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To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Writers Week, Fremd alumni from 1997 to 2017 came home to share their stories side by side with the current Fremd community.
English teachers Russell Anderson and Gina Enk invited Fremd alumni from across the country to perform their works as a way of bringing the event full circle.
“This year we had graduates come back because student periods are always the most popular periods of Writers Week,” Enk said. “We reached out to a whole bunch of grads. They flew in and drove in from all over the country, from New York, L.A., Ohio, and Chicago.”
The organization of Writers Week takes a lot of work, with English teachers being dedicated throughout the year to find suitable writers to invite.
“Any book that we come across, any poem we see, I think in the back of our minds, it’s always, ‘Is this going to be a good fit for our students from high school?’” Anderson said.
This year’s program featured a diverse array of student pieces including a heartfelt dedication to a grandparent, a eulogy to a recently-closed 7-11, and a story about an Ecuadorian mother’s journey to find her father in America. In many ways, Writers Week creates a nonjudgmental space for students to engage with the world outside the confines of the classroom. Student stories can be comedic or tragic, entertaining or thought-provoking.
For students, having a platform to tell their stories can be cathartic and freeing. Junior Keerthi Krishna discusses how presenting her piece “Thank You Lane Kim” enabled her to share her experiences with racial isolation.
“I wrote about a character from ‘Gilmore Girls’ named Lane Kim and how I relate to her and how I really saw myself in her character especially as she was a token person of color in ‘Gilmore Girls,’” Krishna said. “I felt like that represented my childhood because I grew up in [a] predominantly white town and there were literally two Indians in my elementary school.”
Community lies at the core of Writers Week. There’s a certain unspoken relationship between the performer and the audience, a kind of mutual understanding. Senior Savannah Korte, a first-time student presenter at Writers Week describes how the stage allowed her to relate to her audience, and for them to relate to her.
“I was so terrified,” Korte said. “But it’s so fun it’s just having the audience react to you. It’s connection. I feel like sometimes the world can be so lonely, and you feel like your experiences are very isolating.”
For over thirty years, Writers Week fostered a sense of community, passion, creativity and an appreciation of the arts at Fremd. Every year, students are reminded of the power that writing allows, through sharing their experiences and living in others’. Writers Week, more than being a writing festival, is a celebration of life.
For any students on the fence about presenting at Writers Week:
“I think everyone should try it at least once in their life,” Korte said.
