Sept. 17, 2002

PEN/Faulkner “Writers in Schools” Moves to Mount Vernon Campus

Program Leaves Folger Shakespeare Library

By Thomas Kohout

In a one-year agreement reached this summer between the The PEN/Faulkner Foundation and The George Washington University, the literary foundation’s prestigious Writers in Schools program will make its home on the Mount Vernon Campus.

“For us it’s so wonderful to be in an academic setting with access to so many resources,” says Carolyn Ruffs Spellman, Writers in Schools coordinator. She explains that the program simply had outgrown its space at the Folger Shakespeare Library, where the rest of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation is based. The program’s new digs are located in the toney confines of the Webb building overlooking the new athletic fields.

“They wanted to find the right kind of environment to move into,” says Executive Dean of Mount Vernon Campus Grae Baxter. “When the chair of the PEN/Faulkner program contacted President Trachtenberg, he thought first of Mount Vernon because we are developing the campus as a center of academic excellence. With the atmosphere and focus on campus, it seemed like a compatible environment.

“President Trachtenberg sees this as a part of our overall commitment to reach out to the community and build partnerships. This is really a connection, a vital and intellectually-based, connection with an important cultural organization in our community. Our hope is that the Mount Vernon Campus can find ways to participate in this series in some synergistic program, perhaps with the University-wide writing initiative.”

Writers in Schools is a literary arts outreach program committed to developing the next generation of readers and writers. The program connects area high school students with prominent authors and copies of their latest works.

“It’s amazing how inspiring this is for kids,” says Spellman. “To them any author is famous, so this is a really overwhelming experience.”

Spellman explains that the program helps to teach writing and cultivate new generations of fiction readers by providing works of fiction, supplied by the publishers, to the schools, as well as classroom materials to help teachers integrate these books into their curriculum. Then the authors visit the students for a class period and talk to the students about fiction and writing. The 14-year program has been so successful, says Spellman, that Ford Motor Company underwrote a national program. The Writers in Schools series in now up and running in Detroit. They will launch an additional program in Kansas City this fall, another in Atlanta by January, and they hope to set up shop in Los Angeles by summer 2003.

“Students across the country are coming into universities and, even though they had straight A’s, and they are talented, intelligent students, they can’t write,” says Baxter, citing the growing need for programs such as Writers in Schools. “[Students] just aren’t being prepared in their elementary, secondary, and high schools.”

 

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