Girls Write Now Interview with Asari Beale

How schools with writers-in-residence can transform students’ lives

Teachers & Writers Collaborative (T&W) Executive Director Asari Beale recently sat down with Girls Write Now to discuss how schools with writers-in-residence can transform students’ lives. To learn more about the benefits of writers-in-residence programs and hear from Beale about the work being done at T&W, you can read the transcript below or listen to the full interview here.

 

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Vani Kura [VK]: Hello, my name is Vani Kura. Today, I am hosting a conversation as a follow-up to the LitNYS Convening held at the Girls Right Now offices in September 2024. In this series, we are speaking to leaders at culturally important literary organizations about the work they do and what it means for literature at large. I am happy to introduce my guest, Asari Beale, who is the executive director at Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Asari, thank you for joining me.

Asari Beale [AB]: It’s a pleasure to be here with you.

VK: Thank you. So to get started, could you tell me a little bit about Teachers & Writers Collaborative and how you first got involved with them?

AB: I’m here representing Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Teachers & Writers is one of the first organizations in the country to do writers-in-the-schools programs. And that’s still very much at the heart of what we do today. Basically, we send writers of all kinds—poets, journalists, playwrights—into public schools to mentor young people and teach them techniques and strategies for doing their own creative writing. We want to really encourage young people with the confidence that they can be writers no matter where life takes them, to inspire them with a lifelong love of reading and writing. So that’s our main program. We also, in New York State, reach youth through the New York State Youth Poet Laureate program and the New York State Poetry Out Loud program. And then finally, we connect with teachers through our publications. We publish a number of books, and then we also publish Teachers & Writers Magazine, which is a free, online resource with lesson plans, interviews, essays, all to support the teaching of creative writing. Our main mission is to increase access to the literary arts and uplift youth voices.

VK: Wow, that’s an incredible mission. And I want to know a little bit more about your personal journey into literary leadership. Were you coming into it from a teacher’s perspective, a writer’s perspective, something else?

AB: Yeah, I like to tell the story because I feel like my work at Teachers & Writers is such a great summary and outcome of my journey leading up to it. Basically, one of my first real jobs when I was maybe a year out of college, I started working for a nonprofit called Committee for Hispanic Children and Families. And that really gave me a taste for nonprofit work, work that’s really mission driven and in service, especially in service to youth. I did step away from the nonprofit world to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction Writing. And so I spent maybe about seven, eight years after I got my MFA teaching at City University schools at Brooklyn College and Hunter College. But then I still had that desire to go into the nonprofit field and work with others in a nonprofit setting. So from teaching I worked with an organization called Reach Out and Read of Greater New York, which promotes early childhood literacy through doctors.

Again, it was like the service work with youth at the focus. And then I worked for a community-based nonprofit, in the neighborhood that I live in of East Harlem, called LSA Family Health Service. And they, again, did a lot of supportive work for children and families. A friend told me about the opportunity that came up with Teachers & Writers Collaborative, and I just thought, well, this is a perfect mix of my love for the literary arts and writing, and it combines that with the experience and the joy that I get out of doing collaborative work in a nonprofit setting. So it was just a perfect marriage of those two sides of my life.

VK: That’s really beautiful and such an incredible testament, as you were saying, to the work that Teachers & Writers is doing. Another question I had is about the challenges that many literary organizations and nonprofits are facing. And I just want to know, what are some of the challenges that people might not think about or know about when it comes to actually running a nonprofit?

AB: I think one challenge that people may know about is just funding financial challenges. I think if anybody’s familiar with the way nonprofits work, it may not be a surprise to them. But, you know, it’s the way nonprofits work, we’re not like a company that raises money and then somebody gets to enjoy any profit that’s made, right? Everything that we raise goes back into our programs. And often it’s not enough, right? Often we’re really working hard to try to get funding to pay everybody. And hopefully if we can, we try to expand our work knowing that there are so many people that we can reach with our program, right? So I think that’s a big challenge. I think a big challenge of working for any nonprofit because of that is the potential for burnout. I think it tends to attract people who really have a lot of heart and really believe in what they’re doing. And also sometimes it can lead to a situation where there’s just not a lot of work to do and not a lot of people to do the work. But because we’re so committed to the work, it could lead us to a situation where we can burn out. So one of the things that I really try to encourage at Teachers & Writers is for people to take the time that they need to take care of themselves and to rest when needed, to honor their life as writers, because everybody on our staff is also a writer. And so we all also have our creative life outside of the nine to five. So I think it’s really important to have this kind of work-life balance, and I try to respect that for everybody at Teachers & Writers and encourage that kind of culture.

