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CW NEWS
NOTE:
Trying to remember what happened way back in the
2006 - 2007 school year? Or even beyond?
Click for the News and Calendar archive for
2005-2006 or
2006-2007.
NOTE #2: An excellent, frequently updated source for news
of the general SOTA community is the
SOTA PTSA website.
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AUGUST 7, 2008
Breaking news: the CW website will be
shifting to the use of YouTube
in presenting online videos. This reflects
widespread changes in web-viewing habits, and is an
easy and familiar format for many site visitors of
all ages. New and (eventually) existing CW
videos will be viewable on our own site in an
embedded YouTube player. But we will also be
building a presence on YouTube itself ... which, we
hope, will be yet another way to draw new people
back to this site and to snare them in the literary
web that is SOTA Creative Writing. (Oh, why
can you never find a metaphor cop when you need
one?) Check it out for yourself by visiting
the
Videoclips page of our Gallery section.
JULY 15, 2008
It may be summer but the writing never
stops for CW students.
Word comes that Sasha Schmitz '09 is a
winner in the 2008-09 Presence Poetry
contest. Sasha received a nice check for her
efforts, and her poem will be published in the
journal's September issue. There'll be more
information and links here as they're available,
and, when copyright rules permit, we'll have the
poem on our own website page of student work.
And Mama, a play by Tanea Lunsford '09
already much-awarded and mentioned in CW news, is
now a winner of the Youth of the Bay contest and as
such will get a staging at the fifth annual San
Francisco Theater Festival on July 27.
Festival details can be found above, in the CW
Calendar for July. You
can read more about Tanea in recent CW News items
for March 14, 2008; May 8, 2008; and May 29, 2008.
JULY 4, 2008
A couple of midsummer items on this
Independence Day. First: A scene from Mary,
a play written by Tanea Lunsford '09 and
mentioned in a May 8, 2008 news entry, is now up for
reading on the Playwriting
page of the website's Student Work section.
Second: Adrian Kane '08 learned
recently (on graduation day, no less) that her poem
"Red Curtain" will appear in an upcoming issue of
The Binnacle, a literary and arts journal
published by the University of Maine. Notice
and links will be found here when it happens.
JUNE 13, 2008
Another school year ends, and high school
careers have concluded for CW's graduating seniors
-- Victoria Solari, Hannah Shr, Sophia Ol'Khova,
Isabel Poling,
 Travers
Grindall, Gia Harris, and Adrian Kane.
The seven were honored in the annual department
reception, held again at the 19th-century San
Francisco mansion of a Friends of SOTA benefactor.
A scant 14 hours after the reception ended, it was
time to report for Commencement Exercises at the
Masonic Center on Nob Hill. C-dubs Adrian,
Gia, and Hannah read poems at the event, and Adrian,
as valedictorian of this Class of '08, also
delivered a speech guaranteed to warm the heart of
any AP English instructor.
As the journalists say, "full
disclosure": I write of these events as the father
of senior Adrian Kane. These have been four
memorable years, full of the inevitable character
revelation and plot twists familiar to all graduates
and parents of graduates. Entering the program
in fall 2004, for example, I certainly had no idea
that I would end up creating and maintaining this
website. It has been fun doing so as a
volunteer, and now, with my daughter off to college,
I will continue my role in an official,
"webmaster-in-residence" capacity. I look
forward to watching and reporting on this amazing
department and its equally amazing young writers. --
Steve Kane, CW web guy
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MAY 29, 2008
The Koshland Young Leader Awards, a
scholarship established by Dr. Daniel Koshland, Jr.,
and administered through the San
 Francisco
Foundation, has announced that none other than CW's
Tanea Lunsford '09 is one of this year's
winners. The two-year fund of $5000 is awarded
to at least four outstanding San Francisco public
high school juniors. In the words of the
announcement, the award winners are students who
"are strongly motivated to achieve, but whose
responsibilities to their families -- as wage
earner, caretaker, or household manager -- place an
undue burden upon them." The intent is that
the Awards, now in their 15th year, "will allow the
recipients to focus more on their studies, thereby
improving their chances to succeed academically and
to pursue their career goals." Tanea is an
exceptionally talented writer and a "frequent flyer"
in the CW News over the last three years, so her
recognition by the Koshland program comes as no
surprise here. Congratulations Tanea!
MAY 8, 2008
Tanea Lunsford '09 likes to write
plays. In her freshman year, her play Mama
was one of four winners in the Blank Theatre Company
Young Playwrights Festival in Los Angeles.
(See
05-06 News Archive, April 19 2006) And now
Tanea, a junior, has a winner in the third annual
San Francisco Young Playwrights Festival.
