The Upswing Fund
April 14, 2021
The Upswing Fund highlights Girls Write Now as one of their featured organizations for the 2021 cohort, including a beautiful testimonial from a Girls Write Now mentee Kilhah St Fort:
“When I was struggling to cope with the overwhelming racial violence in the media and a truckload of uncertainties about my senior year due to COVID-19, Girls Write Now was there for me. I was practically a zombie. Then, I attended a Girls Write Now Friday Night Salon on Spoken Word Poetry led by Mentor Cynthia Amoah, and I started to come alive. The environment of positivity, warmth and encouragement helped me transfer all my negative emotions into rich lines of metaphors and imagery. I learned to strengthen my voice and transform it into a weapon, both to defend myself and attack the systems that aim to harm me. I remembered that poetry is not confined to books. It does not strictly belong to a seventeenth-century British poet and his endless sonnets. Poetry is the ache of a single mother’s back, the slight brush of your crush’s hand against yours, the tears in your eyes when you kiss your old life goodbye and embrace your new one. Poetry is people and more importantly, poetry is you.”
GIRLS WRITE NOW MENTEE KILHAH ST FORT