Category: Press

June 10, 2011 By ERIK PIEPENBURG In the week leading up to the Tony Awards on June 12, ArtsBeat is asking several New Yorkers who are not Tony voters to pick their favorite shows, actors and designers in The New York Times’s interactive Tonys ballot. Today s ballot comes from Jenny Richards, a 12-year-old who…

May 25, 2011 By Clarissa Pharr Grier Montgomery has had quite an interesting few weeks. Besides the excitement of the looming summer vacation and his upcoming 13th birthday, the seventh grader has just become an award-winning playwright. This means that amid the usual challenges of homework and junior high, Grier has had to contend with…

April 28, 2011 For the first time in 88 years, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards came to the Washington metropolitan area on Friday, April 15 to acknowledge work by local students. The awards are administered nationally by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers and locally by the new regional affiliate, Writopia Lab, with…

April 18, 2011 Regional winners of the Scholastic Writing Awards On Thursday, April 14th, 122 teen writers from Greater Washington — 19 of whom are from Alexandria, were honored at the Rosslyn Spectrum Theatre as regional winners in the Scholastic Writing Awards, the country’s largest, longest-running, and most prestigious writing competition for teens. 14 local…

April 13, 2011 Teddy Becker-Jacob speaks quickly and voluminously about writing, hinting at an obvious passion for his craft. He describes a recent play he has writtenabout a middle-aged man, frustrated with his lot in lifein abstract terms that are reminiscent of a young Samuel Beckett or Edward Albee. Although his eloquence is an obvious…

Febuary 10, 2011 By Raven Snook We’ve written about Writopia Lab before we highlighted the spot as a great place for after-school classes just last year. Launched by seasoned journalist and Upper West Side mom Rebecca Wallace-Segall back in 2007, the nonprofit runs creative writing programs for kids ages 8 to 18 in Manhattan and,…

August 2010

April 28, 2010 Cornwall Senior Wins National Writing Award Writopia student Lena Beckenstein was congratulated in the “>Cornwall-on-Hudson News for her accomplishments in receiving a 2010 Scholastic Art & Writing Gold Medal Award and a Creativity and Citizenship Award. Congratulations, Lena!

March 18, 2013 EDUCATION A Case for More Creative Writing—and Less Standardized Testing By Rebecca Wallace-Segall In this op-ed, Writopia founder Rebecca Wallace-Segall shares why we must create more safe spaces for kids to write. Writopia Lab gives kids the change to express themselves through creative writing. (Photo c/o Writopia Lab) Each week last month,…

March 29, 2013 Program Nurtures Young Writers Children have rich imaginations and they use it to dream up their own stories and plays. Guided by professional writers and playwrights from a group called Writopia Lab, dozens of children around the United States, from New York City to Washington and Los Angeles – are creating new…