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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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AUGUST 6, 2009
To help returning and new C-dubs get in
the mood for the new school year -- which begins
eighteen days from today -- there are five new
videoclips up in the Video Gallery and on YouTube.
All five are drawn from Jon Gudmundsson's taping of
the January 16, 2009 Poetry Café
performance titled Sustainable Poems for the
Future. Featured in these new clips are
Jessica Barrog '11, Atticus Graven '10, Tanea
Lunsford '09, Brigid Martin '10, and Sayre Quevedo
'11. Check it out on
this gallery page, or go right to the
YouTube SOTA Writers Channel and see all
nineteen videos now available for viewing.
JULY 27, 2009
A new addition to the CW website is up
today: An
umläut
"sampler" page has
been added 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. Enjoy
the summer reading!
JULY 13, 2009
There are major changes in the SOTA
schedule for next year. CW Director Heather Woodward
sends this summary along to new and returning
C-Dubs:
Next year we will be having a new schedule that
creates time every other Wednesday morning for
student activities, assemblies, department meetings,
and all the other things that disrupt academic
classes and cause us to lose instructional time.
Lowell and many, if not most, of the other high
schools have something similar. Dubs, note that you
don't have to come in to school until later on that
day if there are no student events.
C-dubs should have received this information
already, but for those who missed it, two new
schedule attachments have been added to the
CW Program Basics
website page.
<News top> <page top>
JUNE 30, 2009
Summertime, and the publishing's not
easy...but it's been done recently by two members of
SOTA Creative Writing. "To A Cabin," a poem by
Marley Pratt Walker '11, has been published in
the 2009 edition of the River of Words Journal.
The River of Words organization sponsors an annual,
nationwide contest for environmental poetry and art,
in affiliation with The Library of Congress Center
for the Book. View
their website here. Alexander Pollak '12,
meanwhile, has seen his poem "Purple" appear in both
the print and online editions of Teen Ink
Magazine.
Link here to read it online.
JUNE 24, 2009
To our list of C-dub summer activities
(see May 30, below) we add news of Danielle
O'Farrell '11. This summer Danielle joins the SF
program DancEsteem on a trip to Japan, where for the
second time she'll participate in a dance exchange
program with the Sanae-Hara studio. Demanding though
Creative Writing can be, many of its students come
to the program with other strong interests and
talents, and find a way to continue pursuing them
while at SOTA. Danielle is one such student, having
danced for thirteen years with DancEsteem. She
dances modern, ballet, and hip-hop, and is now an
assistant teacher for the program as well.
JUNE 11, 2009
Two CW sophomores, Ariana Cisneros '11
and Jessica Barrog '11, have had poems
published in the most recent issue of the online
journal Protest Poems. You can link here to
read Ariana's poem "Girl Poem," and here to
read Jessica's work titled "Oppression."
Congratulations to both on a great way to end the
school year!
JUNE 9, 2009
With the careers of 2009 C-dub grads
celebrated at last Friday's senior party, and their
commencement ceremonies completed on Monday, it
seems very appropriate that their leader and mentor
over the years has just received special recognition
from one of the City's -- and nation's -- most
prominent writing centers for youth. Yes, Heather
Woodward, founder and director of SOTA Creative
Writing, has been named Teacher of the Month at 826
Valencia. Her nomination was spearheaded by current
C-dub parents and included a wonderful book of
photos and testimonials from students, parents, and
artists-in-residence, past and present. All would
agree that "Teacher of the Millennium" would be a
more appropriate award for
Heather, but well-earned congratulations are
still in order. Read the nice article at the 826
Valencia website,
here.
MAY
30, 2009
The year winds down and summer activity
starts up for C-dubs. Here's a partial, suggestive
list of the kinds of things that SOTA Creative
Writers have going on this summer:
Jackson VanFleet-Brown '11 has been accepted
into the Research Mentorship program at University
of California - Santa Barbara, which gives high
school students an opportunity to learn about and
participate in the conduct of academic research in
the Social, Life, or Physical Sciences.
Vanessa Cabrera '12 will be involved in the
Teen Art Connect program at the Contemporary Jewish
Museum (see May 14 news item below).
Indiana Pehlivanova '09 will, for the second
year in a row, be working as a docent at the Legion
Of Honor art museum, teaching children about
exhibitions there.
