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CW NEWS
NOTE:
Need to refresh your memories of previous school
years? Forget what happened and when, or who
got published and where? See the top of this
page for Creative Writing
archive News and Calendar pages going back to
Fall 2005.
NOTE #2: An excellent, frequently updated source for news
of the general SOTA community is the
SOTA PTSA website. And the website of
Friends
of SOTA (FOSOTA) also provides news about the
SOTA community, including alums, as well as
detailing ways you can help support SF SOTA and its
arts mission.
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MARCH 9, 2010
Seven new videoclips are up in our
Video
Gallery and on our
YouTube Channel. Thanks to CW parent Frederic
Grasset for videotaping and editing the two nights
of Poetry Café from which the
clips were extracted! The CW website now has over 30
videoclips to watch, stretching back to January of
2005. And since starting with YouTube 18 months ago,
we have had nearly 2600 uploads viewed. Admittedly,
that's about the number of views that your basic
"Cat Playing Piano" video receives before lunch on
any given Monday. On the other hand, 2600 people is
the equivalent of seven sold-out shows at the SOTA
Main Stage auditorium. If you haven't taken a video
trip down memory lane lately, why not do it now?
FEBRUARY 23, 2010
Creative Writing department head Heather
Woodward titled a recent email "C-dubs on a roll!"
Indeed, the list is long for this update, so let's
get started:
Ariana Cisneros '11 has learned of two new
publications. The March 2010 issue of
Toasted Cheese Literary Journal will
include her piece, "A Girl Named Autumn." And
Spirits, the arts/literary magazine of
Indiana University Northwest, will include "Oranges"
in its Spring 2010 issue, to be printed in early
April.
Appearing in the same issue of Spirits will be
Jessica Barrog '11, with her piece titled "How
Can You Give This a title?"
Sharing the excitement of her first publication is
Melis Ozturk '13, whose haiku poem "My
Bathroom Secret" appears in the February 15, 2010
issue of the online poetry journal
Autumn Leaves.
Sayre Quevedo '11 has learned that he is a
Discus Awards winner, which makes him eligible
for one of the $2000 college scholarships awarded
each month of the school year by that organization.
Teen Ink journal, which publishes both online
and print versions and has a huge readership,
awarded special recognition to Otto Pippenger
'12: His fiction piece, "The World's
Greatest Detective," received high scores from
readers and was the featured piece in its category
on February 19. You can
read it here.
Last, but not least -- there are no "leasts"
in SOTA Creative Writing, just as there are no
"small" coffees at Starbucks -- four C-dubs truly
distinguished themselves at the recent
San Francisco Writers Conference. The four were
CW juniors Sarah Maloney, Sayre Quevedo,
Jackson Van Fleet Brown, and Yaul
Perez-Stable. All four received scholarships to
be part of the sold-out conference, whose attendees
are principally adult writers. And amazingly, an
anthology published by the conference counted eight
works by these four (two apiece) among the 27 pieces
total that were printed.
Congratulations to all!
FEBRUARY 12, 2010
Results are in from the Poetry Out
Loud competition on February 10, in which five
students from SOTA Creative Writing took part (see
February 5 News item,
below). Each of the five recited, in his or her own
distinct C-dub fashion, two great and well-loved
poems in English. And ... we have winners! Max
Peterson '10 took first place and will move on
to regional competition in Sacramento, the winner of
which goes to Washington, D.C. for the national
finals. Max has impressed listeners since starting
at SOTA; his freshman year performance of his own
poem, "Patchwork City," is the most-viewed videoclip
on the
YouTube SOTA Writers channel. For Poetry Out
Loud Max recited Whitman's "O Captain, My Captain"
and Frost's "Fire and Ice." Winning one of four
Honorable Mentions in the event was fellow senior
Atticus Graven '10, who took honors for
delivering "Invictus," by William Ernest Henley, and
Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a
Summer's day?"). Congratulations go out to all five
participating C-dubs. And dear Reader, please check
back to this News page for upcoming information
about Max's trip to Sacramento.
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FEBRUARY 9, 2010
A photo slideshow of Poetry Café
2010, featuring Heidi Alletzhauser's
photographs of both performance nights, is up in the
Photogallery.
The January 22-23 events (see January 25 News item,
below) were great successes. Check out the pictures
of C-dubs doing their thing!
FEBRUARY
5, 2010
Two events to highlight today -- one
featuring students, the other a past CW
artist-in-residence.
Visual artist
Victor
Cartagena, who has worked many times with
Creative Writing students during fall "Writing
Through the Arts" units, is part of an important new
exhibition at the SOMArts Main Gallery. Titled
PrintByte: The Cutting Edge of Printmaking,
the event runs from today through February 27. See
it at 934 Brannan Street, and read about it
online here.
