Young, Gifted, and Chicagoan

Chicago is home to a strong community of talented young writers. Tonights reading features young peopl from three organizations that service youth through the written and spoken word.

Poets and writers from Young Chicago Authors, Young Asians With Power (YAWP), and Gallery 37 gather at the guild to read their latest work.

YWAP formed in the summer of 2002 to address the need for a conscious, multi-disciplinary, for-youth-by-youth arts program for the Asian/Pacific Islander American (APIA) teens in the Chicagoland area. The students from Lake View High School serve as apprentice authors in Gallery 37’s after-school job training program inder the direction of writers Keturah Shaw-Poulos and Rachel Webster. They have worked nine hours a week for the last ten weeks writing poetry and fiction shaped by memory, intelligence and imagination.

The mission of Young Chicago Authors is to use creative writing as the vehicle to uncover and nurture the abilities of young people, so they may develop self-confidence, imagination and individuality.

The night will serve as a pre-celebration for the National Youth Slam taking place in Chicago in April 2003. See “Youth News” for details about the National Youth Poetry Slam.