As part of the Washington Writers’ Publishing House’s (WWPH) year-long celebration of its 50th anniversary and renewed commitment to community programming, the press has been sponsoring literary salons in each of Washington, DC’s eight wards. I facilitated a mini workshop for the Ward 8 edition, held at Project Create, an Anacostia-based nonprofit providing free arts education to area residents.
The salon drew an impressive group of eager writers, ages 12 to 24. I was a bit concerned that such a broad age range might make things challenging. How do you bring together participants with such different levels of exposure to literature? The younger writers were definitely shyer, while the older participants (including some current creative writing/English majors and a recent grad deeply immersed in Afrofuturism and knowledgeable about mechanics of creating writing) were more at ease. But the event was well-organized, varied, and thoughtfully paced, so everyone found a way to participate.
As is often the case, the best part of these gatherings was the camaraderie that forms among the writers. A few participants left making plans to reconnect. For all the complaints about social media isolating young people, it can also provide the means to foster community.
Each facilitator shared a prompt connected to the idea of “writing the future,” highlighting a different element of the creative process. For my workshop, I focused on writing in the first-person point of view. Whether in fiction or poetry, first-person is the earliest way we learn to tell stories. Take a listen as the way children narrate their own adventures, full of twists, imagination, and intensity.
My Prompt
My prompt asked the group to imagine life in 2050 and consider how the events of the 2020s (election craziness, gameshow politics, the pandemic, wars, genocide, home-grown angst and violence, AI taking over the world. We have been through some ish yes?) might shape that future. I framed it as: What’s on your heart right now, and how might someone in 2050 see its influence on their world? From there, we dug into one of the hardest parts of good storytelling: keeping an audience engaged with the character’s journey. (As one facilitator noted, many stories boil down to two possibilities: a stranger comes to a new place, or a character goes on a journey.)
The responses ranged from fears of a fractured, dystopian future to more speculative explorations of resilience and possibility. We closed with a quick revision exercise using a poet’s trick—reading a draft backwards—to sharpen attention to language and detail. Writers also practiced fleshing out sensory description as a way to deepen the imagined worlds they were creating.
I left impressed by the focus, artistry, and openness of these young writers. They weren’t glued to their phones. They engaged with one another, listened deeply, and took feedback with seriousness and care. The kids are going to be all right.
On note on our host, Project Create. It’s seems a a great organization, with a really nice facility in the heart of downtown Anacostia. Their commitment to providing free arts education is inspiring. You can learn more about their work and how to support it here: https://projectcreatedc.org/
