September Community Outreach
Dear Friends of Project Write Now:
Summer is all about our teens!
This month, we’re celebrating the incredible talent, passion, and joy our teen interns bring to Project Write Now. Whether they’re assisting in classrooms, running social media takeovers, capturing stories through interviews, or supporting community events, our teens are making a remarkable impact!
Our Teaching Assistant interns are off to a phenomenal start, supporting instructors in summer programs across the community. At Red Bank Regional’s Summer Slam, two separate groups of TAs inspired rising 9th graders with their passion and creativity. One TA worked closely with campers in a private writing program, while others are leading the way in Teen Writing Space and preparing for our big Write & Reverie event on Thursday, August 7, which is being run by teen intern Skyla. Later this month, two more TAs will join us at our Ink It Up! camp at the YMCA.
One TA shared after her experience with Summer Slam: “Teen internships like this are extremely important because it gives us hands-on experience and allows us to build our confidence, as there were parts of Summer Slam where we interns had to step out of our comfort zones!”
Meanwhile, our Editorial Assistants have taken over PWN Teen in exciting ways. With three Instagram takeovers already this month, cool Bridge Ink graphics, new book recommendations, and upcoming video projects, they’re keeping our feeds lively and inspiring. Many are also crafting thoughtful articles for our Real Voices Write Now magazine—so stay tuned!
And we’re thrilled to share that The Interview Project is partnering with Trinity Church in Asbury Park to honor the Saturday Soup Kitchen’s powerful community outreach. Our interns are already hard at work conducting interviews and drafting stories that celebrate the voices of this vibrant community.
Finally, we’re excited to welcome Allison, a rising senior at Communications High School, as our Community Outreach & Engagement intern. Allie has jumped right in, supporting events such as Sound Bytes, Firefly: Stories Out Loud, and workshops at The Salvation Army, even lending a hand on our beach day with Our Lady of Mount Carmel campers.
We’re so proud of our teens and are grateful for the energy, creativity, and heart they bring to everything they do. This summer truly shines because of them!
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.
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 Avakian, Director of Community Outreach & Engagement, at meredith@projectwritenow.org.
Bridge Ink 9.4
Our latest Bridge Ink issue is out! Volume 9, Issue 4 features teen writing from California, Washington state, Virginia, New York, and New Jersey. You can also find collaborative pieces by our new 2025 interns. Looking for something meaningful to read today? Stop by bridgeink.org. You won’t be disappointed.
Kula Urban Farm
We joined the homeschool group at Kula Urban Farm in Asbury Park for a special workshop to help celebrate summer with some poetry. After making their own flower crowns, children and their caregivers were given journals, pens, and stickers and came up with summer-related words to use as writing prompts for poetry. Many of the children proudly shared their summer-themed poetry while wearing their freshly made flower crowns.
Lunch Break Storytelling Project
We finished our six-week Storytelling Project at Lunch Break with a showcase on Tuesday, July 22. Six community members took the stage to share original, deeply personal stories developed during our weekly writing sessions. The evening closed with an open invitation for audience members to share, as well, reminding us of the power that lives in our stories. We love our partnership with Lunch Break and are excited to be back this fall with Community Playmaking in collaboration with the Two River Theater.
Lunchtime Write-In
Every Friday, writers meet on Zoom to write and share our stories. This month, we explored the themes: “Convenience,” “Brown,” and “Shadow.” No matter where we Zoom in from, we all feel together in this space. Join us for our next Lunchtime Write-In to see what our upcoming themes will be!
Morning Pages Update
Our Morning Pages sessions are in full swing! Every weekday morning at 8 a.m. ET, writers gather for an hour of focused, community-supported writing. These pay-what-you-wish sessions ($0-$95) welcome writers at any point in the month for brief check-ins followed by distraction-free writing time. The magic happens when you show up consistently—you get words on the page and build a supportive writing community. Join us any weekday morning and discover how starting your day with writing and community can transform your creative practice.
Our Lady of Mount Carmel
Throughout the month of July, we returned to Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Asbury Park to host weekly writing workshops as part of their summer camp program for the third consecutive year. To culminate our time together with the 6-8th grade students, we made a special field trip down the street to the beach. Campers enjoyed experiencing the sights, sounds, smells, and sensations of the seaside, some of whom noted it was their first time. We wrapped with some reflecting writing in our journals, followed by some writing in the sand. We’re so grateful to have returned to OLMC and loved our mini beach writing retreat.
