heavy right now. So many of us are feeling scared, facing the unknown, and witnessing actions that are dividing us even further.
In conversations with friends, family, and co-workers, we are asking ourselves, what can we do to help? To make a difference? To heal and connect rather than divide?
For us, one answer is: story. We need to be sharing our personal stories and experiences. And we need to be sharing these stories in supportive, inclusive spaces that allow us to process what our stories really mean. That deepen meaningful connections with one another. That build and strengthen community.
Stories connect us by reminding us of our shared humanity. When we hear someone else’s story, we can begin to understand life outside of our own experiences. Our perspectives shift. Empathy is born. Kindness is activated.
With love & gratitude,
Here’s what else we’ve been up to this month. If you are interested in bringing a community outreach program to your school or mission-based organization, email Meredith Z. Avakian, Director of Community Outreach & Engagement, at meredith@projectwritenow.org.
Asbury Park High School – The Spoken Word Project
We started 2026 at Asbury Park High School by exploring the same theme as this month’s Firefly: Stories Out Loud: “Firsts.” Students wrote and shared some of their recent first-time experiences, as well as aspirational ones. Additionally, some of the students wrote about what they would do if they had only 24 hours left to live, in the spirit of the 90s classic song by Mase. We are turning their writing into a collaborative poem, so stay tuned!
Asbury Park High School – Values & Vision
The 12th graders at Asbury Park High School are preparing a skit, essay, poem, or personally sculpted performance that describes their values to be performed in early February. We will move onto the overlap of personal values and community vision further into February/March. We can’t wait to see what they’ve come up with!
Bridge Ink – The Interview Project
Our first Bridge Ink issue of 2026 is a special issue featuring stories written by teens who participated in The Interview Project, a PWN Teen internship program, during the summer of 2025. This project required teens to interview members from the community of Trinity Church in Asbury Park and document the stories they want to preserve. Check it out now!
Bridge Ink – Rainbow Ink
Bridge Ink has partnered with Let’s Say Gay for our third year in a row for another very special Pride-themed issue, Rainbow Ink: Identities! (Let’s Say Gay is a queer youth literary journal designed to create space for the LGBTQ+ community.) This special issue was open to queer artists between the ages of 13 and 18 in 2025. We are so grateful to all who submitted. Check it out now!
Community Playmaking: Shore House
We are thrilled to return to Shore House for a second round of Community Playmaking with members and staff. During this collaborative project with Two River Theater, participants write original 10-minute plays that are then performed by professional actors under the direction of Two River Theater. We’ve begun generating ideas and fleshing out characters. The performance takes place Tuesday, March 3, at 1 p.m. at Long Branch Arts and Cultural Center. All are welcome to attend!
Firefly: Stories Out Loud
Our FIRST Firefly of 2026—synchronistically under the theme of FIRSTS—was a blast! We are so grateful to all who came out (braving the cold!) for this inspiring evening of community and connection at the gorgeous Two River Theater. Huge thanks to our featured storytellers (listed in order of appearance): Meredith Z. Avakian, Briana Butler, and Christopher Harrison. And great job to all of the brave souls who blessed the mic and shared a true, five-minute-long, first-person story on the topic. Also thanks to Kartheek Photo for capturing the event! If you’d like to catch the next show, mark your calendars for March 24. We look forward to seeing you then!
GEAR UP
We’re excited to return to facilitating weekly workshops with students from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School in Asbury Park, as part of our community partnership with GEAR UP at Brookdale. Students participated in a word circle, received and decorated their journals, then wrote and shared about their ideal snow days (or ideal day far away from the snow).
Lunchtime Write-In
Writers continued to meet on Zoom for Lunchtime Write-In to write and share original stories and poems. To start off 2026, we explored the themes: “Firsts,” “Dust,” and “Start.” We love the writing community that has formed in this group and we are always open to welcoming new participants. Lunchtime Write-In meets on Fridays at 12:15 p.m. ET. Join us for our next Lunchtime Write-In to see what our upcoming theme will be!
Markham Place (Little Silver) – 5th Grade
We’ve been having so much fun with the 5th graders at Markham Place as part of our multi-year program sponsored by the Little Silver PTO. We are learning about ekphrasis (writing inspired by art). On our first day, we read “What the Pages Know” by Ryan T. Pozzi and looked at the art that inspired the poem (“Green Wood Birds” by Stephanie Trenchard). We then made lists of what we saw in that same art and used it to inspire our own original pieces. On our second day, we jumped into creating our own visual art that we can use for inspiration for our writing again next week. We can’t wait to come back and hear what their wild imaginations come up with!
Markham Place (Little Silver) – 8th Grade
We’re excited to have kicked off our third year of our Ink & Insight program with the eighth graders at Markham Place. Students have participated in Project Write Now programs since sixth grade, exploring screenwriting, poetry, and now the time-capsule experience. This keepsake is designed to capture their past, present, and future through expressive writing and art as they prepare to transition to high school. During the first session, students designed their time capsules and began capturing meaningful memories, favorite childhood moments, current reflections, and stories that will continue to grow and evolve over the coming months. We are so excited to reunite with our Markham Place family!
Morning Pages
Committed writers continued to meet on Zoom for Morning Pages for an hour every weekday, from 8 to 9 a.m. ET. Want to join us? Sign up for February’s Morning Pages and write with us any weekday through the month. We are so grateful for the community that has formed around starting our days with words on a page!
Red Bank Middle School AVID
To celebrate the start of 2026, we made vision boards using a mixture of words, art, stickers, and magazine cutouts with our 7th and 8th grade AVID students at Red Bank Middle School. We then used those vision boards as writing prompts, manifesting the futures we want by writing them as if they already happened. We also wrote about our significant first experiences. Students, rather than our instructor, are now officially reading the poem of the day each week from here on out. So far this year, student volunteers have read “Promise” by Jackie Kay, “The Archer” by Alison Stormwolf, and “Kid, this is the first rain” by Jeffrey Bean.
Teen Writing Space
We kicked off our winter session of Teen Writing Space with a passionate group of teen writers sharing their thoughtful ideas and their creative words together. We greatly admire their commitment toward their craft and to the group. You can still join us anytime!
The Write Year (For Teens)
Our amazing teen leaders, Skyla and Alina, ran a one-hour generative workshop for teens on Zoom to kick off the 2026 year. We themed the workshop around the year of the horse, opening discussions about horses in Western literature and Chinese culture. As examples, we read “Horses at Midnight Without a Moon” by Jack Gilbert and “Three Horses Drink Water at the Riverbank” by Chi Lechuan (translated by Wang Ping). We used the poems as inspiration for our original writing, pulling lines and ideas out onto new pages. We had a blast writing together!
Write Out Loud
Our first Write Out Loud of 2026 was a blast! And the FIRST was not lost on us—we used FIRSTS as the theme of the night, writing to the same prompts we encouraged you to try for Firefly: Stories Out Loud the following week. We are so grateful to all who came out and wrote with us. Join us for the next Write Out Loud on February 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. In 2025, we provided 45 seats totaling $12,619.00. So far for 2026, we’ve offered 13 seats totaling $3,365. 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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