Our spring series Girls Write Now Live: History in the Making features the diverse voices of today’s young writers! Each episode showcases electrifying original storytelling from teens who are taking their place in history through prose, poetry, video, illustration, and more forms of multimedia work.
On June 5th, Christine Ball, President & Publisher of Dutton and Berkley, honored Kiley Reid, author of the New York Times bestseller Such a Fun Age (G.P. Putnam’s Sons), with the Agent of Change Award. The evening was emceed by Amber Davis and Tiffany Davis, Co-founders of Context & Co. and Storytelling Coaches for Girls Write Now mentees.
This episode was dedicated to those who have lost their lives to racial violence. Girls Write Now stands in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.
An Arizona native, Kiley Reid is a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was the recipient of the Truman Capote Fellowship. Her writing has been featured or is forthcoming in the New York Times, Playboy, Ploughshares, December, New South, and Lumina, where her short story was the first-place winner in the 2017 Flash Prose Contest. Her New York Times–bestselling debut novel, Such a Fun Age, is currently in development by Lena Waithe’s Hillman Grad Productions and Sight Unseen Pictures. Kiley lives in Philadelphia.
We were also thrilled to host a live Pre-Show Q&A with Kiley in Zoom, which you can watch here.
The evening’s featured mentees took over the screen from their homes to share multi-genre, multimedia works. They are listed below in the order of performance.
- Leadra Reeves; poem, “Rough Edges”
- May Hathaway; poem, “Meditation on Blood”
- Micaela Pinto; fiction, “505”
- Tiffanie Roye; podcast, “Tiff Talks: An Afternoon with Brick Distributor”
- Obenewa Adu; memoir, “Tales Of A Mixed Girl: An Open Letter To All The Mixed Girls Struggling To Find Their Identity”
- Brianna Clarke-Arias; erasure poem, “The Body”
- Anne Rhee; poem, “Crossing Over”
- Hannah Thomas; fiction, “A Traditional Wife”
- Angely Morel; memoir, “Letter to You, Letter to Me”
- Daniela Ramos; graphic design and poem, “Sex is Her Identity”
- Nylah Harris; video, “Evolution of Nylah and Kathleen”
- Chelsea Yan; poem, “Epiphany of Hotpot”
- Gabrielle Galchen; poem, “Forgotten Ignorance”
- Olivia Hom; animation, “Rainbow Shoelaces”
- Irene Hao; poem, “Flicker Out”
- Siarra Francois; memoir, “The Quarantine Diaries”
- Aaliyana Garcia; original song and video, “Feelings Change”
- Elisabeth Hynes; poem, “Where Am I?”
- Maxine Babb; fiction, “A Painter’s Job”
- Lauren Cichon; photography and audio, “Bunk”
- Sanjida Sheuba; poem, “Taken Out”
- Ciara Mckay; poem, “Everything That Ever Haunted Us”
- Amanda Castillo; fiction, “Oppidum Exspiravit”
- Lena Habtu; poem, “exist(ing)”
- Check out the full Girls Write Now Live lineup