Aly Robalino '12 and Alex Pollak '12
will be doing a production of The Wiz with
Spindrift, in Pacifica. Spindrift is a year-round
nonprofit performing arts school whose members
frequently end up at SF SOTA. Like SOTA Creative
Writing, Spindrift is blessed with the
administrative talents of C-dub (and SOTA Tech)
parent Keira Robalino. Those who know Keira
agree that she is possessed of superhuman
organizational skills and talents, an intense
devotion to the arts, and, it would seem, absolutely
no interest in that notorious time-sink known as
"sleep." You can read more about the good work
Spindrift is doing at
www.spindriftschool.org.
MAY
22, 2009
Some new pictures are up on our
Photogallery page, from the Playwriting performances
on April 17 and 18 of this year. The evenings were
especially memorable, as is the work of CW parent
and photographer Heidi Alletzhauser, who supplied
the photos. Start at the
Photogallery page, or go directly to the
Playwriting 2009 photographs.
And on the subject of Playwriting: A script excerpt
from the work that Eli Wolfe'09 did for that
unit, which was presented onstage on April 18, is up
for reading on the
Playwriting page of our student work section.
It's titled Finger-Puppets. Those who have
followed Eli through his CW years will recognize the
hilarious, brutally incisive intelligence he has
brought to all of his work.
<News top> <page top>
MAY
20, 2009
Go to Google and do an Advanced Search of
our website's URL for the names Tanea Lunsford
and Naomi Neal and, trust us,
you'll get a lot of hits. And now, two more:
Tanea Lunsford '09, has received recognition
in yet another playwriting contest. Tanea, who has
been a playwriting fiend since her earliest days as
a C-dub, is now a finalist in the Young Playwright
Project contest, for which high school playwrights
from throughout the Bay Area submitted ten-page plays based
on an assigned topic. Tanea's short play is titled
How to Make A Clean Getaway, and was
developed during CW's recent playwriting unit led by
artist-in-residence Isaiah Dufort. As a finalist
entry, the play will get a staged reading by
professional actors of the Playground acting
company. The reading will
come at the top of the "Best of Playground Festival
of New Writers" program on Friday, May 22, 8 p.m.,
at Thick House theater, 1695 18th Street in Potrero
Hill. You can read about the Young Playwright
Project and link to the box office at the
Playground site here.
But wait, there's more... Tanea has also won
the highly competitive 826 Valencia Young Author's
Award, which includes a scholarship for $10,000.
Check it out on the
826
Valencia news page.
Naomi Neal '09, who recently completed a
novel, Inheritance, for her CW Senior Thesis
project, has had a notable run of publication
credits in the last year. And she'll soon see another poem in print. "Sleepover on Minerva Court" will
appear in the Summer 2009 issue of Naugatuck
River Review, published out of Westfield,
Massachusetts. At the
Review website you can read about the journal
and go about purchasing a print or online version.
MAY
14, 2009
It should surprise no one that at least
some of the talented CW student writers come from
.... talented parent writers. One such
example is Susan Freinkel, parent of
graduating C-dub Eli Wolfe '09. Tonight --
sorry for the late notice -- Susan will read from
her 2007 book American Chestnut: The Life, Death,
and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree, now being
released in a paperback edition. The book was widely
praised on its publication, with the New York
Times terming it "an absorbing account" and
Nature calling it "a parable for our time: a sad
and salutary tale, beautifully written." Tonight's
reading is at the BookShop bookstore in West Portal,
80 West Portal Ave., at 7 p.m. Read more about the
book at the
UC Press bookstore.
And we also have student news today: Following a
highly competitive application process, Vanessa Cabrera '12
has been selected as a participant in the Teen Art
Connect program at the Contemporary Jewish Museum,
in downtown San Francisco. She will begin training
for the intern position in June. Congratulations
Vanessa!
MAY
12, 2009
If we may slip in some relevant CW parent
news ... we've learned that Thomas Graven,
parent of Atticus Graven '10, has been named
as the new principal of San Francisco's Hoover
Middle School. As assistant principal at Hoover,
Thomas was instrumental in placing C-dubs as
volunteer tutors in a reading class there, a
successful experience for everyone concerned.
Hoover, with enrollment around 1400, has sent many
talented students on to School of the Arts over the
years, in Creative Writing as well as other
disciplines. It is good to know that the school will
be in such capable hands.