Having honed their skills in many CW performances,
five Creative Writing students will be competing in
the Poetry Out Loud competition on February
10. Maxfield Peterson, Atticus Graven, Danielle
O'Farrell, Aly Robalino, and Otto Pippenger will be
part of the event, which takes place at Lowell High
School from 3:30 - 5:30 p.m. The CW department will
attend and watch, and all parents and friends of the
program are welcome too. Read more about this
nationwide programs at the
Poetry Out Loud official website.
FEBRUARY 4, 2010
Publication news again for C-dubs.
Zola Hjelm '13 has recent acceptances from two
journals. Her poem "Back Home" was posted January 31
in Asphodel Madness; you can
read it here. And her poems "Come On In" and "An
Era of Wandering" will appear in the March 2010
issue of the quarterly online review
Message in a Bottle. Meanwhile, "Shattered,"
a poem by Alexander Pollak '12, has been
accepted for both the online and print editions of
Teen Ink Magazine.
Click here to read it online. Congratulations to
Alex and Zola!
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JANUARY 28, 2010
Past CW artist-in-residence Dan Hoyle
is out with a new one-man show, The Real
Americans, at The Marsh theater on Valencia.
Hoyle is an actor-writer who blends acute character
portrayals, political musings, and comedy in his
memorable shows. The Real Americans runs from
January 26 to March 6. (Note 02/19: Show extended
through April 18.) Read about it and get tickets
at the
Marsh website here, and check out Dan's CW bio
on our Faculty
Biography page.
JANUARY 25, 2010
Memo to those who missed the January 22
and 23 editions of the annual Poetry Café:
What
 were you thinking?
These were two terrific evenings, and kudos go out
to all C-dubs. As has become traditional, the show
was conceived and arranged by department seniors, in
this case, Brigid Martin, Maxwell Peterson,
and Atticus Graven, with Forrest Ambruster
attending in spirit. A photo
slideshow is coming soon to the website gallery, and later, videoclips will be available on the
SOTA WritersYouTube channel. In the meantime,
Heidi Alletzhauser has made a great, instant animated
slideshow; check it out
here.
JANUARY 23, 2010
Continuing with C-dub publication news:
Yaul Perez-Stable '11 is also a contest
winner with
Creative Communications Anthology, and will
see his winning poem, "Little Dream," in print
sometime in the next three months. Watch for it!
JANUARY 18, 2010
In this week leading up to Poetry Café
it's fitting that a number of Creative Writing
students have poetry publication success to
report. Sarah Maloney '11 will see "From the
Ground Up" appear in the journal
Nibble, which specializes in short poetry.
"Controlling Moonlight," by Rebecca Straznickas
'12, has been accepted for the inaugural issue
of
Two-Bit Magazine, which will begin as an
online publication and then move into print as well.
And Sayre Quevedo '11 is a contest winner for
"Granada," and will have that poem published in
Creative Communications Anthology, in print,
some time in the next three months. Congratulations
to all C-dubs!
If and when the poems appear
online, links will appear here. And stay tuned,
because there'll be more publications to report as
the week goes on...
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JANUARY 13, 2010
Just nine days left until the second
major CW performance weekend of the 2009-10 school
year. Poetry Café
will again be a two-night
affair, the first on-campus at the Main Stage, the
second in an authentic café setting at Maxfield's
House of Caffeine.
See the details above, and
download a poster to
paste up around town.
JANUARY 7, 2010
CW photographer Heidi Alletzhauser has
used the holiday break putting together some great
slideshows with the new web tool Animoto. The shows
include background music and an up-tempo, creative
display of photos and short videoclips. Check out
the Photograph Gallery
page for links to these new slideshows, which depict
October's "Bohemian Rhapsody" performance and a
December visit to the SF Food Bank.
Of interest not only to CW but the wider School of
the Arts community is
this ABC7news video, originally posted on
December 25, 2009. It explores SOTA's long-deferred
dream of moving to San Francisco's Civic Center
area, where it would be right at the center of the
City's vibrant professional arts. Take a look to
learn about both the dream and the considerable
obstacles to its realization.
