Congrats to the 2022 Teen Writers Fellows

We began the new year with double the amount of Teen Fellow applications we received last year! We’re so impressed by the talented teen writers who submitted writing and choosing only eight fellows to join us for our 2022 program was incredibly difficult. 

We’re thrilled to offer a spot to eight talented teens, four of whom are pictured here. This fellowship is an incredible opportunity for these local sophomores and juniors to hone their skills in a dedicated community of peers.

Our 2021 Teen Fellowship class was absolutely remarkable.

One of our fellows was one of three runners-up to be the Youth Poet Laureate for Virginia. Another one of our fellows won the Poetry Contest at this year’s Hampton Roads Writers Conference. All eight of them created lasting friendships, contributed positively to The Muse Community, and improved tremendously as writers. 

 

 

 

Beyond the fellowship, this was a big year for our Youth Program. 

We developed a robust Youth Outreach series with Tidewater Art Services, bringing literary classes into teen boy groups homes, started a new event series with Slover called Thought Radio to promote kids’ well-being, hosted five published authors to speak to our teen students, changed our curriculum to include a clear growth trajectory, created an online community for our students through Discord, hosted several readings, published a literary journal titled Just A Phase featuring the voices of teenagers from eleven different high schools across the Tidewater Area, and more!

In 2022, we want to continue our strong partnerships with local organizations and continue to build cohorts of ambitious teen writers.  

We leave you with this note on how one parent described how the Muse changed her son’s work: 

“[I liked] the collaborative and truly supportive nature of the fellowship. Our son shared with us how each writer or poet brought their own style and feedback to the sessions. We saw his writing become more and more mature and elegant.”