Calling all Women Writers!

Friends, I have been inspired. Reading the New York Times yesterday, I discovered an incredibly cool program that pairs high school girls with women who are authors, journalists, playwrights, poets and editors as mentors.

Specifically targeting low-income and immigrant girls, whose parents may not speak English, Girls Write Now was started 10 years ago by Maya Nussbaum. While majoring in creative writing, Nussbaum realized the difference mentors had made in her life and writing and wanted to offer the same opportunity to aspiring writers -- girls who might not have it otherwise because they attend large, overcrowded schools, come from low-income neighborhoods or from families in which writing is not a priority.

Through Girls Write Now, mentees meet once a week with their mentors to share creative writing work, visit museums, and attend films and plays. At monthly workshops, all program mentors and mentees come together to work on improving their craft and building their confidence through readings (you can watch video clips of readings on YouTube). They are also offered college counseling through the program and at the end of the year, emerge with seven-genre portfolio, and opportunities to submit writing for internships, scholarships, awards and publication. Not surprisingly, Girls Write Now boasts a 100 percent college acceptance rate among participants.

As an enthusiastic, but often awkward creative writer, I would have loved to have participated in something like this when I was in high school. So here’s my question to local ink-stained, professional ladies: How can we start this in Seattle? I know we have the 826 Project that helps to tutor young writers, but how can we create a program that uniquely targets girls? Because, as we all remember from high school, it’s not always easy to step outside your comfort zone in front of the opposite gender.

Any ideas? Let me know what you think, maureen@partnership4learning.org.