On Sunday, May 5, 2013, we were thrilled to be the Community Partner for the San Francisco Giants at AT&T Park. Our students were treated to complimentary tickets to the Giants vs. Dodgers game and were so excited at the chance to cheer on the home team!

Our Apprentices student Evelyn Leon, 19, read her poem “My Place In the Field,” from home plate before the game. (You can read her poem at the end of this post.)

Evelyn was joined by her instructor, WritersCorps teaching artist Rose Tully.

Evelyn was also joined by her proud parents.

Many thanks to the San Francisco Giants for the opportunity!

See Evelyn read her poem in this video:

Check out the rest of the photos from the game here. Thanks to photographer J. Astra Brinkmann!

My Place In the Field

You see, I was scared.
It was the first Giants game
I ever attended.
I hated it at first.
Screaming, cursing, garbage.
Thirteen, and looking for Mom and Dad,
I sat my little sister on a bench.
The star of the show seemed to be a ball.
The man swinging his bat had all the attention.
Hopefully, he was going to make a home run.
(Whatever that is.)
Back to reality—
I grabbed my sister,
Ran up the stairs, down the hall
Next to the ice cream stand.
Trying to find my parents,
I witnessed an amazing sight.
Being a person of color,
Always made me think of the world
As a divided place.
As distracted as I was,
Always admiring white clouds above everyone,
Brown dirt underneath everything,
I saw
Latins,
Blacks,
Whites,
Everyone joined together in the stadium,
All united together in the field.

—Evelyn Leon, 19

On Saturday, April 13, WritersCorps held the third annual Poetry Projection Project, a festival of short films inspired by youth poems, at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The event was emceed by our very own teaching artist, Anhvu Buchanan, or “Mr. B,” as he’s known by his students.

The audience enjoyed a reading by four WritersCorps poets– Haley, Nicole, Senobia, and Melissa– followed by a screening of film entries. Then, special guest juror H.P. Mendoza, an award-winning San Francisco-based filmmaker (”Colma: The Musical,” and “I Am a Ghost”), praised the work of the filmmakers and poets before announcing the winners of the festival.

The winners were:

“City Boy,” by Jayraj Govender (above, left), featuring his own poem.

“The Girl with the Birds,” by Reel Grrls students, featuring their own poem.

See “City Boy” and “The Girl with the Birds” at the end of this post, and watch the rest of the selected festival films here!

Everyone had a great time at the celebratory reception, enjoying a variety of munchies!

Congratulations to all the filmmakers and poets! See more photos of the Poetry Projection Project event here. Thanks to photographer Cole Anetsberger!

Thank you to our partners, the YBCA Young Artists at Work (YAAW) program, and TILT-Ninth Street Independent Film Center.

Special thanks to our in-kind sponsors: Rainbow Grocery, Cabot Creamery, and Taylor’s Tonics/The Fizzary.

WritersCorps and Amate: Women Painting Stories is proud is present Iron Mom: Not Just a Baby Mama, a collection of poetry for performance about pregnancy and motherhood as a shared experience between writer Leticia Hernández and young women of color who attend Hilltop School.

Join us as Hernández and her collaborators, WritersCorps teaching artist Minna Dubin and well-known local artist Ana Teresa Fernández, present a multi-media experience that explores the realities of motherhood.

More info here.

On March 7, 2013, WritersCorps and the Contemporary Jewish Museum joined forces for the third year to present WritersCorps Live at the CJM, featuring award-winning author Tamim Ansary, along with WritersCorps teaching artist Minna Dubin, and 8 students from 8 different WritersCorps sites in San Francisco.

Before the reading began, about 80 WritersCorps students were treated to a private tour of Kehinde Wiley’s exhibit “World Stage: Israel,” by interns from CJM’s Teen Art Connect program. Our students thoroughly enjoyed the thought-provoking art and group discussion.

After the tour, students enjoyed some pizza while Tamim Ansary fielded their questions about being a professional writer, and signed their copies of “West of Kabul, East of New York.” Thank you to Picador for their generous donation of copies of the book for our students!

Savannah from Downtown High School started the reading off with a poem called “How to Dance with Wolves.” She was followed by DeAsia from the WritersCorps Apprentices program, who read a poem that she shared on KALW’s Crosscurrents a few days earlier (check it out here).

Savannah and DeAsia were followed by Maribella from Aptos Middle School, and Laura from Sanchez Elementary. WritersCorps teaching artist Minna Dubin also shared her writing.

Karla, from Hilltop High School, shared a brave and moving piece about motherhood, and Kevin and Redemption represented Mission High School. Monica, a student in the fall semester of our collaboration with Oasis for Girls, also shared her work. Two of our students at the Woodside Learning Center inside the Juvenile Justice Center were represented by two short films of their poems which were screened.

Finally, our featured reader, the award-winning writer Tamim Ansary, treated us to an excerpt from “West of Kabul, East of New York,” his memoir about his family’s immigration from Afghanistan to San Francisco.

Thank you to everyone who attended the event to support the work of our students and teaching artists! It was a packed house and we were thrilled to see all of you. Check out more photos from the event here on Flickr. Thank you to photographer Cole Anetsberger!

And don’t forget to mark your calendars for our next event, Poetry Projection Project — a short film fest based on youth writing — on Saturday, April 13, 2 pm, at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. More info on that here.

We are thrilled to announce that two of our students have won the Middle School Poetry category of the SFUSD Arts Fest, and another three students won honorable mentions! All students are from Aptos Middle School, where they are taught by WritersCorps teaching artist Harold Terezón.

1st Place: Ada Chen, “The Garden”
2nd Place: Jamila Wilson, “Missing You”
Honorable Mention: Lucy Jaffar, “Here and Now”
Honorable Mention: Christina Wong, “One Day You’ll Wake Up and See”
Honorable Mention: Jackson Vachal, “Fear”

Congratulations to the students for all their hard work!

The SFUSD Arts Festival is an annual celebration of students’ creative expression and of arts access in our schools. Running from March 2-10, 2013, the festival is being hosted for the first time at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum (coinciding with the new Terracotta Warriors exhibit); and is co-presented by the SFUSD Visual and Performing Arts Office, the San Francisco Public Library and the San Francisco Arts Commission. According to event organizers, “This year’s event will include a visual art exhibition featuring artwork by 2,000 students, live musical and dance performances by over 65 student and community groups, screenings of student films and videos, poetry readings, and hands-on art activities.” All events are free and open to the public.

See our students read at the literary awards ceremony this Sunday, March 3, 2 pm, at the Koret Theater at the San Francisco Public Library’s Main Branch (100 Larkin Street).

For more info, visit the SFUSD Arts Fest website.