WritersCorps is holding our first ever Pen Pal Meetup and Open Mic. Students from our sites have been writing letters to each other this fall to get to know youth who go to different schools. The meetup will feature a variety of activities, including a hip hop writing workshop, a holiday card making workshop, and the chance to read their work during our open mic hour. There will be prizes and refreshments. And you don’t even need a pen pal to attend.

When: December 6, 2011, 3:30-5:30 p.m.

Where: San Francisco Public Library, 100 Larkin Street (at Grove), Children’s Creative Center, 2nd Floor

Cost: Free

Public Transit: Civic Center BART and Muni Metro J, K, L, M, and N lines

Join WritersCorps at San Francisco’s annual literary extravaganza, Litquake. Now in its 12th year, the festival runs October 7 to 15 this year with more than 550 authors at events. WritersCorps will be participating in the legendary Lit Crawl through the Mission district on Saturday, October 15. Our teaching artists and students will be reading about city and place.

WHAT: WritersCorps: Writers and Their Students Explore San Francisco

WHO: WritersCorps teaching artists Anhvu Buchanan, Rick D’Elia, Minna Dubin, Roseli Ilano, Carrie Leilam Love, and harold terezón, along with WritersCorps students.

WHEN & WHERE: Phase 2 of Lit Crawl: Saturday, October 15, 2011, 7:15 to 8:00 p.m.
Serendipity, 803 Valencia St, (near 19th St)

Cost: Free!

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Join WritersCorps for a special reading and art show with our students at Hilltop School.

We gave modern teenage girls a box, art supplies, pen and paper and asked: “What goes in your hope chest?”

The students at Hilltop School answered.

WHAT: The Hope Chest Project

WHEN: Thursday, May 12, 1 to 2 pm.

WHERE: Galeria de la Raza
2857 24th St (at Bryant)

COST: Free

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Students from all over San Francisco have been working with authors from WritersCorps to put their stories and thoughts down on paper. Now those writings have been published in a series of books and projects! Come join WritersCorps for our year-end celebration of new writing.

Featuring performances by students from Aptos Middle School, Downtown High School, Hilltop School, International Studies Academy, Mission High School, San Francisco Main Library, and the WritersCorps Apprentice Program.

WHAT: WritersCorps WordStorm: A Celebration of New Writing

WHERE: San Francisco Main Public Library, Latino Hispanic Room (lower level),
100 Larkin Street (@ Grove)

WHEN: May 11, 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.

Literary Carnival (with free writing workshops and activites): 4:30 to 5:30 p.m.
Student Reading: 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.

COST: FREE

PUBLIC TRANSIT: Muni Lines 5, 19, 21, 43, 49; Civic Center BART and Muni Metro

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April 16 and April 19
Free Admission

Lights, camera, poetry! In celebration of National Poetry Month, WritersCorps presents the Poetry Projection Project, a festival of short films based on youth writing. We challenged filmmakers of all ages to create short films based on WritersCorps poems. Entries were juried by filmmaker Peter Bratt, who will be in attendance at the April 16 screening.

There are three screenings of the Poetry Projection Project. All screenings are free and open to the public.

April 16, 2 p.m.
Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts (MCCLA)
2868 Mission Street (between 24th and 25th streets)
Peter Bratt, our special guest juror, will announce the winners of the Poetry Projection Project at this screening. A reception featuring food from Mission Pie to follow.

April 19, 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.
San Francisco Public Library, Koret Auditorium
100 Larkin Street (at Grove Street)
This screening is open to school field trips and the public. If you are bringing a class on a field trip, please RSVP to nirmala.nataraj [at] sfgov [dot] org

Storylines by Paul Notzold, Photo by Ian Wang.

The San Francisco Arts Commission kicks off The ARTery Project with the debut of three site-specific light installations by artists Jim Campbell, Theodore Watson and Paul Notzold and art openings at The Luggage Store, Hospitality House, and Gray Area Foundation for the Arts.

WritersCorps collaborated with Paul Notzold to create one of the installations, Storylines, which will project from the 6th floor of the Art Institute of California building at 10 United Nations Plaza onto the 7th-Street-side of the Renoir Hotel. The projection features animation and speech bubbles that will be populated with stories created by students in the San Francisco Arts Commission’s award-winning WritersCorps program.

WritersCorps students will read at the launch event on November 9, when city officials will gather to turn the light installations on. The evening’s festivities will also include live music provided by People in Plazas and a community procession to each light installation led by members of the Bayanihan Community Center and Kularts carrying traditional Filipino parol lanterns. Members of the public are encouraged to join the fun and come adorned in their own lights or to bring traditional light objects representing the many festivals of light that take place throughout the holiday season.

Lights on Market Street: December 9, 2010 through June 2, 2011.

Launch Event: Thursday, December 9, 2010, 5:00-7:00 PM

Where: Procession starts at A.C.T. building at 1119 Market Street (across from U.N. Plaza)
Reception follows at The Luggage Store/Hospitality House  at 1007 Market Street

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About The ARTery Project
The ARTery Project is an initiative funded by the National Endowment for the Arts aimed at revitalizing the Central Market commercial corridor into a nationally-celebrated cultural destination.

Join WritersCorps at San Francisco’s annual literary extravaganza, Litquake. Now in its 11th year, the festival runs October 1 to 9 this year with more than 550 authors at events. WritersCorps will be participating in the legendary Lit Crawl through the Mission district on Saturday, October 9. Our teaching artists and students will be reading about city and place as they celebrate our latest student-produced travel guide and poetry anthology: “City of Stairways: A Poet’s Field Guide to San Francisco”

WHAT: City of Stairways: Exploring Place in San Francisco

WHO: WritersCorps teaching artists Anhvu Buchanan, Rick D’Elia, Minna Dubin, Aracely Gonzalez, and Carrie Leilam Love.

