Young Writers Shine at Dixon Summer Center

Thirteen enthusiastic young adults showed off their literary prowess last week at the grand finale celebration of the Dixon Summer Center for Creative Writing at Washington College, held at the College’s Norman James Theatre.

The auditorium in William Smith Hall at Washington College was packed with families, friends and those interested in the creative writing summer center.

The Dixon Summer Center represents a 46 year commitment at the State level to provide summer education for gifted and talented students in the 7-through 12^th grades and is co-sponsored by Dick Goodall’s Dixon Valve and Coupling, Washington College and Maryland State Department of Education.

Dick Goodall introduced the portfolio reading event while emphasizing his commitment to supporting summer programs for talented youth. “The written word is incredibly important,” he said. “I want to see them take these writing skills and use them for the betterment of others.”

Thirteen students attended this year’s nine day workshop to sharpen their writing skills during intense 8am-3pm one on one sessions with instructors Anelle Tumminello and Shannon Kirby and in group studies.

Tumminello, a Baltimore native who spent many childhood summers on the Eastern Shore, recently retired from teaching English and running curriculum and assessments for all 12 high schools in Anne Arundel county, has been teaching at the Dixon Summer Center for all three of its years.

“I’ve been so immersed in the workshops my grocery list rhymes,” she joked. “This has been an amazing two-weeks watching these kids actually reading and discovering. There’s a quote I love from a 16th Century nun, Marie de l’Incarnation, who wrote, “Writing teaches us our mysteries.” I find that to be true during this writing and teaching experience,” she said.

Each student worked with narrative, poetic and argumentative forms of literary expression, complete with Socratic seminars on poetry each day. The workshop environment also encouraged supportive peer criticism and suggestions about each other’s work.

Students completed a portfolio of poems, creative arguments with topics ranging from hunger to the championing of gay rights, along with short stories and fictional vignettes. Samples of their work were printed and bound into a 2014 Student Work Portfolio to be used for the reading and made available to friends and family.

After the readings, each young writer invited guests to their “literary stations,” a poster depicting themes, aphorisms grammatical rules and descriptions of the literary genres they embraced and wanted to share. Guests went from station to station for a mini-talk about each writer’s particular literary interests.

One young writer, Sarah Westrick, mused impressively about the popular YA novel, The Giver, a dystopian saga about a utopian world where “sameness” is the byproduct of eliminating humans of pain and suffering along with the rich spectrum of emotions and any memory of the past, including war, death and starvation.

Westrick nimbly referred to another great sci-fi piece, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, mentioning how the books used the future as a stage to provide warnings for the present.

Each of the students, animated, engaging and articulate spoke warmly about their two-week experience at the summer writing center, and while some were young enough to look forward to returning next year, others were sad that they would be moving on.

Each writer had standout samples to read. Here’s one from Hannah E. Davis conjuring up the strange beauty of a jelly fish.

 

Dance of the Jelly Fish

 

The water filled umbrella

Transclucent

in hues of softest pink

Like a tutu on a little girl at the barre

The pinnacle of the head

Glistening, transparent

Dancing through the water,

a ballerina on her debut

The frilled scalloped edges

lift gracefully

Only then to fall slowly into place

Long pink feelers

are the ribbons of ballet slippers

Twirling down a dancer’s calf

Fluted frills fly

like tissue paper on Christmas day

Pink flames emitting a blinding

white light

Ethereal,

An alien space

Beads, flames, feathers of light,

A train of silk

As long as a spiral of stars

An ocean

A galaxy

An eternity

A dance

 

 

You will just have to attend next year’s program to see and hear how talented these young writers are becoming.