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About Our Girls’ Writing Group

By Keith Hefner—Executive Director

For two years, from 1999-2001, Youth Communication ran a series of girls writing groups, alongside the other writing groups that we offer to teens. This section of our website includes selections from the stories that were published by girls in the those sessions. The project was directed by Andrea Estepa, a long-time teacher/editor at Youth Communication, and supported by grants from the New York Community Trust. Teens in the workshop wrote dozens of stories. Many of them appear in those booklets.

Girls Booklet Description: Many of the articles written by participants in our Girls Writing Groups have been collected in the booklet, "Growing Up Girl: Young Women Write About Their Lives." The authors of the two dozen pieces in this collection range in age from 14 to 19. Their stories explore a wide range of subjects including family relationships, love and sex, appearance and body image, sexual harassment, coming of age experiences and favorite pastimes.

About the Workshop:
The writing group, each a semester long. Up to a dozen girls participated in each session. During the semester they met all day on Saturdays as a large group, and from time to time met individually with Ms. Estepa during weekday afternoons. (One group met daily for six weeks during the summer.)

The sessions focused on reading and writing in a variety of genres, including reported stories, personal stories, reviews, and memoir. One of the sessions focused specifically on women's history. The workshops also included college visits and outside speakers.

During the course of a session, students read widely from adult literature, including selections from Grace Paley, Sandra Cisneros, bell hooks, Wendy Shalit, and William Carlos Williams. They also read teen-written stories which complemented the adult stories. In discussing the readings, students focused on style (how the stories were written; how the writer used language to tell the story she wanted to convey) and content (the subject the writer was exploring, and her stance toward it).

Students in the workshop wrote in many forms and for many purposes, including responses to the readings and journal writing. By the end of the workshop, each teen also wrote at least one signficant, publishable story. Those stories were published in New Youth Connections. Some of them have also been republished in our Growing Up Girl booklet and in five other "girls" issues" booklets (see above).

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