NWP Radio

Tiffany D. Jackson is the New York Times Bestselling author of YA novels including the Coretta Scott King— John Steptoe New Talent Award-winning Monday’s Not Coming , the NAACP Image Award-nominated Allegedly , Let Me Hear A Rhyme , Grown , and her latest titles Blackout , White Smoke , and Santa in the City . She received her bachelor of arts in film from Howard University, her master of arts in...

Join colleagues from the Bay Area Writing Project as they learn alongside youth through a partnership with YRMedia called Teach YR . Through this partnership, teachers dig into the ways that youth media informs, mentors, and pairs with curricular design and the teaching of writing in their context and classrooms. This NWP Radio show will share inspirational media created by youth for public broadc...

K-Fai Steele is an author-illustrator who grew up in a house built in the 1700s with a printing press her father bought from a magician. She wrote and illustrated A Normal Pig and her latest book is All Eyes on Ozzy! She was a James Marshall Fellow at the University of Connecticut, a Brown Handler Writer in Residence at the San Francisco Public Library, and an Ezra Jack Keats/Kerlan Memorial Fello...

Join us for a creative Write Out broadcast led by leaders of Outdoor Afro, the nation’s leading cutting edge network that celebrates and inspires Black connections and leadership in nature. Outdoor Afro leader Leandra Taylor and National Park Ranger Alanna Smith will lead us in creating and customizing journals to use for nature and historic writing. Don’t miss this event, just in time for Write O...

Join us for a “behind the scenes” exclusive as we engage in the power of stories, storytelling, and writing with partners from the Park For Every Classroom project. Park for Every Classroom (PEC) is a National Park Service partnership program that includes a network of educators, partners, and Park Rangers that collaborate to engage communities in place-based learning. In this special Write Out br...

Carmen Oliver grew up in Manitoba, Canada, surrounded by lakes and prairie grass where she built tree forts, caught tadpoles, and sailed on homemade rafts. She is the author of the picture book series Bears Make the Best Buddies (Reading, Math, Writing, and Science) as well as the nonfiction picture book biography A Voice for the Spirit Bears: How One Boy Inspired Millions to Save a Rare Animal ,...

Varian Johnson is the author of several novels for children and young adults, including The Parker Inheritance , which won both Coretta Scott King Author Honor and Boston Globe/Horn Book Honor awards; The Great Greene Heist , an ALA Notable Children’s book and Kirkus Reviews Best Book; and the graphic novel Twins , illustrated by Shannon Wright, an NPR Best Book. Varian was born in Florence, South...

Often the story of teaching, of teachers, and of literacy is told by outsiders to education—media, social media, TV, and movies. These stories contribute to a public narrative that is too often dismissive and demeaning of teachers and of research-based practices. Teacher voices/teacher stories—the stories of those who are actually in school—matter and can help shift that narrative into one that sp...

Felicia Rose Chavez is an award-winning educator with an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Iowa. She is author of The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom and co-editor of The BreakBeat Poets Volume 4: LatiNEXT with Willie Perdomo and Jose Olivarez. Felicia’s teaching career began in Chicago, where she served as Program Director to Young Chicago Au...

What is "rhetorical problem-solving" and what does it mean to "write rhetorically"? Listen to our interview with Jennifer Fletcher , a professor of English at CSU Monterey Bay and the author of Writing Rhetorically: Fostering Responsive Thinkers and Communicators .

The original Declaration of Sentiments, the document outlining the rights that American women should be entitled to as citizens, emerged from the Seneca Falls Convention in New York in July 1848. Then in 2020, a group of women and girls in the Western, Central and the Finger Lakes regions of New York got together “to use pens and voices” to write a new declaration for the 21st century, which they...

Join the National Writing Project’s The Write Time with Kwame Mbalia , editor of Black Boy Joy , two additional contributors Varian Johnson and Julian Randall , and Washington, DC area teacher, Cosby Hunt. Black Boy Joy , released on August 3, is a book that celebrates the excellence of young Black males, their happiness, their voices, and their stories. We are excited to discuss the project with...

Join NWP Radio for an interview with Poet t.l. sanders , a poet and performance professional based in Kansas City, MO. As a Prairie Lands Writing Project Teacher-Consultant, a Missouri Writing Project Network Teacher-Consultant, a member of the National Writing Project Writers Council, a current curriculum director, and former elementary, middle, and high school English teacher (with 16 years of t...

Join the National Writing Project’s The Write Time with New York Times Best Selling author and illustrator Rachel Ignotofsky . Rachel will be interviewed by Soñia Galaviz a 5th-grade teacher and leader with the Boise State Writing Project .

Equal access to quality writing education has been a longstanding challenge in the United States and not enough has been done to move the field forward in recent years. In this episode, we visit with 826 National about their report that aims to bring writing education to the forefront of public, policy, and funding conversations by examining its current state and issuing a call to action to the fi...

Abdi Nor Iftin has been featured on various radio and TV stations sharing his life story of growing up in a country torn by civial war and immigrating to the United States in 2014. His new book Call Me American was released in 2018 and is a finalist for New England's Bookseller's Association book awards. Abdi is interviewed by author and educator Kate Kennedy. Kate taught writing at Portland High...

In this CoLab, co-author/editor Christopher R. Rogers will be joined by members of the Marginal Syllabus team for a conversation that starts with the editor’s introduction to the February 2021 edition of the journal Research in the Teaching of English . Written in the days prior to the 2020 presidential election, amidst dual public health and racial justice pandemics, the article’s brevity belies...

Joseph Bruchac is a Nulhegan Abenaki citizen and a leader among his people. He is the author of more than 120 books for children and adults, including his best-selling series, Keepers of Earth: Native American Stories and Environment Activities for Children . Joseph is interviewed by Dr. Caitlin Johnson, an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. Dr. Johnson is an English...

Do you love historical fiction? Teach American Literature? Are you a teacher-writer? Any of these would be a great reason to tune in to NWP Radio as we talk to Don Zancanella about the writing life, teaching and writing, and about his magnificent new novel Concord .

Chris Crutcher ’s years as a teacher, then director, of a K-12 alternative school in Oakland, California through the nineteen-seventies, and his subsequent twenty-odd years as a therapist specializing in child abuse and neglect, inform his thirteen novels and two collections of short stories. Chris has received a number of coveted awards, from his high school designation as “Most Likely to Plagiar...

In this CoLab, author Ebony Elizabeth Thomas is joined by colleagues Christina Cantrill, Joe Dillon, and Remi Kalir to discuss her article "‘We Always Talk About Race’: Navigating Race Talk Dilemmas in the Teaching of Literature" which was published in Research in the Teaching of English in May 2015. This article is the featured article for May 2021 in the LEARN: Marginal Syllabus and will be avai...

For National Poetry Month, NWP Radio has launched a special limited series called “The Story of a Poem” where we interviewed poets from the NWP Writers Council about their poems, their composing processes, and writers’ craft. This episode features poet and educator  George Ella Lyon .

English teachers took note when Penguin Young Readers invited #DisruptTexts to create a discussion guide for Amanda Gorman’s inauguration poem, "The Hill We Climb." But it was not surprising. Teachers who want to expand the range and diversity of literature in their classrooms have looked to the #DisruptTexts movement for inspiration and guidance. Now a widespread movement with discussions, activi...

For National Poetry Month , NWP Radio launched a special limited series called “The Story of a Poem” where we interviewed poets from the NWP Writers Council about their poems, their composing processes, and writers’ craft. This episode features Dan Zev Levinson .