VK: Yeah, I think the piece about rest and repair is so important, especially for people who are incredibly passionate. I think it’s very easy for us to run headlong, headfirst into our work and not really consider what that does to our bodies and our minds. So I really appreciated hearing that.

AB: Yeah, if we’re gonna be advocates, we have to make sure that we are not running on a deficit, you know, on an energy deficit. If we wanna have energy for everything that we do, we need to make sure that we’re rested and taken care of.

VK: Yeah, and to continue on that, the theme for this LitNYS conference was actually “rupture, readiness, and repair strategies for strengthening.” So I wanted to know from you, what is one strategy for strengthening your community, literary or otherwise?

AB: That’s a good question. I think one strategy is bringing people together in community to learn from each other. So one of the things that we do at Teachers & Writers is we have these artists meetings, and that’s an opportunity for peer to peer learning. So that somebody who’s doing something really interesting or exciting in their program, in their Teachers & Writers program, can share that with other teaching artists and teachers so that they can then take that into their classrooms. I think that that kind of community exchange is really vital, not only because it shares information and shares best practices, but because we’re all stronger as a community.

And I really believe in the importance of community. I believe that there’s so much good work to be done. None of us literary arts organizations are in competition with each other. I think we all work better when we share our resources and our knowledge together in community.

VK: Absolutely. And I feel like those conversations are very fruitful, too, because I think one thing that’s really important about community is having that diversity of voices and having people come in with things that maybe people in the room have never heard of before. Or if they’ve heard of it, they aren’t really sure how it applies to them or their classroom. So, yeah, I’d love to hear just a little bit from you. Have there been any really impactful takeaways you’ve had from seeing the work that have come out of these meetings or any of the work that’s happening at Teachers & Writers?

AB: Yeah, I mean, It’s not uncommon for me to get teary-eyed at events. Because it never fails to move me when I see a young person that’s been moved by writing through the literary arts. So for example, one of the programs that we do is Poetry Out Loud. That is a national program, and we host it in New York State. And that’s a program where students memorize and recite poems. And it’s always so powerful to hear these recitations because I know that what I’m hearing is a young person who has really brought the poem inside of themselves, you know, and found a way that this word that somebody else has written has become personally meaningful to them. And it’s become their poem in a sense. The poem now lives in them. And it’s just so powerful to witness. We have these celebrations for our writers-in-the-schools programs where the young people get a booklet that’s an anthology of their poetry and the writing of other young people in their class. So they’re published authors, and they get to celebrate that. And then they read their own work. And again, it’s just so moving the way young people are able to write with so much openness and vulnerability and honesty. Their words are really quite powerful.

VK: I 100% agree. Working at Girls Right Now, we also put out an anthology of our young writers’ work, and it is the best thing I do all year. I love getting to hear the work that they produce. Sometimes we’ll have readings where they’ll read out loud, but even just the work on the written page they’re covering everything. You know, there’s young people who are writing about climate change and they’re writing about family dynamics, and they’re writing about the things that are really important to them. They’re writing love poems. I think they’re writing just the full breadth of the human experience. And it’s so incredible to see that, you know, for as many fears as people have about the new generations and the future, they’re doing such incredible things and thinking so deeply about the world around them.

AB: Absolutely. Yeah, totally. It really gives me hope for the future every time that I see the results of our programs, because I see here are young people who really care, they’re listening, and they’re having the courage to speak. And that’s what we need.

VK: Yes, definitely. So earlier we talked about the challenge of funding, how literary nonprofits are often doing a lot with very little. And I want to envision a future in which Teachers & Writers gets more funding. Let’s say more people become invested in supporting literary nonprofits. What are your biggest dreams for the types of outcomes that you would expect to see if Teachers & Writers got the funding they needed to do all the things that you all want to do?