PWN India (8th Grade)
We have continued Zooming into India (yes, the country!) with a group of incredible 8th grade writers as part of a seven-week program that we began in June. This month, we read “Weather” by Eve Merriam and wrote about our favorite weather experiences, being sure to add sensory details and onomatopoeias to deepen the impact of our stories. We read “Purple” by Sydnee Bowden (from Bridge Ink 8.2) and wrote about color—making lists of all the ways we find it and feel it in our worlds. We read “Of Memory and Distance” by Russell Edson and used random facts to inspire new original pieces. And we read “a poet’s orchid” by Mikaela N. (from Bridge Ink 2.3) and used the objective correlative to tell a story—in other words, we used objects as prompts to tell the stories behind them. We can’t wait to meet again for our last class in August!
PWN India (Children)
We started with a new group of students in India!. We meet on Zoom every Monday and start our hour off by writing about something that matters to us. We write about memories from our weekend, upcoming school or family events, moments shared with friends and family, or something that is bothering us and just write to get our pens moving. After beginning each class with what we call “a brain dump” and just writing whatever is on our minds, we then use a poem or short excerpt from a story to begin a discussion and ask ourselves, “what does this make me think about?” Or “what line stands out to me and why?” Everyone loves sharing their stories, lists, poems, ideas, and feelings with the class!
PWN India (Adults)
We welcomed a new member to our ongoing adult journaling program in India as our Zoom room is always open. We used the poem “there aren’t enough idioms about the stars” by Keith S. Wilson as inspiration for writing. We love all the different directions the prompts take us and feel transported through space and time when we share our stories.
Submission Sundays
Our monthly Submission Sundays accountability group is off to a great start! We’ve met three times so far, bringing together writers who are ready to tackle their literary magazine submission goals with focused energy and community support. Each month, we gather on Zoom for an hour of dedicated submission time. The sessions start with a brief check-in and end with progress sharing and resource recommendations. Submission Sundays will continue meeting on the third Sunday of each month through the rest of the year. Our next meeting is August 17. Whether you’re new to submitting or looking to build a more consistent practice, this supportive group provides the structure and encouragement to make submissions a regular part of your writing routine. Join us!
Summer Slam at Red Bank Regional
Every year, we participate in Red Bank Regional’s Summer Slam and we had a BLAST again this year! With the help of three of our Teaching Assistant interns, we facilitated writing workshops for four groups of writers back to back. We then came back another day with three new interns for two more groups of writers. With every group, we gave time for writers to decorate their notebooks to better reflect themselves and the stories they will hold. We read “Why I Write” by the 2025 TAs from our online literary journal, Bridge Ink, to set the creative tone. We invited writers to come up with their own prompts, writing words on notecards, shuffling them, and then pulling them from a bag to inspire new ideas. Then we had everyone pick their favorite lines from the day and write them on a community project to be displayed within the school. We had so much fun and we cannot wait to be back again. We love working with Red Bank Regional!
The Salvation Army
The day after we hosted our Prudential North to Shore event Sound Bytes: Stories and Food for the Soul at The Salvation Army in Asbury Park, we returned to host a two-hour workshop with the children participating in their Vacation Bible School summer camp. Keeping with the Sound Bytes theme, we shared some of our favorite summer foods, journaled, sketched, and wrapped with a mini celebration featuring two classic and refreshing summertime favorites: lemonade and ice cream. (Thanks again to our friends at The City of Asbury Park Mayor’s Wellness Committee and Wegmans for sponsoring our food and beverages! Thanks also to our friends at Cookman Creamery for making the most delicious vegan ice cream!)
TORCH Leadership Academy Nonprofit Expo
We were so honored to be invited to participate in the TORCH Leadership Academy nonprofit expo. We invited teens to take notebooks and decorate them with markers and stickers. We also handed out pencils, pens, and buttons. (As usual, the stickers were the biggest hit of all!) We met so many amazing students, teachers, and parents! We explained our mission and went over all the ways teens can get involved. We also connected with other nonprofits and schools for future partnership opportunities. We were thrilled to meet so many writers and look forward to continuing our new connections.
Write Out Loud
We beat the heat with ice pops, heat-themed poems and prompts, a cool community, and an air-conditioned space at the Asbury Book Cooperative for our monthly Write Out Loud meetup. We read William Shakespeare’s “Fear No More” and Hilda Doolittle’s “Heat” and shared some group discussion about both pieces before writing about our relationship with heat and sharing what we wrote. Then we moved into the open mic portion. It was incredible to welcome some new faces, welcome back our returning crew, share some nostalgia, and connect as a community before the heat-filled sky soon became a summer storm. How fitting. If you’re interested in joining us for the next Write Out Loud, mark your calendars for 6 p.m. on Tuesday, August 12, and register today.
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.
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