MAY
6, 2009
It's difficult to believe that spring is
here again, which means time for the annual citywide
arts festival now known as
Young at Art. Members of
SOTA Creative Writing have distinguished themselves
once more in the Literary Arts portion of the
festival. Here's the list of
current C-dubs who are winners at the high school level:
1st Place Poetry
Natasha Joyce Weidner '09
2nd Place Poetry
Indiana Pehlivanova '09
3rd Place Poetry
Aly Robalino '12
And congratulations as well to three winners at the
middle-school level who will be joining SOTA CW next
year:
1st Place Short Story
Shanna Parkerson Williams '13
2nd Place Short Story
J. Bryce Hidysmith '13
2nd Place Poetry
Zola Hjelm '13
The Literary Arts award ceremony will be held at the
deYoung museum's Koret Theater on May 23rd, at
2:00pm. The theater is off of the main lobby across
from the ticket counters, and it, along with all
Young at Art events, is in the "free zone" of the
museum. The keynote speech will be given by noted
author (and past CW artist-in-residence)
Michelle Tea,
and first-place winners, at the least, will be
invited to read their work. You can read more about
the Young at Art 2009 festival at
their website.
MAY 3, 2009
It's now even easier to support your
favorite high school creative writing program.
Thanks to Michael Palladino and SOTA PTSA, you can
now
donate online to the Creative Writing
department. Just go to our
new
donation page, where you will have the option to
contribute through PayPal (all major credit cards
accepted) or, as always, to download printable order
forms which you can mail in with a check. Your
online donation is accepted through the secure
PayPal system and credited, through the PTSA,
directly to the department of Creative Writing.
Donations are tax deductible, and you will receive
confirmation of that fact. Sincere thanks again to
Michael Palladino for helping set this up.
<News top> <page top>
APRIL 30, 2009
City Lights Foundation Books has just
published a book that will be of interest to SOTA CW
and to anyone who follows arts education. Titled
Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sounds, the book
documents the fifteen-year history of the National
Writers Corps program through essays and poems
written by the accomplished writers who are at the
"core of the Corps," who teach creative writing
workshops to young people in juvenile detention
facilities, homeless shelters, inner-city schools
and centers for newly arrived immigrants. Indiana
Pehlivanova '09 blossomed in the San Francisco
Writers Corps after arriving in the United States
from her native Bulgaria. And past CW
artist-in-residence
Chad Sweeney mentored Indiana in that program
before (and during) her years with SOTA CW. Sweeney,
an accomplished poet, also edited this new
collection. You can read more about the book, and
order a copy, at the
City Lights Foundation online bookstore.
APRIL 23, 2009
Congratulations to Vanessa Cabrera '12,
who has had two poems published in I'm From,
a journal associated with SF writing center
826 Valencia. The poems are titled "Pink" and
"Hers," and Vanessa has sent along the first of
these with permission to print on the
poetry page of our student
writing collection. Take a look!
And while you're on the poetry
page, take a listen to audio files that have
been added for two of the poems. Hear them as they
were read by authors Yaul Perez-Stable '11
and Indiana Pehlivanova '09 at the CW Poetry Café
performance of January 16, 2009.
APRIL 14, 2009
Today's C-dubs in the news represent a
sort of age group book-ending. You've heard of
Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea? What we
have today is The Young Man and the Senior.
Ouch. Deepest apologies.
Anyway, freshman Alex Pollak '12 reports not
one but two notifications of publication -- both
received in the same day. His poem "Traveler" has
been published in Teen Ink. You can already
read it
online here, and it will also appear later in
Teen Ink's print version. And another poem by
Alex, "Sunset Blankets," will be published in the
June issue of the e-zine literary journal
Lunarosity. Watch for it on June 5 at
www.zianet.com/lunarosity/ .
As she ends her four years with SOTA Creative
Writing, Naomi Neal '09 has learned of her
first fiction publication in a major literary
journal. Sojourn: A Journal of the Arts will
publish her piece "Gus and Nicole in the Main Woods"
in its upcoming 22nd issue. Here is a link to the
Sojourn website.
Congratulations to both Alex and Naomi!
And a reminder: Playwriting performances are this
weekend. Check out the
details here,
and make your plans to attend both.
APRIL 2, 2009
We now have information about the next,
and final, major performances of the Creative
Writing school year: the staged readings that
culminate the six-week playwriting unit. Mark the
dates: April 17 and 18, at two different venues.
