Over the holiday weekend nearly 300 writers and readers gathered to celebrate the work of Girls Write Now at the New York Society for Ethical Culture. The event was headlined by Judy Blundell, the 2008 National Book Award Winner for Young People’s Literature for What I Saw and How I Lied.
Founded in 1998, the New York City-based group pairs women writers with female high school students in a special writing mentoring program. The group’s holiday fundraising goal is $30,000, and they have raised $27,000 with two weeks left in the campaign. Contributions came from Min Jin Lee (Free Food for Millionaires), Hannah Tinti (The Good Thief), Jami Attenberg (The Kept Man), Bryan Keefer (All The President’s Spin), Lila Zemborain (Mauve Sea-Orchids), Melissa Walker (the “Violet” series of young adult novels), Tayari Jones (The Untelling), Janice Erlbaum (Have You Found Her), and actress Anne Hathaway.
Novelist Ruiyan Xu has mentored young writers for three years at Girls Write Now, and said that all the readers reflected “great maturity and command” in their prose, stressing that she loved “seeing all the pats on the back and secret smiles between mentors and mentees, seeing the affection and trust between all these people, most of whom were strangers to one another just five months ago.” St. Martin’s Press will publish Xu’s debut novel, The Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai, in 2010.