Читать книгу Generation F - Girls Write Now - Страница 56

LILA COOPER

YEARS AS MENTEE: 1

GRADE: Junior

HIGH SCHOOL: Institute for Collaborative Education

BORN: Brooklyn, NY

LIVES: Brooklyn, NY

MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: Girls Write Now has helped me grow as a writer. It’s taken me out of my comfort zone of plotless short stories and poetry. Even though I do a lot of poetry, I have learned there are other genres that I actually enjoy. I’ve appreciated Robin’s critiques, because she makes me think in a different way about my writing. She helps me see what’s working and what isn’t; she gets it. Sometimes we both obsess over a single word. It’s great to be able to do that together on Saturdays over a cup of tea.

ROBIN WILLIG

YEARS AS MENTOR: 3

OCCUPATION: Chief of Staff, Center for Reproductive Rights

BORN: Far Rockaway, NY

LIVES: Brooklyn, NY

PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: Summer Residency, Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow, Eureka Springs, Arkansas

MENTOR’S ANECDOTE: I never studied poetic forms and I was struck, in the Girls Write Now session, by the many rules. Lila and I talked a lot about “Garland Cinquain.” Wasn’t he an informant on an SVU episode? She and I share a love of words and often our time is spent dissecting and rebuilding. At the end of the Poetic Forms workshop, the girls read their pieces aloud and each chose to ignore the rules. I appreciate that about the mentees, and Lila especially—their willingness to explore. Generation F indeed: freedom, flouters of rules, and, likely, founders of a better way forward.