Check the Major
Performances listing above for details.
And as long as we're discussing the stage: Otto
Pippenger '12, continuing to enrich his
playwriting technique by taking on acting roles, has
been cast in another play through the SF Shakespeare
Festival. He'll play Mr. Quimby in a number of
performances of Ramona Quimby, put on by the
Civic Arts Stage Company in Pleasanton. Otto's
evening performances will be at 8 p.m. on Friday, April 24 and Saturday, April 25;
you can get complete info
here.
<News top> <page top>
MARCH 28, 2009
And the hits keep coming. Kudos go out
today for two publication/contest notices and a
big-time award.
First the publications/contest results: Sayre
Quevedo '11 has learned that his poem "Am I
Married?" will appear in an anthology published by
the Federation of Poets. Release date for The
Poetry of Marriage Anthology is yet to be
announced. And Sasha Schmitz '09 is now
looking forward to three more publications. Her
piece "Faith in Sunday Dinners" has been accepted
for publication, mid-April, in The Walrus, a
literary journal put out by Mills College. And she
was a winner at two levels in poetry contests
sponsored by Gannon University in Pennsylvania: In
the adult category, she won an honorable mention and
publication; and in the high school category, she
was awarded second place, a cash prize, and
publication in the school's literary journal. Both
Gannon contests drew 600+ entries.
In the awards category: Naomi Neal '09 has
won a full-tuition scholarship to Shimer College in
Chicago. To do so, she participated in a competition
at the campus on February 14 and 15, which required
both an essay response to an essay by de Montaigne
and participation in a seminar discussion of the
same piece. You can read more details of the award
in this
article in the Pacifica Tribune.
MARCH 14, 2009
We have a bonanza of news about C-dubs to
report today. Read on:
Indiana Pehlivanova '09 was honored with a
prominent role in recent exhibitions and
performances related to the 15th anniversary of San
Francisco WritersCorps, a project of the San
Francisco Arts Commission which places professional
writers in community settings to teach creative
writing to youth. The group has served over 15,000
students, and Indiana reports that WritersCorps
chose ten of these -- including Indiana herself --
"and decided to make a little post with their
thoughts about poetry so the entire gallery on
VanNess was just filled with life-sized
illustrations of us and lots of poetry and our
thoughts." WritersCorps has a fine website at
www.sfartscommission.org/WC. You can download a
PDF booklet called
"WritersCorps Celebrating 15 Years." And the
site also features a
videoclip of Indiana reading poetry ... in an
elevator!
For a few years now, the folks at the
San Francisco Writers Conference have generously
provided scholarships allowing selected C-dubs to
attend their big annual conference. This year was no
exception, as Atticus Graven '10, Maxfield
Peterson '10, and artist-in-residence Page
(PK) McBee were granted enrollment at the
three-day event on Febrary 13-15, 2009. SOTA CW has
been extremely fortunate to have this opportunity to
attend workshops and readings, and to meet and
mingle with working writers.
Not long after attending the SFWC, Atticus Graven
'10 received word of publication in TeenInk. His
article, "Overserved and Undecided," was published
online (read
it here) and also was chosen for inclusion in
the journal's print version -- and so will be
viewed, all told, by an estimated half-million
readers.
And finally, but not least, two C-dubs have won
prizes in the 2009 Coastal Art and Poetry Contest,
sponsored by the California Coastal Commission.
Selected from over 1600 entries were Natasha
Joyce Weidner '09, who won first place for her
poem
"The First Human," and Yaul Perez-Stable
'11,
awarded Honorable Mention for his poem
"The Land." The link provided for each poem
takes you to a gallery of winners; you will need to
scroll down to find Natasha's and Yaul's work.
Congratulations all!
MARCH 12, 2009
Word comes that
Octavio Solis, a two-time
artist-in-residence with SOTA Creative Writing, has
been nominated for a major prize in the American
theater. The American Theatre Critics Association
announced Monday that Octavio's play Lydia is
up for the 2009 Steinberg/ATCA Award, the nation's
largest new play award. Lydia premiered to
great acclaim in a 2008 staging with the Denver
Center Theatre Company, and makes its Bay Area
premiere with the Marin Theatre Company beginning
March 19. Read the March 11 SF Gate
news item here (scroll halfway down the page),
and check out
Octavio's bio
on our Faculty page. Update: SF Gate also
published an
interview with Octavio on March 20.