Titled Mary, this latest play will be staged
at City College's Diego Rivera Theatre on Thursday
May15, Saturday May 17, and Sunday May 18. The
Sunday performances include a post-show talkback
with the winning playwrights. Bonus: Two of
the other three winners are Theater majors at School
of the Arts! Click here for
pics and bios of Tanea and the winners. Or
click here for
general performance info -- times, dates,
prices.
MAY 5, 2008
A February 12, 2008 news item (below)
noted that a poem by Naomi Neal '09 had been
selected to appear in the inaugural edition of the
literary journal Quiddity. This was
quite a feat and honor, because, although the
journal will publish both established and emerging
writers, the editors selecting Naomi's poem had no
idea that she had not even "emerged" from high
school. The issue is now in print, and the
Quiddity website affords a glimpse of it,
including Naomi's poem "Wilderness."
To see the text of "Wilderness," hear Naomi read it,
and see her photograph and author bio, here is a
direct link:
http://www.sci.edu/quiddity/issue01-1/index.html#nneal
To reach the main page of the Quiddity journnal
website, use this link:
http://www.sci.edu/quiddity/issue01-1.html
APRIL 18, 2008
As we move midway into National Poetry
Month, some Creative Writing poets are yet again
distinguishing themselves in regional and statewide
contests.
The Sacramento Poetry Center's 2nd
Annual High School Poetry Contest drew more than 500
entries from around Northern California.
C-dubs Naomi Neal '09 and Forrest
Ambruster '10 were among the 17 finalists chosen
to read their work at The Stage in midtown
Sacramento, on April 14. And at that event,
Naomi was named runner-up, and carried away a nice
cash award. You can read Naomi's winning poem,
"Voyage," on the website of California Poet Laureate
Al Young:
http://alyoung.org/index.php/whats-at-stake/
"Beached," a poem by Natasha
Weidner '09, won the 10th-12th grade category of
the California Coastal Commission's 2008 Coastal Art
& Poetry contest. This contest has grown
steadily over the years, and this year received
almost 1900 entries in all categories from across
the state. Take a minute to
read about the contest or view a
gallery including Natasha's poem.
Congratulations all!
APRIL 16, 2008
April 11 and 12 saw Creative Writing's
annual playwriting performances, the culmination of
a six-week unit taught by writer-in-residence
Marisela Orta.
 Presentations
were fewer but longer this year, a half-dozen scenes
or one-acts each night. The scenes were chosen
in a juried process, and read/acted by CW students
-- many of whom showed real acting chops.
It was the last hurrah for the
seniors of the Class of 2008. This bittersweet
fact was accompanied by the knowledge that it was
also the last time that Donn Harris -- SOTA's
principal and a CW parent -- would direct the
playwriting shows, as he has done since the spring
of 2005. Donn is already in transition to the
Oakland School for the Arts, where he has been named
the new Executive Director. As a parent,
artist, and perhaps most of all as a dynamic
principal, Donn will be sorely missed.
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APRIL 3, 2008
CALL FOR ENTRIES!
Heather Woodward, director of SOTA's Creative
Writing department, is curating the Literary Arts
section of this year's Young at Art event.
Formerly known as the Youth Arts Festival, Young at
Art is open to students of all ages throughout San
Francisco -- except, this year, to C-dubs, who will
be helping organize and carry out the lit section.
Anyway, to all you website readers who are NOT
current C-dubs, get your entries in! The
deadline is fast approaching. Young at Art has
a great website:
www.youngatartsf.com. Visit there for
information and entry forms.
MARCH 29, 2008
Woman on Fire, a new play by
current CW writer-in-residence
Marisela Treviño
Orta, will have a
staged reading on Monday, March 31. The
reading is part of the Playwrights Foundation's "In
the Rough" series, which, as their website states,
"seeks to give playwrights the opportunity to hear
first drafts of new work, to fine tune nearly
finished plays approaching a production or
commission deadline, and to make connections with
producers." Reservations are highly
recommended. See our
Calendar entry
for details, and also read about it at the
Playwrights Foundation site
here.
MARCH 28, 2008
April is National Poetry Month, and the
San Francisco Public Library is sponsoring a nice
series of readings and events to celebrate.
Check out "Poetry Blooms in April" listings at
http://sfpl.lib.ca.us/news/aprilpoetry.htm.
MARCH 19, 2008
C-dub Yaul Perez-Stable '11 has
received an honorable mention in Gannon University's
National High School Poetry Contest. Yaul was
invited to the award festival, where the keynote
speaker is former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser, but
will not be able to make it to Pennsylvania for the
event. Congratulations, Yaul!
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MARCH 14, 2008
Two items in CW news today:
Outside the realm of writing, where
C-dubs are known to venture on occasion, Tanea
Lunsford '09 has won an award as YMCA Volunteer
of the Year. She was nominated by two
branches, the Urban Services YMCA and the Stonestown
Family YMCA, and won for her work with the latter.
