(CHICAGO, IL) On the weekend of May 3 and 4, about a dozen juniors and seniors from Chicago Public High Schools, will gather on the Columbia campus to be mentored in their writing skills by two nationally recognized writers. Afro-Chicano poet John Murillo and Asian American memorist Bich Nguyen will conduct two full days of writing workshops for Columbia’s first Diversity in Writing weekend. Murillo and Nguyen will be assisted by several of the college’s top graduate students in the MFA Poetry program as well as a number of senior students in creative non-fiction.
The event is supported through a grant from Columbia’s Multicultural Affairs Office and seeks to enhance curricular diversity. It is also intended as a recruitment opportunity which will assist the college’s mission of attracting an increasingly diverse student population to the arts and media college.
English professor Sam Park came up with the concept for the Diversity in Writing weekend, which focuses on the genres of poetry and creative non-fiction, both degree tracks in Columbia’s English department. He worked closely with colleague Sheila Baldwin, who was instrumental in the writing of the successful grant proposal and in outreach to the Chicago Public Schools.
CPS students will be selected by Park and Nicole Nzinga-Darden, an MFA candidate in Poetry, who has been working as the coordinator for Diversity in Writing. Work has been submitted from students at Benito Juarez, Martin Luther King, Jr. College Prep, Kenwood Academy, Roberto Clemente Community Academy, Multicultural Arts High School and several others.
On Saturday, the young poets will work with Murillo and the aspiring creative non-fiction writers with Nguyen on issues of revision and they will attend master classes in either poetry or creative non-fiction. On Sunday the master authors will speak about the business of writing as well as mentoring students on the importance of reading good literature and doing skill-building work in analytical thinking. Sunday will culminate with public readings by participating students. Cash prizes will be awarded to outstanding students.
“This experience will provide students with a lot of support at a stage in their lives where they need a mentor to validate their goals and ambitions,” says Park. “Having a published, ‘real’ writer encourage you and read your writing can be a transformative experience.”
Nzinga-Darden, who moved to Chicago in 2004 after completing her undergraduate work at Pomona College, comes to the project with solid experience in educational outreach and enrichment. She worked for a Teen REACH after-school program in Bronzeville for two years, first as a tutor and later heading up the academic support team. “We had great results and were even asked by several CPS teachers to work exclusively with some students in lieu of class attendance,” she explains. “The program had – and still has – a 100% college attendance rate. I’m absolutely thrilled to be working with young people again through the Diversity in Writing weekend.”
Bich Nguyen is the author of Stealing Buddha’s Dinner (Viking 2007), for which she won the PEN/Jerard Award. Her work has also appeared in Dream Me Home Safely: Writers on Growing up in America, Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry and Prose, as well as Jane magazine and Gourmet magazine. Her first novel, Short Girls, will be published by Viking Penguin in 2009.
John Murillo is an Afro-Chicano poet and playwright from Los Angeles, California. He is the 2002 and 2004 winner of the D.C Commission on Arts and Humanities’ Larry Neal Award for Poetry. A Cave Canem fellow and former instructor with DCWritersCorps, John was a coach for Washington D.C.’s 2001 and 2005 National Teen Poetry Slam Teams. His work has appeared in such publications as Ploughshares, Cave Canem VIII and IX, DC Poets Against the War, and the forthcoming anthology, Fear of a Brown Nation. He is the author of the chapbook, Aluta, and co-editor of the forthcoming anthology, B-Boy Infinitives: Poetry of the Hip-Hop Experience. John is the current New York Times Fellow in Poetry at NYU’s Graduate Program for Creative Writing.
Samuel Park is the author of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Alyson, 2006). His forthcoming publications include reviews in Shakespeare Bulletin and Theater Journal as well as several scholarly articles and critical essays. He is a full time faculty member in Columbia’s English Department. Park holds his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, where he wrote his dissertation on “The Performance of Race in Asian American Drama.”
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