MARCH 10, 2009
Three new videoclips are up in our
Gallery section. Check out
these exceprts from
the So I Had the Weirdest Dream...
performance on October 24, 2008. Or as long as
you're at it, why not click to the
SOTA Writers channel page at YouTube
to see all 14 videoclips now available?
MARCH 7, 2009
Knowing that many in the SOTA CW
community would like to participate, we're passing
along this news item about Lawrence Ferlinghetti
from the City Lights Bookstore newsletter:
|
On March 24th, 2009, Lawrence
Ferlinghetti, the co-founder and
co-owner of City Lights Booksellers and
Publishers, and one of this country's
most beloved poets and truly great
humanitarians, will celebrate his 90th
birthday. Though no public celebration
is planned, we'd like to help you share
your birthday greetings and wishes—send
emails to
lfbirthday@citylights.com. We'll
pass these on to Lawrence, and share
some of them with all of you down the
road. Meanwhile, hear Lawrence read from
his recent book Poetry As Insurgent Art
as part of City Lights' new podcast,
"Live From City Lights." Subscribe by
RSS, or search iTunes' podcast directory
for "Live from City Lights." |
<News top>
<page top>
FEBRUARY 23, 2009
We have great news today from two CW
seniors. Tanea Lunsford '09 has been named a
winner in the 2009 Horatio Alger California
Scholarship Program, which, to quote its own
website, "provides financial assistance to students
in the State of California who have exhibited
integrity and perserverance in overcoming personal
adversity and who aspire to pursue higher
education."
Link here to read more about the scholarship
programs of the Horatio Alger Association. And
Sasha Schmitz '09, an accomplished fencer for
many years, reports that the fencing team of which
she is a member won Gold at a national championships
qualifier event on February 22. In June, the team
will be going to the national championships in
Texas. Congratulations to both C-dubs!
FEBRUARY 3, 2009
Naomi Neal '09 has learned she is
the winner of this year's High School Travel Writing
Contest, sponsored by the Bay Area Travel Writers
(BATW). She is invited to read her essay and pick up
her prize on February 21, at the BATW meeting at
Books Inc., Opera Plaza store, at approximately
10:45 a.m. The website for the group is at
http://www.batw.org. Congratulations Naomi!
<News top>
<page top>
JANUARY 27, 2009
Yet another member of the Creative
Writing department is stretching her artistic reach
to include the stage. Ariana Cisneros '11
will appear in Fears of Your Life, a
multimedia piece based on the book of the same name
by Michael Bernard Loggins. Marsh Youth Theater is
putting on the show, which runs January 30 -
February 7 at the Marsh Theater. You can find
details of the show performances at
www.themarsh.org, and read
this article that appeared in SF Gate on January
25.
And we now have dates for Landscape of the
Body, in which Otto Pippenger '12 has a meaty,
challenging role. The show will run from January 31
to March 7 at SF Playhouse; C-dubs will attend
together on February 19. More details in the
December 8 News item;
performance details at
www.sfplayhouse.org.
JANUARY 24, 2009
Donn Harris, former SOTA principal
and CW parent, sends notice of a big upcoming event
at Oakland School for the Arts (OSA), where
he is now Executive Director. OSA, a relatively
young charter school, has moved into beautiful new
digs at the restored Fox Theater in Oakland, and
will celebrate the move with an Open House on
January 30, from 5 - 9 p.m. Donn writes, "The
faculty, staff, students and families of OSA are
extremely proud and honored to be part of the Fox
renovation and the renaissance in uptown
Oakland.....So please join us as we celebrate and
pay tribute to this remarkable display of civic
accomplishment." The evening will include
performances, tours, speakers, and great food. You
can visit the OSA website at
www.oakarts.org, and click
here to see a TV news clip about the Fox Theater
reopening.
JANUARY 20, 2009
Poetry Café
2009 is history, and there's no revisionism in
stating that both nights -- January 16 on the SOTA
stage, and January 17 at a real café,
Maxfield's House of Caffeine -- were a
success. As is becoming traditional, department
seniors took responsibility for organizing the
affairs. Here's what CW department director Heather
Woodward had to say: "Congratulations to the seniors
for putting on two fabulous evenings of poetry!
