Girls Write Now mentor alumna and, author of Halsey Street, Naima Coster and Meg Wolitzer, who recently published her 12th novel The Female Persuasion, spoke to us for our May CHAPTERS! The authors gave a keynote address at the New-York Historical Society to our audience full of mentees, mentors, and Girls Write Now fans.
Girls Write Now Readers
Ciara McKay & mentor Jaime Mishkin, Ten Years; Leslie Pantaleon, Us; Nylah Harris & mentor Kathleen Scheiner, Forever Florinda; Amina Morgan, Good Things Gone Bad; Sade Andre, Backwards Commute; Maryclare Chinedo & mentor Morayo Faleyimu, Boy, Please!; Waeza Jagirdar, Freedom; Isis Pitt, Just Another #MeToo Story; Abby Fisher, New Year’s Resolution; Maria Rita Furtado, To You; Rubit Hernandez, Mirror Memories; Lily Walker, Camellia Sinesis; Nazerke Akilova, Memory; Sarane James & mentor Margo Shickmanter, The Email Chain; Janiah Taylor, Excerpt from Dear Young People; Shanai Williams, Silenced; Sabrina Persaud, Oh, Look What I Did to Myself; Gia Deeton, Safety.
Emcees
- NAIMA COSTER is a Girls Write Now mentor alumna whose mentee, Yvonne Ndiaye, is emceeing with her tonight. Naima is also one of tonight’s keynote speakers. Naima is an author and teacher whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Lit Hub, Catapult, The Rumpus and Guernica. Naima studied creative writing at Yale, Fordham University, and Columbia University, and has taught writing to students in prison, youth programs, and universities. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2017 Cosmonauts Avenue Nonfiction Prize, judged by Roxane Gay. Her novel, Halsey Street is published by Little A Books. Naima currently teaches at Wake Forest University and is a senior fiction editor at Kweli.
- YVONNE NDIAYE is tonight’s emcee and a Girls Write Now mentee alumna whose mentor was Naima Coster. Yvonne is a graduate of Onondaga Community College, where she received the Leadership Award, Certificate of Academic Achievement, and the Phi Theta Kappa Award. As a teen, Yvonne attended Brooklyn International High School, where she participated in student government and won a Scholastic Art and Writing Award, and the Best Mentee award from iMentor. Yvonne’s poem “Life in Senegal” will be published by Tin House in Girls Write Now: Two Decades of True Stories from Young Female Voices (October 2018).
Keynote Address
KEYNOTE SPEAKER INTERVIEW
MENTEE PERFORMANCE
THANK YOU