With WritersCorps students Indiana Pehlivanova, Annie Yu, Marcella Ortiz, Nicole Zatarain Rivera, Sandra Pulido and Robin Black

WHEN & WHERE: Phase 2 of Lit Crawl: Saturday, October 9, 2010, 7:15 to 8:00 pm
Serendipity, 803 Valencia St, (near 19th St)

Cost: Free!

Check out images from the event!

Litquake, in conjunction with the San Francisco Public Library, presents a literary crawl for teens on October 8, featuring three phases of workshops and events. Phase 1 features young authors, Phase 2 features writing workshops for teens, and Phase 3 includes a teen book club. ell your own story.

Workshops will be led by Bay Area youth literary organizations, including Streetside Stories, 826 Valencia and WritersCorps. Our students Annie Yu and Marcella Ortiz will be leading workshops (in zine making and in taking writing inspiration from a walk, respectively). Check out the full list of events here.

WHAT: Teenquake Teen Crawl

WHEN & WHERE: Friday, Oct. 8, 1 - 7 p.m.
San Francisco Main Public Library, 100 Larkin St

COST: Free to youth

Join the young authors of “City of Stairways” at our upcoming multi-genre event at the Red Poppy Art House (one of the many sites mentioned in the book)! Part travel guide and part literary anthology, “City of Stairways” was written by students in WritersCorps. This 7×7 inch book is packed to the brim with original poetry, photography, artwork, maps, and tips on the places to see and be seen in San Francisco. “City of Stairways” offers an intimate look at some of the most memorable sites and neighborhoods in San Francisco, and gives residents and visitors alike a unique, vibrant perspective on being a youth in an urban neighborhood.

Aside from our young authors, tonight’s event features local musicians who will be performing work in response to the poems in “City of Stairways.” The artists include rapper/emcee Hopie Spitshard, global avant-garde songstress Tbird Tall Flame Luv, and indie rock luminaries, The Invisible Cities. Don’t miss it!

About Our Guest Performers:

Hopie Spitshard independently released her debut album, “The Diamond Dame,” in July 2008, immediately garnering national attention and a nomination for URB’s Next 1000. Now, as the ink on her law degree dries, Hopie is again returning to the music scene with an eclectic body of work, her second full-length album, “Raw Gems.” To date, Hopie is self-taught &/or classically trained in violin, voice, music composition, spoken word, drums, & guitar.

Tbird Tall Flame Luv, aka Tonya Ridgely, is a great integrator of many talents. With a contemporary avant-garde approach, her accessible global style blends the magical aspects of acoustic, ambient and indigenous music with edgy and soulful undertones of blues and indie rock. Building on a solid classical music foundation at Carnegie Mellon University and a world music and dance foundation at Cal Arts, Tbird’s deep connection to the spiritual purpose of music has lead her to train in healing modalities.

After charming fans with albums “Watertown” (2004) and “Houses Shine Like Teeth” (2009), The Invisible Cities have spent the past couple years web-casting house concerts and taking advantage of Jet Blue’s all-you-can-fly pass to tour. Their video for their new song, Bulldozer, played at several film festivals and won a couple audience awards (Thank you audiences!). They are finishing up work on an EP and trying to be more twittery.

WHAT: City of Stairways Reading/Performance

WHEN & WHERE: Thursday, Sept. 23, 7-9pm

Red Poppy Art House, 2698 Folsom Street

COST: $5 - $10 sliding scale (suggested donation of $10 for adults)

WritersCorps students at City of Stairways book launch, Get Lost Books, July 15

Join the young authors of “City of Stairways: A Poet’s Field Guide to San Francisco” as they continue blazing new trails through the city for our summer reading series! A recent write-up in the San Francisco Chronicle applauded the book for being “about more than just what’s in the city — it’s about how it feels to be here,” celebrating the young poets’ process of writing poems on location and “lending an elegant craftsmanship to their emotions and observations.” See for yourself what some of our favorite city secrets are at our next reading at Book Passage! Along with our young writers, poet Michael Warr will be reading selections of his work. Writer Chrissy Anderson-Zavala will be our emcee for the evening.

About our guest poet:

Michael Warr wrote his first poem at the age of nine in San Francisco. His awards include the Gwendolyn Brooks Significant Illinois Poets award, a NEA Creative Writing Fellowship for Poetry, The Beat Museum Poet of the Month, and others. He is author of “We Are All the Black Boy” and a co-editor of “Power Lines: A Decade of Poetry from Chicago’s Guild Complex.” His poems are anthologized in many publications including “The Spoken Word Revolution: Slam, Hip-hop & the Poetry of a New Generation,” “Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe,” :Changer l’Amerique, Anthologie de la Poesie,” “Protestataire des USA,” and recorded in the CD “A Snake in the Heart: Poems and Music by Chicago Spoken Word Performers.” His digital photo/poetry performance, Poetic Aperture — An African American Interprets Africa, based on his poetry and photographs created as a photojournalist in Ethiopia and Mali, debuted at Chicago’s The Field Museum. Click here for downloads of his poems with music.

WHAT: “City of Stairways” Reading

WHEN & WHERE: August 26, 6-7pm
Book Passage, 1 Ferry Building, #42

COST: FREE