This is an in-person workshop that takes place at the University of St. Thomas.
This workshop is tuition-free and only open to incoming HISD 9th – 11th graders.
Write Now! is a weeklong day camp structured to inspire and help kids find their voice as writers. Participants will have an exciting and immersive experience on the campus of the University of St. Thomas where they will engage in a variety of creative and fun writing and reading activities under the guidance of skilled workshop instructors. They will also meet and hear from local published authors and be exposed to the local literary community. Through the experience, they will become better writers of the stories, poems, and essays they wish to write and find joy in the power of the written word. This camp will also help students feel more confident in their ability to write a winning college application essay. The week will conclude in a celebratory reading to which family and friends will be invited. As an added bonus, attendees will have a campus tour and learn about the college experience. Past creative writing experience is not required, just a willingness to explore and express oneself.
Write Now! is presented by DiscoverU, HISD College Readiness, and Inprint.
INSTRUCTORS
LAYLA AL-BEDAWI is a writer of fiction, personal essays, prose poetry, and hybrid strangelings. English is her third language, but she’s been dreaming in it for years. Born in Germany to Kurdish and Ukrainian parents, she moved to the US in 2006 and currently lives Houston. Her work has been awarded the 2023 Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Nonfiction, has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, IGNYTE Award, and Rhysling Award, and has been selected for the 2021 Best Small Fictions anthology. She has been published in Wigleaf, Bayou Magazine, Winter Tangerine, Juked, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere. She is a candidate in the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of Houston.
LUPE MENDEZ—writer, educator, activist—originally from Galveston, is the author WHY I AM LIKE TEQUILA (Willow Books, 2019), winner of the 2019 John A. Robertson Award for Best First Book of Poetry from the Texas Institute of Letters. He is the founder of Tintero Projects which works with emerging Latinx writers and other writers of color within the Texas Gulf Coast Region, with Houston as its hub. Lupe earned his Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Texas @ El Paso and his work can been seen in print and online formats including the Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast Journal, the Texas Review, the L.A. Review of Books, Split This Rock, Poetry Magazine, and Poem-A-Day from the Academy of American Poets. Mendez is the 2022 Texas Poet Laureate.
MATHEW WEITMAN is a first year PhD student in creative writing and literature at the University of Houston, where he is an Inprint Brown Foundation Fellow. His work appears or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Bennington Review, The Evergreen Review, The Missouri Review, The Georgia Review, Poet Lore, The Southwest Review, and many other publications. He is the winner of the 2021 Loraine Williams Poetry Prize and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Mathew has led Inprint Teachers As Writers Workshops and Inprint Harris County Jail Workshops.
