Code for Blueberry Toaster Waffles
By Sierra Blanco
Code for Blueberry Toaster Waffles is a short illustrated spoken-word poem by Sierra Blanco that speaks to themes of creativity, friendship and isolation. It is accompanied by drawings based on the themes presented within the text.
Process
In order to make this piece, I used skills that I had learned from Girls Write Now about making animatics in GIMP for the visuals, as well as various tricks learned from both poetry classes and open mic salons in order to create the linguistic portion of the work.
Meet the Pair
MENTEE SIERRA BLANCO & MENTOR ABIGAIL KEEL
Sierra’s Anecdote: I always love meeting up with Abigail for good tea and discussion. Abigail is especially encouraging to me when gearing up for entering competitions like Scholastic! She gives really insightful feedback on all my pieces and has an interesting perspective on details in my pieces. Moreover, the intriguing activities Abigail comes up with are incredibly fun! It was also absolutely amazing to have her at the third (staged) reading of my musical, Farewell Chris Yee!
Abigail’s Anecdote: Sierra and I meet every week at Argo Tea. Every time she walks in and I ask how she’s doing or how her week has been, she replies “Epic!” or “Splendiferous!” or “Awesome!” It always puts a smile on my face to see her embrace school, life, and writing with so much enthusiasm. It’s infectious. And watching the staged reading of her original musical this winter was definitely “epic.”
Sierra Blanco
Sierra Blanco won the Sondheim National Young Playwrights Competition, Writopia’s Worldwide Plays Competition, NYC Write A Play! Competition, and was Guest Playwright to the O’Neill Young Playwrights Festival. Her poetry was published in the New York Times and her play “Bang!” in “A Decade of Shared Stories.” Her play “The Smallest Heroes” received a contract with YouthPLAYS. She received the Perelstein Discover Your Passion Scholarship for Musical-Theater Composition. She is a winner of the National Endowment for the Arts Musical Songwriting Challenge. She had three Off-Broadway productions of her work and maintains membership at the Dramatists Guild, AEA, and MENSA.