AB: Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, I think that there are private schools where there’s a writer-in-residence and those schools see the value of having a poet or a writer-in-residence that is giving mentorship to their students. I would love to see that for all of the public schools in New York City.

When we go into a public school, you know, we’re also not able to be there all year round. So I just think it would be amazing if we can have this really deep partnership with a school where a Teachers & Writers poet-in-residence works with all of the classes of all the students in that school. And what that will do is help students build confidence around their ability as communicators, build confidence in their ability to express themselves both orally and verbally, to collaborate with each other, give them tools for processing, and we also know that it has outcomes that help impact their other academic classes. So when students are more engaged because they’re involved in an art program like ours, that means that they do better in all parts of their school life, right? So yeah, I would love to see a writer-in-residence in every New York City public school and give students an opportunity to see a writer is not somebody who lived in a different century or is from a different part of the world or a different social bracket or something like that. A writer can be somebody like me and I’m a writer. Not me, Asari, but the student. But also me. Yes. And also me.

VK: Definitely. And I think that’s such an amazing vision. Just even thinking about the idea of there being a writer-in-residence in every school. It sounds like such an ideal world. And I really loved the point you made about the fact that this isn’t just about writing. It’s not just about art. Having these writers-in-residence, having these students doing these programs, it’s going to affect every other aspect of their life, their engagement in their academics, their self-esteem. And so it’s not just an individual good, it’s a societal good. It’s something that hopefully will impact the community at large as well.

AB: Absolutely. I mean, I’ve been thinking a lot about that in the context of civic engagement and media literacy, right? And so I think that the work that we’re doing, having students do really close readings and analytical readings, and to have discussions about something, about a text, and then to write something that’s inspired by that text, that is the kind of thinking that I think is necessary for strong civic engagement, right? We want to have a society in which people are thoughtful readers, thoughtful consumers of media. And that’s just another thing that I think that our writing programs can do.

VK: 100%. Because I think especially now with the media landscape, it’s so oversaturated. We have so much information coming in. And I even find myself as an adult who went to college and has all of these skills, sometimes I will see something on social media, and I’ll immediately go start talking to someone about it. And they’re like, have you actually really looked into this? Have you really thought about what this means? Or have you fact-checked this? And sometimes I have to remind myself like, wow, no, I didn’t. And I need to sit down, and I need to look at the facts. And I think if we can get young people at a much younger age thinking critically like that, it’s going to pay off in huge dividends just for our society, and as you were saying it for civic education and engagement as well.

AB: Yeah, I really do believe that. And yes, I could go on and on. I mean, there are studies that show this link between people who read novels and their ability to have empathy with others who are different from them. Just there’s so many ways that the literary arts can help us navigate life in general. I think it’s a worthwhile investment in our society. It should not be secondary, right? Literary arts really are essential.

VK: Yes, definitely. So that we can wrap up this lovely conversation, how can people get involved with Teachers & Writers? How can they contribute to the work that you’re doing and generally support your mission?

AB: Well, one way to get involved if somebody is a teacher, an educator of any kind that tries to bring creative writing into their teaching practice, they should definitely check out teachersandwritersmagazine.org. That’s our magazine. It is free, it doesn’t have any kind of paywall, and you’ll have access to this treasure trove of resources to do creative writing in your classrooms. In addition to that, if somebody is interested in supporting Teachers & Writers or interested in bringing a Teachers & Writers program to their school, I suggest going to our main organization website, which is twc.org. And there they can learn more. And if they’d like to donate to help sponsor a program or support our work, there’s a link right at the top of the top right-hand corner that they can click on.

VK: Wonderful. Well, Asari, thank you so much for joining me. And thank you for sharing about the work that you do at Teachers & Writers.

AB: Oh, it’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

VK: Thank you for listening to Lunch with LitNYS, a production of Girls Right Now. To learn more about how you can get involved with Teachers & Writers Collaborative, go to twc.org. Head to litnys.org to find other great organizations from around New York. This episode was edited by me, Vani Kura. It was produced by Kenna McCafferty and me. See you next time.