DECEMBER 15, 2009
CW News readers and anyone familiar with
the program's recent history will remember Tanea
Lunsford '09, whose name appeared here
frequently in connection with publications and
awards. Tanea is now a freshman at Columbia
University, but while still a senior at SOTA the
story of her young life was being documented for CBS
5 TV's ongoing news series, "Students Rising Above."
Only recently (December 11) did the feature news
story appear in the evening news slot. The video
clip -- filmed at SOTA, and featuring interviews
with Tanea, her grandmother, and CW director Heather
Woodward -- can be
viewed at this link to CBS 5. Even if you're
already familiar with Tanea's amazing talents and
the challenges she faced from an early age, you will
want to check this one out.
DECEMBER 10, 2009
Publishing congratulations go out today
to Alex Pollak '12, whose poem "Wax/Wane" is
now up on the online journal
Lunarosity. This is the fourth poem by Alex
to appear in the journal.
Click here to read all four.
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NOVEMBER 22, 2009
Creative Writers took their first "Friday
Adventure Day" outing of the 2009-10 school year
on November 13, and you can check out some
photos here. The
outing, a behind-the-scenes look at world-famous
City Lights Books in North Beach, was led by City
Lights editor and CW artist-in-residence Maia Ipp.
The FAD tradition was originated in previous years
by artists-in-residence PK McBee and Michael
Braithwaite, who planned one Friday each month in
which C-dubs were led to a new destination unknown
until the last minute; their new experiences were
followed by generative writing exercises. As
possible, we'll include news of future FADs as they
occur.
NOVEMBER 14, 2009
Five videoclips are up from the
department's October 16 performance, Bohemian
Rhapsody. Many thanks to CW parent Frederic
Grasset for filming and editing the show! The
four videos of C-dubs reading can be seen both
embedded on our website and at the
SOTA Writers Channel on YouTube; the fifth clip,
of the lip-sync finale, can be viewed exclusively on
this website, using the readiliy-available QuickTime
player. You can start by linking to our
Bohemian
Rhapsody clips page. And as always, an
ever-growing list of videos from past shows can be
found at the main Video
Gallery page.
NOVEMBER 11, 2009
Creative Writing photographer and parent
Heidi Alletzhauser has created a photo book documenting the department's
2008-2009 school year. It includes gorgeous photos of the
three major shows, Field Day, and the Senior Party,
as well as portraits of 2009 graduating seniors.
Occasional text and commentary, drawn from this
website, are included as well. It all makes for an
invaluable keepsake. Both softcover and hardback
books are available to order online at Blurb;
preview it in its entirety at
this link. Heidi has also put together the first
pages of what will be the 2009-10 book, and
this slideshow gives you a sneak preview of the
layout, showing scenes from the CW 1
orientation/party in August of this year.
NOVEMBER 1, 2009
The Bay Area's gorgeous autumn weather
pulls C-dubs outdoors, and we have photos
up to prove it. On the
photogallery page you can find two new
slideshows: first, Creative Writers participating in
SOTA's annual Field Day on September 30; second,
students and parents on what has become an annual
overnight camping trip, a nice reward for the
success of the fall show, Bohemian Rhapsody.
Thanks for the latest photos to Heidi Alletzhauser
and Amos Baruch.
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OCTOBER 29, 2009
News comes that veteran, indispensable CW
artist-in-residence Page (PK) McBee is the
2009 winner of the Mary Tanenbaum Award for her
nonfiction manuscript, This Fragile Fortress.
The award, sponsored by the San Francisco Foundation
and administered by Intersection for the Arts, comes
with a $2000 prize and permanent placement of the
manuscript in U.C.Berkeley's Bancroft Library. In
the official award citation, This Fragile
Fortress is praised as "an ambitious hybrid
collection of interpersonal essays that explore the
body and the meaning of embodiment. McBee's
challenge is to find a language that gets at both
the comfort of bodies and the estrangement that they
also evoke .... Her work is rich with possibilities
and inventive in its attempts to move beyond merely
an exotic narrative of 'self' ..." Page, along
with winners of two other prizes, will read from her
work on November 16th at Intersection for the Arts.
See our November 16 calendar entry
for details, check out Page's
CW bio
here, and read further at websites of
Intersection for the Arts and the
San Francisco Foundation.
OCTOBER 23, 2009
Today we share a double dose of writing
accolades for senior Brigid Martin '10.
First, after a brief delay, Brigid's short story
"Social Suicide" is now available to read in the
Summer 2009 edition of River Poets Journal, a
quarterly of poetry/prose, art, and photography
based in New Jersey. A PDF version of the journal
can be read online here; just click on the
Summer 2009 edition link. (Note that Brigid's name
is mistakenly given as "Bridget.") And a second bit
of good news for Brigid: She was invited to read at
the 45th Anniversary Benefit for the
Poets in
the Schools program on October 10, sharing the
spotlight with such luminaries as Jane
Hirshfield, Paul Hoover, Joanne Kyger, and U.S.Poet
Laureate Kay Ryan. Brigid's powerful reading of her
piece, "Confessions of a Dialectical Behavior
Therapy-Adolescent," was met with raves,
encouragement, and requests for reprints.