Tanea will be honored at a banquet; and CW is
honored to call her one of our own.
Locally and nationally-recognized
playwright Octavio Solis, a
Creative Writing artist-in-residence in both 2006
and 2007, has had a busy, prolific year, with the
opening of two new plays and upcoming new stagings
of others. His play "Lydia" premiered in an
acclaimed, much-discussed performance by the Denver
Center Theatre Company. Here in SF, Creative
Writing students were in the packed house for the
March 6 preview of "June in a Box," at
Intersection for the Arts on Valencia Street.
The play, which also features music and songs by
Beth Custer -- not to mention a fine professional
debut by Solis' daughter Gracie -- has been playing
to appreciative audiences, and will continue through
March 31.
FEBRUARY 24, 2008
Four Creative Writing students were
recently awarded scholarships to attend the 2008 San
Francisco Writers Conference (SFWC) held February 15
- 17 at the Mark Hopkins. This is the third
time that C-dubs have been so honored.
Attendees this year were Gia Harris '08,
Hannah Shr '08, Tanea Lunsford '09, and
Yaminah Abdur-Rahim '09. The SFWC, now
in its fifth year, provides exceptional
opportunities to meet and workshop with working
writers of both local and national stature, in a
wide range of genres. You can read more at the
conference website,
www.SFWriters.org.
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FEBRUARY 12, 2008
This year, C-dubs have been particularly
active in submitting their work to contests and
journals, and great results are coming in.
Today we begin to catch up on noting their success
with awards and publications:
Hannah Shr '08 was recently
published in the cancer anthology Alternatives to
Surrender, edited by Martin Willitts, Jr., Plain
View Press, 2007. Get it at Amazon and
elsewhere!
Picture Frame Perfect, a play
by Jackson Van Fleet Brown '11, made it to
the semifinalist round in the selection process of
the San Francisco Young Playwrights Festival.
The Festival received an unprecedented number of
submissions this year. Jackson will receive
complimentary tickets for his work.
Yael Green '09 had her poem
"Distance" selected as a Regional Winner in the
Fall-Winter 2007 competition of the Easterday Poetry
Award/Live Poets Society, New Jersey's tenth annual
national high school poetry contest.
Finally, we have two notes on
Naomi Neal '09:
First, Naomi's poem "Wilderness" will be published
in the April 2008 issue of Quiddity, and she
will be interviewed in an upcoming radio program
that the literary journal broadcasts on public
radio. If the Illinois-based broadcast is
available in podcast or streaming internet form,
we'll note and link to it here.
Second, Naomi had two poems honored in the Nancy
Thorp Poetry Prize contest sponsored by Holiins
University. "When do I get to know your
secrets?" was a finalist. "Skyworld" was a
runner-up, garnering a check, publication in the
Hollins lit review Cargoes, and free copies
of the journal.
As soon as "first publication
rights" issues have been met/clarified, we'll be
posting work by these C-dubs in the website's
Student Work section.
Congratulations to all!
JANUARY 6, 2008
An extra night and a new venue have been
added for the upcoming Poetry Café
event. On Friday night,
January 11 -- as already scheduled -- the reading
("Café Oklahoma") will
take place at SOTA's Main Stage, 7:30 p.m. But
now you can also hear your favorite poets in a
first-ever reading at The Greenhouse Café
in West Portal. Time and place for this second
event ("Feast of Fabulous Wild Men Day") are
Saturday, January 12 at 7:30 p.m. See the info
in Major Performances
above.
DECEMBER 7, 2007
Current CW writer-in-residence
Chad Sweeney will celebrate the release of his
first full-length book on Saturday, December 8, with
a 7:30 p.m. release party/reading at Pegasus Books
in Berkeley. Sweeney's work, An
Architecture, published by Blazevox, is a
book-length poem in 56 parts. You can read
about and order the book at its
Blazevox page, and check out Chad's bio on our
Faculty page.
Also reading at Pegasus will be the poet Kaya Oakes,
whose recent collection Telegraph (Pavement
Saw), was winner of the Transcontinental Poetry
Prize. See the December 8
Calendar entry for event details.
NOVEMBER 14, 2007
Creative Writing on-campus performances
too far apart for you? Need a fix of poetry
and short fiction? If so, you might check out
the Velvet Revolution readings at San
Francisco State. The kind folks in the SFSU
writing programs have opened this venue to C-dubs,
so you can hear your favorite high-schoolers
alongside older writers, all sharing their new stuff
in an informal, friendly setting. We've even
sold a few umläut
back issues to impressed listeners. Upcoming
Velvet Revolution readings include November 27 at
the SFSU Poetry Center, and December 4 and 11 at the
SFSU Creative Arts Building -- see
Calendar listings above.
