by Catherine Bloomer
One of the most rewarding experiences WriteOn has to offer is the end-of-semester Student Reading. The reading takes place on New School’s campus, giving students a taste of what their MFA Fellows experience!
In the Fall of 2018, Candice Ralph and Jillian Fraker created a class theme of “Your Worlds, Your Words.” They used personal narrative and poetry to explore the trajectories of how students’ experiences relate to and function within the physical, metaphysical, and the fantastical. From exploring the personal narrative of James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son to finding poetic voices in the park, the students interviewed aliens and even explored other galaxies. The students read work that transported the listener to galaxies beyond.
In the Spring of 2019, Cynthia Amoah and Kiri Milburn picked up from their colleagues’ theme to ground their syllabus on the continents of Earth in “Around the World with GJA.” They studied literature from Australia and Ghana (where Kiri and Cynthia hail from respectively) and encouraged the boys to use specific details from their own worlds in their poems and short stories. In their students’ reading we heard stories of daily commutes, of grandparent’s journeys, of the (un)known world in which we live.
