Free! Workshops for kids and teens on Saturdays,  July 10 through August 14th

Come write with us on Saturdays in the park! Kids and teens (7- 17 year olds) are invited to join is for six weeks of writing and sharing work in a fun and positive environment! Workshops meet in Fort Greene Park from Saturday, July 10 to August 14, from 10:45 to noon.  At the end of the workshops, all participants will be invited to read their writing as part of the Fort Greene Park Summer Literary Festival on August 21st!

Registration begins June 14th!

To sign up, contact NY Writers Coalition at 718-398-2883 or email us at fgp@nywriterscoalition.org. Space is limited so you must sign up in advance. Parental permission required.

by Eun Jung Lee

Drinking a cup of iced coffee, I am thinking of my old friend I had almost forgotten, the one with the penny-on-the-ground story.
1990. I met a friend in the Pan Am School in Manhattan when I learned English. She had just come from California to New York to learn English, also. We became very good friends. We even went to the same church. She was a very good, beautiful Christian.

One year later, she and I decided to become roommates in Flushing, Queens. Unexpectedly, almost every night we had a fight with each other. There were no big problems. The problem was a tiny room. For example, when I wanted to watch TV, she was sleeping. When I was tired and wanted to sleep, she was watching TV. It was very noisy and bothered me. Her personality and mine were also very different. For example, I am rarely a cleaning-type woman, but she was a very neat-type woman. One evening she cleaned a whole room, flapping the blankets. It really bothered tired me.

Anyway, after fighting almost every day, I complained to her that I wanted to leave. But she wanted to move to a bigger apartment so that I would continue to live with her but with fewer complaints.

The next Saturday we looked at one nice, bigger apartment with the real estate agent. But, wow, the kitchen was so oily and dirty and needed cleaning. Outside of the apartment, I suggested something because I really didn’t want to live with her. “Jane, I have an idea! I will toss this penny. If the front is showing, I will move to live here with you. If the back is showing, I will go to another place by myself. OK?” She said, “OK.”

I prayed to God, “You decide, Lord”! Then I flew the penny to the sky. The penny landed with its back showing. God wanted me to separate from her. Then she was laughing, laughing, grabbing her belly.
So no way we would stay together. She stayed alone in the old place. I left and went to another house. After that, we became separated. I don’t know where she is now.

That was God’s decision with the penny on the ground.

by Audry Israeli

I taught the lower grades and they came up with a lot of cute and funny sayings. For example, I told them the story of Christopher Columbus’s voyage and how he discovered America, but he didn’t know it. And that later, Amerigo Vespucci came here and he realized it was a new land, and it was named after him. But some things were named after Columbus—such as Columbus Avenue and Columbia University.

I asked the class, “Where did Columbus sail?”

A girl answered, “He sailed up Columbus Avenue.”

Around Veteran’s Day I asked the kids, “What’s a veteran?”

One child answered, “Someone who doesn’t eat meat.”

Another one said, “A doctor for dogs and cats.”

When we were making Valentine’s Day cards, I gave the students a sheet of white paper and a red paper heart to paste on it. A little boy came up to me desk in tears, holding his red heart, which was in two pieces.

“What happened?” I asked him.

He pointed to the little girl who sat next to him and said, “She broke my heart.”

When I told them about the Underground Railroad, I asked them to tell me what it was in their own words.

One boy said, “The slave subway.”

On St. Patrick’s Day I told the class the story of St. Pat. I mentioned that it was said that he drove the snakes out of Ireland.

A girl asked, “Did he have a truck?” I was puzzled for a moment and then she added, “You said he drove them out.”

Some time later I saw a cartoon in the Daily News. It showed a man driving a car. There were snakes around his neck; seated next to him were more snakes and even more were filling the back seat. They were all hissing.

“Shut up, back there,” the man was saying.

The caption underneath read: “St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland.”

I thought about what the little girl had said and thought, “My God, she was right!”

By Nicholas Bochinis

I’ve always loved the 1960s, not just because of what it was, but because of what it meant.

His Voice—his music always made me feel like I was seeing pictures in sound. I always felt optimistic—full of hope like I was hearing music from a future being—this musical prophet of the Civil Rights Movement. Can you hear me, John? I can’t see you but I know you’re here. Your turmoil and your pain is a melodic and modal refrain uniting people in a global universe. Will you be there for the second resurrection? I know you must have hated heroin, but your music gives the world its next injection of love through sound. When you come, we’ll all go up and meet the One. On the path of Love, the world will play and say hello, and not goodbye. It was a love supreme. The resurrection has begun. The long night is over and the angels are here. The collective sound where love and God are smiling because you were born.

by Bette Clark

She always apologized for her words, as if they would not measure up to something. When she let them out they danced through the air, hovering like dragonflies over a pond, not quite sure where to land but content to stay suspended, wings of gossamer glinting in the sunlight.

Once she wrote about shapes that were characters she carried around in her pocket to keep her company. These words sat cozily next to her skin, shielding her from the cold and urging her to venture out when she was tempted to stay hunkered in. There was a triangle with a giggle, a circle with an air of mystery, and a mischievous square.

This is not quite accurate because her words were difficult to catch: they moved quickly from a state of rest to one of random motion, like the light of fire flies captured briefly in a glass jar. They were ephemeral yet tangible, bursting with color yet quietly subdued. They were all these things because they were made from waves of light, sometimes like Japanese brush strokes, earth tones on an ecru canvas, barely visible yet spare and lovely. Other times they were bits of phosphorescent algae piercing black water with long-tailed comets of silvery white.

Her words were paintings in the air, not frozen on a surface, but suspended like drops of water, sometimes coming to rest, other times, evaporating, yet other times dripping like a tear. These were her words and they could not be measured.