“I’m so happy to be a high-schooler and to be able to apply to this program. I’ve been wanting to join for so long!”
— Kylie G., First-year Mentee
We were thrilled to welcome members of the Class of 2018 and their parents to our New Mentee Friends & Family Open House. This year, 140 pairs will be enrolled across the Writing & Mentoring Program (WMP) and the Digital Media Mentoring Program (DMP). Roughly 29% are returning pairs, 55% are returning mentors, and 37% are returning mentees. Our inspiring mentees come from all five boroughs, and our talented mentors come to us from companies including The New York Times, Spotify, Archie Comics, Entertainment Weekly, Gawker Media, Penguin Random House, The New School, and TIME Magazine.
Every year, the Girls Write Now community weighs in on identifying the overarching theme. After diving into a deep discussion, we picked the theme “Generation F” and it will direct the program and inspire our writers all year. The goal is to interpret “Generation F” and mentees will explore what this means to them, with their mentors by their side. The “F” has already inspired ideas like “future,” “forward,” “freedom,” and “female.” At the end of the program year we will release the culmination of the mentees’ work in our annual anthology.
The power of Girls Write Now resonates and the great word-of-mouth recruits family members. We have two pairs of sisters who have been in our program: Nyasiah and Aracelie, and Anglory and Angely. Nyasiah began as a freshman and stayed in DMP for all four years, graduating in the spring of 2016. Aracelie is now coming to us as a freshman enrolled in DMP. She expects that having a mentor means “having a person who I trust to help me learn and grow.” Anglory enrolled in WMP during the last program year as a senior, and her sister, Angely is now starting as a sophomore in WMP. She looks forward to “joining a community of female writers who will empower and support each other, while also discovering myself as a writer.”
From Founder and Executive Director Maya’s kitchen table in 1998 to our workshop space at 247 West 37th St. in 2017, Girls Write Now has evolved from an idea to a robust organization that directly impacts the next generation of women writers. We look forward to the relationships our pairs will build this year and the boundary-pushing and multi-platform stories they will create!