Public Interaction

Some activities of the NWP of Acadiana are open to or even directed towards the general public. Recognizing that our responsibilities involve more than classroom tasks, the Teacher Consultants have devised several ways of working with non-academic groups. Some of those projects are the following:

• “Yeah! You Write!” is a two week summer writing institute for children in grades 4 - 8, with assistance from students in grades 9 - 12. It is housed at a local school and taught by two AWP Teacher Consultants, who have directed it since its inception eight years ago. The students pay tuition to attend, but full funding is provided for free lunch for the students. The children write in response to various prompts and stimuli, including dance and creative movement, art work, storytellers, and nature walks. They produce, at the end, an anthology of their stories, poems, plays, and drawings.
• “Yeah, You Write, Too!” was begun in the summer of 2003. It is held on the campus of Episcopal School of Acadiana and is attended primarily by children from Iberia Parish.
• AWP also manages a Young Writers Camp funded by the Lafayette Parish School Board. It operates in much the same way the tuition driven camps run, but children are not required to pay to attend.
• Each year AWP participates in the Deep South Writers Conference by presenting a two-hour showcase of the writing of Teacher Consultants. This event is open to the public.
• When the featured presenter at the Festival of Writers, held every other year, is attractive to the general public, an invitation to writers outside of Acadiana Writing Project teachers is extended. For example, when novelist Tim O’Brien gave a half-day workshop in 1996, almost 100 people from Lafayette and surrounding communities were in attendance.