PUBLISHED SAMPLES FROM WRITEGIRL
On Jan. 20, 2021, a group of mentors and participants from the Los Angeles-based nonprofit WriteGirl hosted a watch party as one of their own delivered a poem during the inauguration of President Joe Biden in Washington, D.C. Los Angeles resident and WriteGirl alumna Amanda Gorman stood at the podium and recited “The Hill We Climb.”
“It will make me cry just talking about it,” WriteGirl founder Keren Taylor said of that moment.
Since 2001, WriteGirl, a creative writing and mentoring program, has helped females ages 13-18 in Los Angeles and beyond discover the power of writing and how to put those skills to use in the real world. Young women, or those who identify as nonbinary, can sign up for numerous free workshops and panel discussions as well as receive one-on-one mentoring from one of the nearly 500 volunteers, women who work in a variety of industries. WriteGirl serves about 500 people annually, and participants are guided through types of writing including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, journalism, graphic novels, songs, screenwriting and for business.
“It was just such a welcoming place,” Charlie Dodge of Arcadia said during a recent phone interview. Dodge joined WriteGirl as a junior in high school along with her little sister. “They gave you a lot of opportunities to read your work in front of people. It was a very collaborative and encouraging environment.”
The roots of WriteGirl
“THE ELEGY FOR EQUALITY,” BY ALI ENGLE-TSENG, 14 Equality was once a living thing Brought up when human voices first began to sing
Then suddenly brought down by the thought of Superior
Stabbed in the heart by that loathsome killer The world cried out as it fell to the trend Of many different cultures separated from friends
All that was left of it was ashy memory
The few golden days where to live was to be And disagreement wasn’t anger or jealousy But, alas, as we all know the story
From cold and closed hearts
Gone was Equality
The organization was started by Taylor, a former performer, songwriter and afterschool program director who had been laid off from her dotcom job and wanted to share her creative passion with others, especially in densely populated cities with higher numbers of at-risk teens.
“I think that I always felt the inequities that existed for women, so that was a big part of it,” she said during a recent phone interview. “We need to help women get ahead, and the best way I knew how to do that was to help them with communication and leadership skills. If you can make it fun and not seem like school, maybe they’ll actually show up. And that worked.”
In 2013, WriteGirl received the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award, which was presented to Taylor and WriteGirl alumna Jacqueline Uy by first lady Michelle Obama at the White House. WriteGirl was given the national stage again when Gorman spoke at the presidential inauguration.
“We’re so proud of how these women have been able to develop their voices and express their voices,” Taylor said. “Every time Amanda is up there speaking, she just exemplifies everything we’re trying to help instill in teens and that’s confidence, a sense of reflecting back on their past but looking to their future, a sense of hopefulness, positivity, compassion for others and directness. All of these qualities Amanda embodies and are things we lean into here at WriteGirl.”
Building confidence and more
mentor, as she opted to attend the larger events and workshops the program provided where there were several rotating mentors.
“That way, I had a different mentor at each event and that worked for me,” she said. “I liked meeting new people and I got to see what different careers they all had, which was really cool.”
Dodge recently graduated from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study and works as an audience producer at The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative news organization. She said she owes a lot to her mentors, who helped her organize her college applications and essays.
Encouragement for college
WriteGirl provides its participants with a program that includes guidance on how to write college essays, prepare for standardized testing, fill out applications, find schools that are the best fit and apply for financial aid. Taylor says 100% of WriteGirl’s Core Mentoring Program seniors have graduated from high school and enrolled in college, many with scholarships and as the first in their families to do so.
“I went to all of those meetings and they helped immensely,” Dodge said. “The network is so large and they have connections with a bunch of different universities, so getting those eyes on my essays was great.”
During her summers off from college, Dodge was a marketing intern at WriteGirl and recently applied to become a mentor in her free time. All programming has been virtual since the pandemic began in 2020, though Taylor said they are working on what a hybrid version of WriteGirl online and in-person events would be like. By going completely virtual, they were able to open up to young women outside of Los Angeles. So far, they’ve had girls join from Nevada and Wisconsin and other countries including Afghanistan, Uruguay and Poland.
“It’s been amazing that the girls that have found us sort of organically have become such a part of our community, and we’re learning a lot from them, too, so it’s really powerful,” Taylor added.
WriteGirl has a lot of bigname support, too: novelists Janet Fitch, Attica Locke and Lisa Yee; songwriter Kara DioGuardi; director Gina Prince-Bythewood; screenwriter and filmmaker Nancy Myers; novelist and actor Lauren Graham; writer Melissa Rosenberg; TV showrunner Joey Soloway; and writer Sandra Tsing Loh (also host of Southern California News Group video series “Bookish”). Actors like Seth Rogen, Wayne Brady and Kirby Howell-Baptiste have also volunteered to perform some of the girls’ works live, Taylor said.
WriteGirl has also published its participants’ works in a series of anthologies that are available for purchase at writegirl.org, with profits going back to fund the programs. The 15 books have won 91 national and international book awards.
“It’s pretty amazing that you get your work published and you have a publishing credit as a high school or middle school student,” Dodge said, noting that at the time she didn’t appreciate how big of a deal that would be. “My name was listed in the credits of a published work before I even graduated, and that’s crazy.”
WriteGirl recently launched its virtual publishing site linesandbreaks.org, which will provide even more opportunities to publish participants’ work, Taylor said. As WriteGirl extends its global reach, she added, it’s also looking at other ways to raise funds to expand programming and accessibility.
“The whole world changes when we educate girls,” she said. “We know that. That’s so fundamental to all that we do. Look at Greta Thunberg and Amanda Gorman. I mean, those voices in some ways are more powerful than some of the older established voices that we always turn to.”
For more information about how you can get involved, go to WriteGirl.org or call 213-253-2655.
“IDENTITY IS A STRANGE PLACE,” BY KATIE CHUNG, 16 Identity is a strange place, isn’t it? Blue waves cascade over a shiny piano. Ivory keys glisten in the melancholy light. But there’s also a light breeze, smell of freshly mowed grass and gold rays.
Does one have to choose a place to belong? Are we Architects or admirers? Writers or readers? Listeners or speakers:
Are we confined to one or the other?
What if we are Architects and admirers? Writers and readers? Listeners and speakers? Identity is still a strange place.
But I want to be where the ivory keys and golden rays meet.
Where I can Belong.
Taylor said WriteGirl is less about specific skill-building and more about building self-esteem and creative confidence, and ensuring young women see themselves as a valuable voice in the world.
And Gorman isn’t their only success story.
“I have as much pride for all those teens that are doing work with women in Nicaragua and are doing a fellowship on peace and conflict in Sweden and working on nuclear nonproliferation,” Taylor added. “Those are the kinds of things that our teens are doing every day all around the world, and I never knew WriteGirl would turn into that. That’s my greatest source of pride.”
Dodge said the program helped boost her confidence and broaden her scope when it came to writing. Her passion was journalism, and she wrote and drew cartoons for her high school newspaper, but through working with a variety of mentors, she found value and creative freedom in other forms of writing as well. She didn’t have a one-onone