From Student to Fellow to Author—WriteOn Celebrates a Literary Full-Circle Moment
A special feature on Jennifer Cho Salaff, Max Fischer and Lilyanna Capulin.
The New York Teaching Artist Reading and Celebration gathered teaching artists, students, and stories from across New York City on one stage at The New School this past fall—an event that brought WriteOn’s intergenerational vision into focus. Hosted by poet and Creative Writing faculty member Laura Cronk, the evening featured five esteemed organizations: Community Word Project, DreamYard Project, Teachers & Writers Collaborative, Urban Word, and WriteOn. The program represented every borough of the city, blending poetry and creative nonfiction in a vibrant celebration of voice and mentorship.
The event spotlighted teaching artists as writers in their own right—publishing books, building careers, and shaping their craft through their work with young writers. Each organization presented a teaching artist alongside a student they had mentored, demonstrating how literary community is built across generations. WriteOn was represented by alums Jennifer Cho Salaff and Max Fischer, and longtime student writer Lilyanna Capulin.
Both Jennifer and Max taught Lilyanna during her four years in WriteOn at the High School of Economics and Finance. Now a freshman at St. Joseph’s University, Lilyanna took the stage first and read a piece she originally drafted with WriteOn. Max followed with a new standalone poem, “guide to home transition remedies,” forthcoming in Thirteen Bridges Review (March 2026), and Jennifer closed their trio by reading an excerpt from her memoir-in-progress. Having missed Lilyanna’s original end-of-semester performance due to COVID, Max was grateful to finally hear her work live—a true full-circle moment.
For Jennifer, the evening captured the spirit of WriteOn’s long-term vision. A graduate of Columbia Journalism School, she began her career as a reporter covering education, arts, and motherhood before returning to fiction to “learn the nuts and bolts” of novel writing. During her MFA at The New School, she joined WriteOn as a teaching artist and research assistant. She credits mentors like Cronk and fiction chair Helen Schulman for modeling how teaching artists can also be working writers. Sharing the stage with Max and Lilyanna made that continuity visible—fellows becoming authors, nurturing students who grow into artists with literary communities of their own.
Max experienced the event as both a return and a renewal. Having taken Laura Cronk’s teaching course during his MFA and taught in WriteOn soon after, Max now returned as an alum and debut author. Sharing a reading space with Lilyanna and Jennifer—alongside other teaching artists from across the city—felt like, in Max’s words, “everyone coming together to perform what we love and teach what we love.” It was a realization of WriteOn’s mission to grow writers, not just workshops.
And for Lilyanna, the night confirmed that the literary life she had begun at WriteOn does not end with high school. Having all four years of her high school experience threaded through WriteOn meant she had already practiced sharing work aloud, revising in community, and taking herself seriously as a writer. Standing between Jennifer and Max in front of an audience at The New School affirmed that she is part of a larger artistic network—that she has, in Jennifer’s words, a “literary community” to return to.
The event affirmed that teaching artists’ own projects are not separate from their classrooms, but fed by them. WriteOn makes it possible for young writers and teaching artists to discover, practice, and share their voices in a community that follows them long after the workshop ends. The program is not just an extracurricular workshop; it is a seedbed for future authors, educators, and arts leaders. Seeing a former student like Lilyanna step into her own voice onstage, while Max prepares for a debut novel and Jennifer continues to build a memoir and a novel side by side, made WriteOn’s impact beautifully clear.
Stay tuned for more articles featuring our amazing WriteOn Alumni!