Teen Media Awards

On Wednesday, August 14, 2013, Library staff and community members gathered to honor the creative works of Pittsburgh teens at the 3rd annual Teen Media Awards! Winners of the Ralph Munn Creative Writing Contest and TheLabs “Labsy” Awards shared their writing and creative arts with a packed theater!

Teen Media Awards 2013 @ Carnegie Museum of Art Theater

Keynote speaker Shioban Vivian started off the evening with an inspiring (and comical) talk about following your dreams and always striving to be creative and hard working. See below for winners and photos from this very special night in Pittsburgh!

Keynote Speaker: Siobhan Vivian

Ralph Munn Creative Writing Contest

Poetry
1st Place: “A or a” by Rose Swanson
2nd Place: “Hospitalia” by Agatha Monasterios – Ramirez

Short Prose
1st Place: “Bishop and Wash” by Lana Meyer
2nd Place: “Veteran Advice” by Kristen Grom

Screen Writing
1st Place: “cHaos before hArmony” by Justen Turner-Thorne
2nd Place: “On the End of Every Fork” by Tyler Hudson

Labsy Awards

Photography
1st Place: “Tanzania” by Olivia Muse
Honorable Mentions: “Flagpole” by Morgan Wable-Keene, “Downtown” by Raven

Design
1st Place: “Chronology Poster” by Morgan Wable-Keene
Honorable Mentions: “Submission 2” by Sarah Watkins, “Drawing 1” by Lexi Hall

Music/Audio
1st Place: “Short Jam” by David Watkins
Honorable Mentions: “Midas Theme” by Morgan Wable-Keene

Maker’s Studio
1st Place: “Space Intruder” by Morgan Wable-Keene
Honorable Mentions: “Speaker” by Ceu Gomez Faulk, “Glam-o-Tron” by Joshalyn and Cassidy

Video
1st Place: “Hat Chasers” by Simone Traub, Julian Edwards, Ashae Shaw, Umoja Shaw, Trayvon Ramsey, Jayla Ramsey, and Caliyha Hogan
Honorable Mentions: “Midas” by Cody, Morgan, Sarah, Philppa, Pascal, Kayla, and Pei Pei, “Electric Twist” by Kate Philipps, Hannah Philipps, Tessa Twyman, and Mae Twyman

For more photos from the Teen Media Awards click here or here or here.

The 2014 Teen Media Awards are just around the corner. If you are a budding writer, photographer, filmmaker, designer, creative-extraordinaire in Pittsburgh or Allegheny County, get started on your work today!

Looks for details on the Ralph Munn Creative Writing Contest in spring 2014 and visit The Labs at Main, East Liberty, Southside, and Allegheny to start working on your designs, photography, and more!

Ralph Munn Creative Writing Programs

The Ralph Munn Creative Writing Contest is an annual contest for high school students (grades 9-12) in Allegheny County.  Submit a piece of creative writing (short prose, poetry, or screenwriting) by the May 1^st deadline for a chance to win a first place prize of $250 and to be considered for publication!  Click here to learn more.

If you need inspiration, attend one of the 22 Ralph Munn Creative Writing Workshops offered this month at our branches.  If you live near CLP-Lawrenceville, join us on April 8th from 4:30-5:30 for our Creative Writing Workshop.  If you need even more inspiration, check out these creative writing titles!

Happy writing!

Amy, CLP-Lawrencevile

Writerly Writing Habits

If you’ve ever obsessed over an unfinished story or spent hours trying to perfect a poem or English class essay, you know how tricky and tedious the writing process can be. To master the craft, many professional writers develop their own quirky working strategies to help them stay productive and keep their ideas flowing.  Readers have always been curious about the physical process behind great works of literature. When it comes to the development of your own unique writing habits, you might want to take some tips from the pros.

Some writers work during very specific hours, and others simply wait until inspiration strikes. Stephen King gives himself a strict daily output requirement—ten pages every day, even on holidays. Then there are writers like James Joyce, author of mind-boggling 20^th century novels like Ulysses and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, who often worked for hours just to complete a sentence or two. John Green (who wrote An Abundance of Katherines, Looking for Alaska, and other awesome YA books) has confessed that he ends up deleting about 90% of everything he writes.

Ernest Hemingway at his standing desk.

Do you sit at a desk when you write? Ernest Hemingway preferred to stand. He perched his typewriter on top of a high shelf and eventually designed a standing desk for himself. Then there was Truman Capote, the eccentric writer of the infamous true crime novel In Cold Blood, who said “I am a completely horizontal author. I can’t think unless I’m lying down.” He preferred to work from bed.

Some writers need peace and quiet; others can’t think without music playing. When Junot Diaz is working on a particularly tricky passage, he locks himself in the bathroom and sits on the edge of the bathtub. Author Jonathan Franzen believes the Internet is the most productivity-killing distraction of all, so he writes on an old laptop with no wireless card and has actually destroyed his Ethernet port so he will never be tempted to connect to the web. When J.K. Rowling was finishing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, she checked into a hotel room so she could write for days without distraction.

