The Third Annual Ladies Write Now Reading

Girls Write Now and Teachers & Writers Present

The Third Annual Ladies Write Now Reading

Join Us Thursday, April 30, 7-9 PM

Please join us on Thursday, April 30, 7-9 PM, for The Third Annual Ladies Write Now Reading, a joint presentation of Girls Write Now, which has been mentoring the next generation of women writers since 1998, and Teachers & Writers Collaborative, one of the oldest and most innovative writers-in-the schools programs in the country. Three Ladies Write Now participants will be joined by three Teachers & Writers teaching artists as our organizations celebrate the power of women writers and creativity as a communal enterprise.

The reading will take place at the shared home of Girls Write Now and Teachers & Writers, 520 8th Avenue, between 36th and 37th Streets, 20th floor. We warmly invite mentors to come out to support their fellow mentors, and friends and family of the Girls Write Now and Teachers & Writers communities to share in this inspiring event.

Meet This Year's Readers:

Kerri Davidson (pictured above, right) is the assistant manager of course handbook content in the publishing division of Practising Law Institute. In this capacity, she works on layout and design of legal course handbooks and indexes. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Otterbein College, with a dual major in English/writing and dance/performance. Kerri loves to write poetry and has participated in poetry readings in the city as part of the Westside Poetry Workshop. She is an active volunteer for New York Cares and is excited to begin her third season with Girls Write Now.

Rachel DeWoskin completed her master's degree in poetry at Boston University in 2000, after spending five years in China as a corporate consultant and soap opera actress. Her first book, Foreign Babes in Beijing, was published by Norton in 2005. She has published work in Ploughshares, Seneca Review, the New Delta Review, Nerve Magazine, The Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, The Ann Arbor Observer, Drumvoices Revue, Teachers & Writers magazine, and Wanderlust, an anthology by Thundersmouth Press. She won an American Academy of Poets Award in 2000 and a Grolier Poetry Prize in 2002. She is the Associate Poetry Editor at Agni magazine.

Born in the peninsular paradise of Florida, Morayo Faleyimu felt her first snowflake at age 18, during her freshman winter at New York University. Initially enthralled, she quickly realized that 1) snow is cold and 2) snow is wet. She and winter have been mortal enemies ever since. When not plotting ways to circumvent winter's annual visit, Morayo glares at her many notebooks, willing an award-winning story to appear. She was recently accepted in Teach for America and will become an elementary school teacher in her hometown of Miami beginning this August. Her current writing projects range from the geologically inspired poem "Plate Techtonics" to the humorous personal essay "My Time on Earth with Krishnamacharya." 

Jane LeCroy has been performing original poetry and songs since 1992. She has performed as part of the Life Ensemble with such jazz greats as Andy Bempky, Arnie Lawrence, Reggie Workman, and Steve Neil. Jane graduated from Eugene Lang College of The New School University, where she studied with poets and educators such as Sekou Sundiata, Kurtis Lamkin, Christian McEwen, and others. In addition to teaching through Teachers & Writers Collaborative, Jane has taught writing at Eugene Lang College, run Susan Straub’s Read To Me Program, and has also taught writing and literature to home-school groups. Jane performs regularly in New York City and tours the United States. She has held performance residencies in New York City at The Internet Cafe, Pianos, and The Bowery Poetry Club and in New Jersey at Liberty Science Center. Jane was part of the electronica project Somnaut with David Last and the rock band Spook Engine and with the emo-core band Vitapup. Currently, she fronts the band TRANSMITTING, featuring multi-instrumentalist Tom Abbs and beat-boxer Kid Lucky.

Writer and arts educator Maureen McNeil is currently the director of education at the Anne Frank Center USA, where she designs programs on literacy and tolerance and collaborates with Young Playwrights, the Vineyard Theatre, Behind the Book, and PEN American Center. Prior to this, she was the director of the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. She also created a writing program for 3rd through 8th graders in upstate New York, taught writing in New York City schools, and worked in museum book publishing. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Mothering Magazine, Home Planet News, The Literary Review, Rhino, the Woodstock Journal, Oxalis, and Black Bear Review, among other journals.  Last spring she published a collection, Red Hook Stories, about the Brooklyn neighborhood in the 1980s. Maureen is working on two novels and enjoying her first year with Girls Write Now.

Gangsta-goddess, ghetto-geisha Liza Jessie Peterson (pictured above, left) is a classically trained alumnus of the National Shakespeare Conservatory and has been a student of Susan Batson, coach to the stars, since 1994. Liza has appeared in TV shows, feature films, and theatrical productions. Her one-woman show, The Peculiar Patriot, is a multimedia political satire, a roller-coaster ride through the underbelly of America’s penal system. It is also a love story told by Betsy Laquanda Ross, a self-proclaimed Prison Industry Pin-Up who visits New York state and federal prisons to boost inmate morale. Betsy represents the millions who regularly sojourn to penitentiaries, subjecting themselves to long bus rides and humiliating security checks to visit incarcerated loved ones. Liza has been teaching in prisons for more than a decade and to date has toured The Peculiar Patriot in penitentiaries across the country in more than 50 performances.