Friday and Saturday night's senior poetry cafés
were everything they should be, with poetry that
demonstrated the personalities and range of the
writers, engaged and engaging poet/readers, some
surprises, and GREAT energy -- especially in the
more intimate Maxfield's where the atmosphere was
positively charged." Thanks go out to parent
organizers and volunteers, and to Maxfield's for
hosting the second night. Keep an eye on the
website's Gallery page for upcoming photos and/or
video of the performances.
JANUARY 8, 2009
Every year, the National Foundation for
Advancement in Arts reviews work submitted by up to
8000 high school students nationwide, in nine
different arts categories, to determine those worthy
of recognition by its youngARTS program. Out of
these 8000, C-dub Natasha Weidner '09 was
recently given a Merit Award for poetry she
submitted in the Writing category. Congratulations
Natasha! Read about NFAA youngARTS and its mission
at
http://www.nfaa.org/index.html.
JANUARY 3, 2009
On August 24 we noted that Sarah
Maloney '11 had had a work of "flash fiction"
accepted for an upcoming issue of the journal
Conclave: A Journal of Character. Now we can
report that the journal is in print and available
for purchase online. And there's a nice bonus for
followers of Sarah and CW: Sarah's piece,
"Five-Minute-Date-O-Thon," is the current
Conclave excerpt offered up by Amazon.com in its
"Look inside the book" feature. Follow
this link and click on the word Excerpt to read
her story. And then, of course, you can proceed to
support Sarah and the journal by ordering the book
...
<News top>
<page top>
DECEMBER 13, 2008
A new
First
Person piece is up, this one by Jack Mirkinson
'05, now in his senior year at Yale. Read it
here.
The First Person slot is open to all CW students,
parents, and artists-in-residence, past and
present. If you have thoughts to share, drop an
email to Steve at
webmaster@sfsota-creativewriting.org
DECEMBER 8, 2008
Long-time readers of CW News will know
that the program's talented writers are often
multi-talented. A recent
case in point is freshman Otto Pippenger '12.
Otto, whose interest in writing developed and
intensified through his experience in film and
theater, will play the role of "Donny" in the first
Bay Area performance of John Guare's play,
Landscape of the Body. Guare, an American
playwright, has authored such celebrated plays as
Six Degrees of Separation, The House of Blue
Leaves, and SF ACT's upcoming Rich and Famous.
Department head Heather Woodward notes that the
experience Otto gains through his role will be
excellent preparation for CW's yearly playwriting
unit, which will overlap the rehearsal and
performance of Landscape. You can read more
about the play at
www.sfplayhouse.org.
You can also see Otto in a
semi-short film screening at the Roxie Film Center
on December 13 at 4 p.m. The film, Story About A
Witch, is part of a one-day festival called
The Sad and Secret Santa Show: Short Films and Music
Videos for the Holidays. Otto is part of an
ensemble cast in this "dark, funny, and scary tale
involving Santa, elves, a witch, and baseball." Get
a flyer for the free Santa Show
here. On YouTube you can see short clips about
Otto's film; one is a
preview trailer, and the other is related to
rehearsals.
DECEMBER 3, 2008
The order form for umläut
has been updated, and readers can now preorder
this year's issue, which will be published in
May of 2009. While you're at it, take advantage of
discounts to order multiple copies or check out back
issues you missed the first time around. Start your
holiday shopping early on the
umläut page.
NOVEMBER 18, 2008
Congratulations to Naomi Neal '09,
who has two pieces appearing in If Poetry
Journal. This month the print edition of the
journal will publish her poem, "This Is It." And
another poem, "My Feet Are Not From Here," is now up
on the web edition of the journal. Read the web
poem, complete with Naomi's bio,
here.
NOVEMBER 11, 2008
In a September 23 news entry (below), we
noted that Otto Pippenger '12 was the
co-writer of two films accepted as entries into
student film festivals. Over the past weekend, one
of those films, The Waiting Room, was named
Best High School Comedy at the Sixth Annual
International Student Film Festival Hollywood.
Congratulations Otto! We will post a link if the
film becomes available for online viewing. In the
meantime, the list of winners can be found at
http://www.isffhollywood.org/winners2008.php .
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OCTOBER 29, 2008
We have some updates to the website
Gallery pages. In the
Photo gallery, check out CW seniors who
participated in an October 5 reading at the SF Main
Library, part of the city-wide Litquake festival. In
Videos, all existing
clips have now been incorporated into Creative
Writing's YouTube page. You can see clips embedded
in our own pages, or by visiting our YouTube
"channel,"
SOTA Writers.