Nowadays, most writers use a computer, though some still prefer to draft their work on paper, from college-ruled notebooks to multi-colored moleskines. Vladimir Nabokov wrote his novels in fragments on index cards, in no. 2 pencil. He liked to shuffle the cards around to decide what order worked best. Legendary Beat generation writer Jack Kerouac glued pages and pages of paper together into long winding scrolls and fed them through his typewriter so he never had to stop writing to change the paper. And don’t forget the necessary refreshments. Coffee, tea, Code Red Mountain Dew, beef jerky…whatever keeps the words flowing.

Maybe you only write between the hours of 4:00 and 5:00 o’clock in the morning, in a special writing fort, on Post-It notes, with your eyes closed, while spinning around in circles. No matter the method, it’s the work that counts! Don’t forget to submit your original poetry, short fiction, or creative blog post to the Ralph Munn Creative Writing Contest. The deadline is May 7^th, so there’s still plenty of time to hone your writing process and get to work. And be sure to check out one of the teen writing workshops happening at various CLP locations this month—you can find all the dates & times here.

Happy writing!

POW: My new favorite poem about Nancy Drew

Whilst perusing Flavorwire’s list of the best new poets of 2011 I took a look at the work of Nancy Reddy and was blown away.  She’s written a poem about Nancy Drew that goes into the legendary sleuth’s life using the usual associations:

You’re Nancy Drew and you drive a blue coupe.

You drive fast. Your mother is dead.

You’re solving mysteries that stump the cops.

You sass them back. You’re flip-haired and eagle-eyed.

And gradually  turns into something darker:

You’re on vacation in the snow-stunned Alps

when the innkeeper comes to you for help.

He’s getting threats from a dark-wigged woman

who claims that she’s your twin. You’re snowed in.

He tells you all the town’s most handsome men

go missing after dark. You wear a borrowed mink

and sleuth by candlelight. You smell Ned’s soap.

She’s a false wall. She’s a trap door.

(from anti-)

photo by flickr user Marxchivist

Of course, re-making an idea and using literary allusion is nothing new in poetry or in other creative endeavors (anyone want to make a bet on when The Hunger Games will be remade?) Here’s a list of 50 movie remakes coming up, posted in January. Reddy’s poem is an example of how it can be electrifying to read what you remember as reinterpreted in someone else’s brain.

Another poetic term that’s related to this is looking at a piece of art and writing about it. It’s called ekphrasis, and it’s really fun.  The next time you’re wandering around the Carnegie Museum of Art, try your hand at some ekphrastic poetry.  Take the atmosphere of your favorite book and turn it into your own thing–part of your personal  imaginative world.

After all, next month is National Poetry Month and time to submit to the annual Ralph Munn Creative Writing Contest. Check your local library branch for upcoming writing workshops!

Here are some books to check out if you prefer your poetry in physical rather than digital form:

Heart to heart : new poems inspired by twentieth-century American art / edited by Jan Greenberg.

Mirror, Mirror: A book of reversible verse / Marilyn Singer

A collection of short poems which, when reversed, provide new perspectives on the fairy tale characters they feature.

Side by side : new poems inspired by art from around the world / edited by Jan Greenberg

Winter Read-a-Thon

If you like to read and would like to help raise some money for the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, you might want to register for the Winter Read-a-Thon.  The Winter Read-a-Thon kicked off on January 8th and runs through February 19th. 

Register for the Winter Read-a-Thon at any Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh location. For a $5 registration fee, you will receive a clock bookmark to help you track how much time you’ve read, plus a pledge form and calendar of related library events.  You can also register online. 

Tell your friends and family about the Library and how much you love to read – and how their pledges will help keep Pittsburgh well-supplied with books, magazines, audiobooks and other reading material.  Track how much time you spend reading between now and February 19, 2011. The more you read, the more money you raise!

So, what’s on my Reading Log so far?

I had selected a few poems to read for Saturday’s Family Read-Aloud that was held at CLP–Mt. Washington to kick off the Winter Read-a-Thon.  One of the poems was written by Alexandra Melvin, a finalist for the 2010 Ralph Munn Creative Writing Contest.

THE COOKIE

The oven beeps

The scent of caramelizing sugar permeates the air

The door opens and steam wafts out

A puddle of brown dough

Starts to cool on the tray

I just can’t wait

I pick one up

Still piping hot

Break it in half

Melted chocolate oozes out

I take a bite

The warm cookie melts in my mouth

Sending my taste buds on a journey

Bringing me back to my younger days of

Watching my mother pull a tray out of the oven

As I sit on the counter

Feet dangling above the floor

Eyes bright with anticipation

Waiting eagerly

For my own bite of happiness

Alexandra Melvin

Read more great poetry along with short stories and creative non-fiction in the Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2010.  All of the poems, short stories and non-fiction essays were written by high school students from Allegheny County. 

I’ve also spent some time reading  The Story of Brutus by Casey Anderson.

From Chapter 8 “Fathers and Sons”:

“You only get one chance to make a first impression, but when it comes to a grizzly bear, you’d better hope that it is a good one.  I have been with several people during their first grizzly encounter, and the moment is always exhilarating and life-changing.  To walk on common ground with an animal who is both noble and regal, and who can kill you in seconds, is not only very humbling but makes you realize how wonderful and wild the world is.  It makes you feel alive.”  p. 61

So, what’s on your Reading Log?

~Marian