Congratulations, Brigid! As a sidenote, CW is
fortunate to have the M.C. of the October event,
Dana Teen Lomax, as a returning artist-in-residence
and senior thesis advisor.
Check out
Dana's bio here on our Faculty page.
OCTOBER 16, 2009
The freakish fall storm is past here in
the Bay area, and it's time to get out of the house
and into the SOTA Main Stage auditorium for
Bohemian Rhapsody, the first show of the 2009-10
school year. If you're still out of power, there'll
be electricity to spare at tonight's show. To whet
your appetite, check out these
sneak preview photos from CW photographer Heidi
Alletzhauser, who was snapping away at the dress
rehearsal. Get the
show details here, and be there tonight!
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OCTOBER 7, 2009
Yet another C-dub has an early-year
publication credit. Rebecca Straznickas '12
has had a poem published in both the online and
print editions of Teen Ink. Her poem, "The
Non-Hitchhiker," can be read
online here. Congratulations Rebecca! Will she
read it at the October 16 performance? Check out the
show details,
make your plans, and find out....
SEPTEMBER 24, 2009
More details are out on the
highly-anticipated fall reading, the first
major Creative Writing performance of the year.
Booked for Friday, October 16, the show -- titled
Bohemian Rhapsody -- will showcase work from
multiple genres. The 7:30 performance will also
feature the ever-popular costume contest. Check out
the fabulous event poster
by Heidi Alletzhauser -- also available to print on
letter-size paper and post in your neighborhood.
Info can be found in the
Major Performances
section above. Mark your calendars now!
SEPTEMBER 21, 2009
One of the course requirements for SOTA
Creative Writers is frequently submitting work for
publication. It's a great way of making contacts,
and it's training for one of the realities of the
writing life: editors don't come knocking on your
door. Now, with the school year only a few weeks
old, we have our first publication news of the year.
The 826 Quarterly Volume 10 -- published by
826 Valencia, San Francisco's groundbreaking writing
center for youth -- is now in print, and three
C-dubs are represented in its pages. In the
"At-Large Submissions" section, Otto Pippenger
'12 has two poems, "Synthetic" and "How to
Walk," and Aly Robalino '12 has a piece
entitled "Tell Me A Lullaby If You Cannot Sing; Tell
Me A Story If You Don't Know A Lullaby." Finally,
first-year C-dub Amelia Williams '13 appears
in the "Workshops" section with a poem, "A Love Poem
to The Purse My Mother Never Had." Congratulations
to all three! You can purchase the book (and read a
few brief excerpts) at
this link to the 826 Store.
SEPTEMBER 2, 2009
Fresh off the successful summer run of
his Don Quixote adaptation at the Oregon
Shakespeare Festival and the recent nomination of
Lydia for the prestigious Steinberg/ATCA award,
two-time CW writer-in-residence Octavio Solis
now has a hit play showing here in the City. El
Otro, a tightened reworking of the play first
staged in 1998, is at Thick House through September
20. C-dubs will attend the September 10 performance
and have a chance to see for themselves why the the
Chronicle's "little man" is jumping out of his seat
with
this review. See the September
10 calendar entry for venue details, and our
Faculty
Biographies page for Octavio's bio.
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AUGUST 24, 2009
It seems that each fall brings not only
updates but small changes to the CW website, which
now begins its fifth year of dolloping out
department news, information and shameless
boosterism. One site change that occurred this
summer -- which you may have missed if your internet
bookmarks suffered sunburn or fog rot (depending on
where you live in the City) -- is the addition of an
umläut
"sampler" page to the
existing options on the
Student Work page. The first four issues of the
journal (out of eight) are represented so far, with
more to come. Check it out here. And after you've whetted your appetite with the
sampler, go ahead and order some issues of umläut
for your library. The current issue, Conquistador,
is just $10, and older issues are $5; order three
and you get the fourth for free. Such a deal, and
especially helpful for new and prospective students
wanting a sense of the work done by other C-dubs.
Place your order with this
updated order form. You will need the Adobe PDF
reader to order and to read from the sampler.
A reminder too that you can now
donate online to the
Creative Writing department. The next time your
impulsive mouse finger is poised to order another
album from iTunes, why not go instead to our
donation page? We'll
feel good about you, and you'll feel even better
about yourself.
Welcome (back) all to Creative Writing's eighth
year.
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