Not yet included among the videoclips -- but
soon, we hope -- are the fine performances given by
C-dubs at the first show on October 24. It was an
exciting evening, with a crowded, responsive house.
As Heather Woodward noted afterward to students,
director Tony Bravo is a master at getting students
to "let go of flat, safe delivery and to open up and
read with all of yourself." The audience, including
many freshmen attending their first SOTA
performance, responded to that openness. And, it
must be said, to the costume contest at
intermission...
OCTOBER 24, 2008
Another acceptance notice for a C-dub:
Danielle O'Farrell '11 has learned that her
piece "Finding Color" will appear in Long Short
Story: An Ezine for Writers. The best estimate
for publication is July 2009, but you can check out
the e-zine now at
http://www.longstoryshort.us/.
Congratulations, Danielle!
Tonight, the Creative Writing Department takes
over the SOTA Main Stage for its first performance
of the 2008 - 2009 year. The show, titled So I
Had the Weirdest Dream..., is directed by the
inimitable Tony Bravo. If you haven't cleared your
calendar yet, do it now, note these details from
our calendar,
and come out to hear some fresh, energetic new
voices.
OCTOBER 6, 2008
A new personal essay is up in the
First Person slot. Sloane Martin '07 provides some nice
reflections on the department, fifteen months
after graduating. Take a look! And note again that First
Person is open to all CW students, parents, and
artists-in-residence, past and present. If you
have thoughts to share, drop an email to Steve at
webmaster@sfsota-creativewriting.org .
OCTOBER 2, 2008
We usually have news of CW students and
artists-in-residence, but today it's a great
pleasure to note that Heather Woodward, the
department's director -- and founder seven years ago
-- has received special recognition in a San
Francisco Examiner article about the best
teachers in San Francisco. Congratulations,
Heather -- though it's no surprise to anyone at
SOTA! You can read the October 1 article, by
Examiner education writer Caroline Grannan,
by clicking
here.
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SEPTEMBER 23, 2008
We have news today on recent
accomplishments by two C-dubs:
Word comes that "The Picture of the
Trumpet," a poem by Yaul Perez-Stable '11,
will be published in a MotesBooks anthology titled
MOTIF: Writing By Ear. The anthology is
due out by the end of 2008, and when publication
rights to the poem become available we'll also print
it in our Student Work section. MotesBooks
website is
http://www.motesbooks.com.
And Otto Pippenger '12 is the co-writer of
two films that have been accepted into student film
festivals. Details: The Waiting Room,
directed by SF Art and Film student Max Strebel, has
been chosen to screen and compete in the
International Student Film Festival in Hollywood,
coming up on November 7 -9 of this year.
Click here for that festival's list of entrants.
And The Time Machine, co-written by SOTA
media student Willem Yarbrough -- who also directs
-- has been accepted into the Sacramento Youth Film
Festival, with screenings on October 3. You
can read about that festival
here.
Kudos to both!
SEPTEMBER 3, 2008
Forrest Ambruster '10 becomes the
latest C-dub to report news of publication.
His poem "Revolutionary Brussels Sprouts in a
Bureaucrat's Salad" will appear in 95 Notes,
a literary magazine published by Chicago State
University. Congratulations Forrest!
AUGUST 24, 2008
Congratulations to Sarah Maloney '11,
who has learned that her short story "Five Minute
Date-o-Thon" will be published in an upcoming issue
of Conclave: A Journal of Character.
Watch upcoming News items for details.
AUGUST 16, 2008
Please note there has been a change in
the date of the first potluck. It has been
rescheduled to Thursday, August 28 at 7:30 p.m.
As always, check your email for location and other
details.
AUGUST 13, 2008
The official start to school is still 12
days off, but the Creative Writing department is up
and running. Emails have already gone out
regarding the first potluck of the year, which will
be held on Friday, August 22 at 7:30 p.m. It's
an important one, so check your email for details --
and if you haven't received the notice, let
department coordinators know that they may need to
update your email address.
Each fall brings updates and a few changes to the
CW website. As for updates: New
syllabi, new material, and a fleshed-out calendar
will appear as details become available. And
as for changes: This year, as the site begins
its fourth year, we 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 in turn lure new viewers
back to this site and ensnare 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. Or
go right to the
SOTA Writers "channel" at YouTube.
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