Tuesday, November 27
MWC is participating in this year’s #GivingTuesday on November 27 to kick off our year-end membership drive/fundraising campaign to support our 2019 general operations and programming schedule, which includes our annual Writers’ Conference, Children’s Literature Festival, YEW Internship Program and Middle School Camp, and many more events and opportunities.
We asked our Marketing Specialist and former YEW Intern Sarah Elgatian to share a few words about her experience with MWC and why she thinks programs like YEW are important to young students developing their reading, writing, and critical thinking skills:
“I always wanted to be a writer. I think most people fancy themselves to be writers but most people didn’t have the opportunities I did as a teen. I was in the 2007 and 2008 Young Emerging Writers Summer Internship Program which, for the first time, told me that I could be taken seriously as a writer. I learned workshopping, I learned craft, I learned that having other writers around was really important. I learned that if I sat down and took this thing seriously, I could be successful.
I moved from the Quad Cities for college and returned recently. In my return, I remembered why writers aren’t supposed to be solitary. It’s a terrible stereotype–having other writers around, having a writing community, increases a writer’s productivity.
I’ve calculated my own increase in productivity in the year I’ve been back in the Midwest. For every event I go to (a reading, a workshop, a mixer–it doesn’t matter), I am three times as productive in the following month. I am three times more productive in page count and in time spent on my projects.
Not only am I more productive, but I’m more successful. Since January 1 of this year, I’ve been published six times, I won a writing contest, I’ve read at three readings, I became a board member for a local youth writing program, I started working for the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program, I won an honorable mention from the Iowa Writers’ House Bi-Cultural Fellowship, and one of my essays was nominated for Best Of The Web.
But I’m not unique. There are around 15 interns for YEW each year. The alumni from my years in YEW are doing amazing things. One is working on movies at Dreamworks, one is a professor publishing in important journals, there are a couple teachers, folks publishing books. We wouldn’t have gotten where we are in our writing careers if it weren’t for MWC.”
Please consider making a contribution to MWC between #GivingTuesday and the end of the year as part of your year-end giving, or as a gift to family or friends who are writers and/or lovers of the written word–all donations $25 and up will receive 1-year memberships, or membership renewals, to MWC.
Please contact Ryan Collins at 309-732-7330 or via email for more information about how you can help. You can make a donation to MWC via the PayPal button below, or over the phone at the number listed above.