There's a website for the venerable
SFSU Poetry Center. And if you need a map
to find the readings:
SFSU Map.
OCTOBER 22, 2007
A few updates to the website today:
1. Calendar entries for local events involving two
renowned poets -- Jayne Cortez on October 29 and 30,
and Amiri Baraka on November 8. Check out the
Calendar for details.
2. A new link on the Good Links
page to the WritersCorps program here in San
Francisco. Don't know how we left it out 'til
now ...
3. A few photos from the October 12 show
"Ghostwriters," a success by all accounts, with
typically spot-on direction by Tony Bravo, beautiful
Halloweeny set design by Nick Robalino, and above
all, audience-grabbing reads by the 2007-08 C-dubs.
See the pics by starting out on the
Photographs page of our Gallery.
OCTOBER 2, 2007
Tickets are now on sale for Creative
Writing's first show of the 2007-08 school year --
"Ghostwriters," which is coming up fast on October
12. Is this where we say something about
"eerily good writing"? No? Well at any
rate, details are at the
top of this page.
Note that on the
PTSA website -- where you can go for advance
tickets -- the show goes by its initial name of
"Wild About Halloween." Now, is this where we say
something about student work that will haunt you?
No? Okay.
By coincidence -- "spooky coincidence," we might say
-- the San Francisco festival of
writing, LitQuake '07, occurs during the same week
as "Ghostwriters." There's lots of good
writing to be heard at venues around the city, and two C-dubs -- Eli Wolfe '09 and Tanea
Lunsford '09 -- will be part of it. Hear
them October 13, Saturday, at the Marsh Cafe on
Valencia Street, 8 - 8:45 p.m. And read more
about the whole week of events at the
LitQuake
website.
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SEPTEMBER 21, 2007
Two Creative Writing artists-in-residence
(past and present) have garnered great reviews for
their most recent shows. Erika Shuch,
who will lead a unit in Writing Through Movement, opened her show 51802
to a fine review in the San Francisco
Chronicle. Read it
online at SF Gate
here. C-dubs will see the performance
on September 27, and Erika's stint with CW -- her
second -- will begin on October 1. Dan Hoyle, who shared
his particular blend of journalism, stand-up, and
theater in the '04, '05, and '06 school years, has
taken his show Tings Dey Happen to New York
City's Culture Project theater. Critical and
audience response have been glowing, and links to
read all about it can be found at the
Culture Project site and at
Hoyle's own website. Biographical info on
Erika, Dan, and the many other artists-in-residence
CW has been fortunate to welcome over the years, can
be found on our Faculty
Bio page.
SEPTEMBER 10, 2007
CW's artist-in-residence for this week's
Writing through Music unit will be Howard Wiley.
Many C-dubs and their parents were fortunate to hear
him September 2 at the deYoung Museum, where he
performed as part of Jazz at Intersection at the
deYoung. To learn more about Howard and the
Angola Project, check out his website at
http://www.howardwiley.com. The page
includes a YouTube video clip. Info about CW's
"Writing through the Arts," and a syllabus with this
year's artists, can be found on the
CW Program Basics
page.
FALL 2007 -
posted August 30, 2007
If you're wondering
why your student isn't around the house as much, or
why those double-digit numbers are suddenly
appearing next to your email in-box, it's because
the 2007-08 school year has begun for SOTA and
Creative Writing. It's the sixth year for
CW as an arts
discipline, and it promises to be another busy one.
C-dubs are doing assignments and activities designed
to get them reacquainted -- and newly
acquainted with a record number of incoming students
spread throughout grades 9 - 12. Students
and parents who haven't received a month-by-month
calendar to help plan all the events should contact
Heather ASAP.
Fall 2007 also
marks the third
year for this website, a go-to spot for information,
sharing, and shameless cheerleading. As
always, CW students and parents should look first to
their own emails and hand-outs to keep up with
what's happening. But this website will stay
current with the latest news and calendar changes --
those appropriate for sharing on the worldwide web
-- and will be useful, we hope,
to department insiders and outsiders alike.
All pages will be updated as necessary to reflect
program, faculty, and calendar date changes for the
new year. If you find errors, or if you're a
C-dub wanting to contribute a First Person piece, or
if you just want to say hi, email webmaster Steve
Kane at
wbmstr_cw@sbcglobal.net. And, oh yes --
Facebook we ain't, nor MySpace (which is so
2005), but photographs (JPEG
format) of C-dubs in their native habitat are always
welcome!
Any decent
website celebrates by issuing links, so here's three
starters to mark the new school year:
Link to
the updated Creative Writing Program Basics page,
including new syllabus
Link to the schoolwide Academic Calendar 2007-2008
Link to the schoolwide Performance Calendar
2007-2008
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