With the fourth episode on May 15, our spring series Girls Write Now Live: History in the Making continued to showcase the diverse voices of today’s young writers!
We kicked things off by honoring the evening’s keynote speakers Rosayra Pablo Cruz and Julie Schwietert Collazo, authors of The Book of Rosy: A Mother’s Story of Separation at the Border (HarperOne, June 2020) with the Agent of Change Award. This special evening was emceed by Carolina Alduey, multicultural talent manager and PR professional, and introduced by Judith Curr, the President & Publisher of The HarperOne Group, HarperCollins, and Lulu Martinez, Marketing Manager at HarperCollins, who translated the introduction into Spanish. Watch Rosy and Julie’s keynote speeches here.
The evening’s featured mentees are listed below in the order of performance. They took over the screen from their homes to share multi-genre, multimedia works—from poetry and short films intended to raise awareness for mental health to a jaunty and bright original song to an eerily prescient fiction piece about a pandemic.
- Kilhah St Fort; audio, “claiming my place”
- Janet Rojas Vazquez; poem, “A Planted Scar”
- Ugonna Agwu; poem + animation, “Fragments: The Need for Attention”
- Britney Phan; memoir, “this is”
- Jade Lozada; erasure poem, “Mr. Rochester Is Punished”
- Olesya Shanabrook; fiction, “Falling into the Disease’s Arms”
- Hadia Miah; video, “Mauvy Glow Makeup Tutorial”
- Francis Gutierrez; memoir, “Cracks of Sunshine”
- Lorena Maca Garcia; fiction, “Runaway Girl?”
- Mekkiayah Jacobs; podcast, “Getting Out of the Struggle”
- Aniya Greene; poem, “Thoughts of my librarian (whose name I don’t know)”
- Claire Giannosa; poem, “Distorted Atmosphere”
- Ruby Gower; fiction + animation, “Tawhito Scene”
- Pilar Lu-Heda; fiction, “A Gathering Storm”
- Chenicia Cummings; podcast, “Changed Lives”
- Margareta Stern; short film, “Begin at the Beginning”
- Jaya Rao-Herel; memoir, “Two Worlds”
- Kinah Britton; memoir, “Scars”
- Alin Suarez; website, “Citrus Youth”
- Tiffany Ho; fiction, “For All the Choices Given to the One Taken”
- Grace Yu; original song, “See the Sun”
You can watch the full live stream below. And don’t forget you can join us every Friday night this spring for a virtual event, whether it’s a Girls Write Now Live performance or a Salon with a featured guest artist!
- Check out the full Girls Write Now Live lineup
Girls Write Now Live is presented in partnership with the New-York Historical Society. We’d also like to extend our gratitude to Judith Curr of HarperCollins, Christine Ball of Dutton, and Tiffany and Amber Davis of Context & Co for their help with this program.