Student participates in university creative writing program
WAIMEA — On June 25, Parker School student Kyra Matsuda traveled to Iowa City, Iowa, to take part in “Between the Lines,” a creative writing and cultural exchange program for promising young writers.
Joined by students from Russia, Arabic-speaking countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa, and the United States, she will complete the program on July 9.
“Through world literature classes, writing workshops and a variety of seminars — including digital storytelling and slam poetry — students explore how literature and writing can lead to empathy, dialogue and a shared understanding of the human condition,” said Cate Dicharry, the BTL coordinator.
Matsuda is one of 32 students selected for this session of BTL, which brings together young writers from 10 U.S. states and foreign countries. During the camp, she will participate in intensive writing workshops and seminars, attend literary events and have an opportunity to give a public reading of her work.
She will work closely with established writers including Alisa Ganieva, a writer, literary critic and editor originally from Dagestan, Russian Federation; Dora Malech, a poet, visual artist and faculty member at Johns Hopkins University; and Egyptian-Canadian novelist and playwright Karim Alrawi, whose novel “Book of Sands” (2015) won the HarperCollins/UBC Best New Fiction Prize.
The International Writing Program has hosted more than 1,400 writers from more than 140 countries since 1967. BTL is a part of IWP’s programming and is sponsored through grant funds provided by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. State Department.