In March at the Westchester Community College, the Young Authors Conference hosted the annual held “Writing: Beyond Limits” seminar. Each year, students who exhibit striking talent and interest in writing are selected from surrounding school districts to spend a day of learning in writing workshops. The event enables students the opportunity to learn from published novelists, poets, editors, journalists, and peers.
Mackenzie Tatinani, senior, who attended the conference recently shared her experience. “Each workshop was very different, and while some covered the same genre, they were geared to attend to a broad range of interests: the focus of the poetry workshops, for instance, varied from slam poetry to exercises in ekphrasis and beyond. The instructors were either published authors themselves or teachers who knew a lot about a certain aspect of writing.”
Her favorite instructor was an English teacher from Valhalla, who’s enthusiasm for argument writing she claims was “absolutely contagious.”
As to what excited her the most, Mackenzie took particular note in her fellow students attending. “What excited me most of all was the tremendous diversity in age. There was a mix of students at every grade level, from freshmen all the way to seniors. It was wonderful to be surrounded by other students who were just as excited to write and create as myself.”
She said, “The conference helped me realize that writing isn’t a lost art and revealed the tremendous sense of comradery within the writers’ community.”
