Resources:
Sarah Rigg's Feature Article: LGBTQ+ youth writers get publication and mentorship opportunities through new Ypsi workshop series
Beyond the Binary: Stories That Shift Culture
Transcription:
Lee Van Roth: You're listening to 89.1 WEMU. I'm Lee Van Roth, and this is On the Ground Ypsi. The Ypsi-based Dzanc House, an arts center connected to the nonprofit publisher Dzanc Books, is launching a bold new youth publishing series this fall, "Beyond the Binary: Stories that Shift Culture." This free, student-led program is designed to amplify LGBTQ-plus youth voices through workshops, mentorship, and publication opportunities, with the goal of challenging and expanding cultural narratives. Today, I'm here with Charlene Choi, the Director of Development, Programs, and Communications for Dzanc House, to learn a little bit more about how this series came to life, the role youth has played in shaping it, and what Dzanc hopes to build for the community throughout these workshops. Hi, Charlene! Thanks so much for being here today!
Charlene Choi: Hi! Thank you so much for having me, Lee!
Lee Van Roth: So, can you walk us through how this idea for "Beyond the Binary" kind of came together at Dzanc House? What did Dzanc want to further add to the community through a workshop like this?
Charlene Choi: Well, we've been offering youth writing programming for quite a while. And, actually in the last year, we launched two programs. One is "Roots and Wings Elementary," and the other is "Empowered High School." And really, these are workshops that are just really dedicated to giving young people the time and space to read, write, engage with literature, which, oddly, becomes inaccessible when actually language, art, literature, and creativity is an innate skill that we are all born with and sort of what happens to our young minds when we give the space and time to fall into a great story or book or moment of hearing someone say something that we felt but never quite had the time to say. And so, in those workshops, generatively, we were working with high school students from all walks, from all over the community, from all different identities and backgrounds, and some of the work that was produced in those workshop hours was so remarkable, in fact, that we had to record it. And when we started to record, we did these things called "micro-podcasts," where we sort of allowed the students to give each other interviews with mentors, with established authors, with each other, and pick a poem that--an original work--that they had just kind of like done in that hour, or something they've been working on for a while. And it was just such a remarkable moment when we would hear the work that was generated. And so, a lot of us, our interns, our writers, our instructors, our volunteers, we kind of all got really excited about what we were sharing and wanted to share it. And as we started to share with our community and with our students and with other local broadcasters in the area, it became really obvious that there was an opportunity for some showcases for LGBTQ-plus work. Two of our students wrote some such remarkable work that it really resonated with some of the older writers who identified as LGBTQ-plus in that community. And so, we just kind of cobbled it together, and we thought, "You know? Why don't we showcase this work?" So, our intern, who also identifies as "they," we kind of created this short version of highlighting the poems and work that came.
Lee Van Roth: Well, and I think it's really interesting, too. You mentioned you're doing, this is obviously not Dzanc's first foray into youth programming, like you mentioned, not even arts programming and creative programming in general, there's been a lot coming out of Dzanc House, particularly over the summer. And I'm really interested in how....I know that the conversations in program development and things like that, a lot of the feedback and information that you get from the participants in these programs tends to shape the way these programs look. And now having these students that are former program members or have gone through these workshops are now back as mentors and continuing this relationship with Dzanc, how does that full-circle moment kind of feel in regards to Dzanc's mission?
Charlene Choi: Well, I feel like if I can just harp on this sort of reminder of what literature and arts can and will do, which is that power from seeing how the mind unfolds on the page and hearing about how loss or isolation or fear or loneliness or bullying or war or grief or anything and everything innately that as humans affects us, the sort of immense joys and pains of being, how those are shared in our workshops, in our exhibits, in the work that we try to cultivate and the communities that we tried to encourage access and resource to is, I guess, building that environment for people to have access to great books and to be able to be published by our award-winning press, to work with Flying Objects Youth Writing Initiative, which is the curriculum and the model that has been like a decade across the country these models to sort of provide that two-hour time and space or hour and a half for parents to drop off their kids or high schoolers to come in and just immediately get to engage and work collaboratively and independently. And I think our gallery is also doing incredible work. And so, what happened is that Glenn Galvin and Reese Taylor, who were two of our high school students, they have graduated, and they're just an example of two of the poems that they wrote very incredible work in this workshop and sort of inspired this new, safe, consistent space for LGBTQ-plus youth to come and have a dedicated Sunday salon series to just be able to work, collaborate, engage with literature and the arts and with one another.
Lee Van Roth: This is WEMU's On the Ground Ypsi. I'm talking with Charlene Choi, the Director of Development, Programs, and Communications for the Ypsilanti nonprofit arts center, Dzanc House. Charlene, you talked a little bit about what the workshops are, planned to look like and what the participants--youth participants--are going to experience throughout them. What other opportunities are these participants going to have on behalf of Dzanc House to share their work beyond these workshops? Once the series has concluded, how is Dzanc going to continue uplifting and supporting this cohort of writers?
Charlene Choi: Yeah. So, that's a great question, and I'm so glad you asked me, because part of our workshop model is to do something called "integrated project learning," which is to kind of reinforce each series has a dedicated project. So, that's part of the access to resources is making participants hopefully walk away with a tangible thing, be it a published piece in print, online or a podcast segment or a voice feature. An opportunity to be showcased at all of our readings that by a true, award-winning press that is Dzanc Books and Dzanc House. For example, in the fall when we launched our youth program, we had a joint public reading, and it was kind of immense--the amount of people who showed up to hear elementary kids and high school kids read together. And the thing that happened in the room was these really young eight and nine-year-olds who probably had never read in a microphone their poetry to a giant room of high schoolers just were received with this enormous wealth of cheer. And it was also like point up their fingers "quiet" while they were reading. I just think that that sort of sense of, "Oh, I made this thing that seemed like nothing, but it came from my thought and my mind and my focus" and to be able to kind of have the confidence to share that. And of course, they were also published. The high schoolers walked away with a published zine, and the elementary published postcard art, which was really beautiful. And so, there's opportunity for both print multimedia, and also, there is opportunities for paid internships and mentorship and the opportunity to come back and volunteer and get to learn the ropes of segment producing or editorial work or even potentially exhibit gallery curation assistance. There's all kinds of little areas where youth can come and hopefully get a little more hands-on experience.
Lee Van Roth: Well, Charlene, thank you so much for chatting with me today! It's been really exciting to see Dzanc House grow and evolve the way that it has over the summer. And I know we're very much looking forward to what's coming next!
Charlene Choi: Thank you so much, Lee, for having me! We're really excited! Come by any time!
Lee Van Roth: For more information on today's topic and links to the full article, visit our website at WEMU.org. On the Ground Ypsi is brought to you in partnership with Concentrate Media. I'm Lee Van Roth, and this is your community NPR station, 89.1 WEMU-FM, Ypsilanti. Celebrating 60 years of broadcasting at Eastern Michigan University!
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