Girls Write Now to Celebrate Another Smash Season of Fresh Talent with New Reading Series: CHAPTERS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:

Lauren Cerand,
917.533.0103 or
media@girlswritenow.org

NEW YORK (March 30) – Girls Write Now (GWN), New York City's premier creative writing and mentoring organization for high school girls, today announced the rest of its spring series, CHAPTERS, presented in partnership with The Center for Fiction and celebrating a new year of developing New York’s best teen writers. Continuing Friday, April 23, please join us for a series of evenings, featuring Girls Write Now students and the professional writers who inspire them, at the Center for Fiction (www.centerforfiction.org), 17 East 47th Street, between Fifth and Madison. Each event will take place from 6-8PM, and admission is free and open to the public. 

CHAPTERS also features a line-up of special guest authors, curated by Maud Newton: 

Friday, April 23: Lizzie Skurnick, author of Shelf Discovery

Friday, May 21: Marie Mutsuki Mockett, author of Picking Bones from Ash

Friday, June 18: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of The Thing Around Your Neck

CHAPTERS is co-sponsored by: EILEEN FISHER, American Eagle Outfitters, glassybaby and M + E/Michael Fusco Design. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from: The National Endowment for the Arts, The New York State Council on the Arts, and The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. 

ABOUT THE GUEST AUTHORS:

Lizzie Skurnick’s (www.lizzieskurnick.com ) new book is Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading (Avon, 2009). She is columnist for Jezebel.com’s Fine Lines and has written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, NPR, The Washington Post and more.

Marie Mutsuki Mockett's (www.mariemockett.com) debut novel, Picking Bones from Ash (Graywolf, 2009), explores the struggles women face in accepting their talents, and has been praised as "a book of intelligence and heart" by Amy Tan and "ambitious" by Publishers Weekly.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (www.halfofayellowsun.com ) is the author of Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, and The Thing Around Your Neck. She has received numerous awards, including the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.

GIRLS WRITE NOW (GWN), the first and only East Coast nonprofit to combine mentoring and writing instruction within the context of all-girl programming, has, since 1998, helped nearly 3,000 underserved or at-risk girls from NYC’s public high schools develop into the next generation of writers and readers. In recent years, GWN has been profiled in The New York Times and featured on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. In November, the organization received a 2009 Coming Up Taller Award from First Lady Michelle Obama and the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, distinguishing Girls Write Now as one of the top 15 after-school arts and humanities programs in the nation.  More: www.girlswritenow.org.