pwn teen lit fest: voice & verse

Pamela A. Major is the creator and founder of Melia Bloom, a lifestyle services company that empowers people, places, and purpose. Major has a profound belief that in taking the adventure to grow we can always have the delight and opportunity to be better. Major is a dynamic speaker, author, playwright, storyteller, and empowerment coach. She has a unique ability to put into context the needs of an organization or individual and provides practical insights to help them achieve and succeed. One of Major’s most prominent programs is the Viral Vision Adventure (Vi-VA). You can find her at meliabloom.com.

Vivian DeRosa is a writer, blogger, and current student at Smith College. She worked as a Project Write Now intern for two years before founding the Teen Writing Group. She believes that writing and community go hand in hand, and she’s passionate about creating a space where everyone can share their story. She is a Presidential Scholar in the Arts and an Aspen Words Emerging Writer Fellow, and her writing has been published in the Huffington Post, Poets Reading the News, and Lunch Ticket. Currently, she’s working on a novel. When she’s not teaching, Vivian likes reading excellent books and watching terrible TV. You can find her at vivianparkinderosa.com, where she blogs about all things literary.

Luke Herzog, originally from Pacific Grove, California, is a student studying English and Theater at Amherst College in Massachusetts. Luke has written several ten-minute plays and short films, as well as three published sci-fi/fantasy novels—Dragon Valley, Griffin Blade and the Bronze Finger, and Continuum: Collected Stories of Space and Time. In addition, he partnered with a composer classmate to conceive and produce a full-length musical. In 2019, Luke was one of 20 artists in the country chosen as a Presidential Scholar in the Arts and honored at the Kennedy Center. You can find him at www.lukeherzog.com.

Koye Oputa is an 18-year old student living in Baltimore for school. She is constantly eating new foods, learning new perspectives, and discovering that Old Bay seasoning tastes good on nearly everything. She is an intern at Project Write Now and the creative director of the intercollegiate magazine, J. Magazine. She writes for the people who are “bad” and need the hope and love to know that they can be good.

Lisa Hartsgrove is Project Write Now’s program coordinator & writing instructor. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College and her BA in English from Montclair State University. Lisa has been previously published in the Pitkin Review, the Atlantic Highlands “Herald,” and Collage. In 2019, Lisa won first place in the Laury Egan HBAC Poetry Contest, and in 2014, she took third place in the Jersey Bayshore Writing Contest for a flash fiction piece. She is currently working on her first young adult novel-in-verse and is continuing the “one sentence a day” project she began 2016. (You can follow her one-sentence journey and her art journey on Instagram at spillingmyart.) All of her published work is collected on her website, lisahartsgrove.com.

aura Cyphers’ passion for writing began in her teens and has continued to inform every aspect of her life since then. She has taught English and creative writing in classrooms, workshops, and the homeschool setting. She is a multi-genre writer but considers poetry her first love and the genre that taught her how to synthesize and organize language: to craft image, energy, and tension to create a particular experience for the reader. As a writing teacher at Project Write Now, her top priority is to provide a safe and enriching environment in which her students can move beyond self-criticism to self-expression, and explore the untamed world of their imaginations. She has been published in The San Diego Poetry Annual and lives in Southwest Virginia with her two dog-children.

Sebrina Gao (@seb.draws) is a second-year Entertainment Arts student at ArtCenter College of Design. She creates believable environments for animation and is interested in using color and mood to tell stories! She loves hiking, driving, and trying all types of food. You can find more of her art at sebrinagao.squarespace.com!