Writers Week will take place the week immediately following spring break, March 28-31.

On Monday, poetry will be the focus, with several slam poets scheduled to present. On Tuesday, Ian Doescher and Micaela Blei highlight unique approaches to storytelling. Wednesday will be an interactive day with Write Club competitions, where students are able to actually vote for the winner right there in the auditorium. Write Club is the world’s greatest competitive reading series. Thursday is centered around storytelling through the realm of music and film, with presentations from Chris Mills and Ron Lazzaretti.

Writers Week is a recent tradition at LHS; 2016 marks the sixth year of its existence. Anne Malecki, a now retired LHS teacher, started the tradition, but LHS was not the first school to do something like this. Many other schools have successfully initiated similar events. Upon her retirement, Mr. Craig Schmidt, an English teacher, took over the coordinating responsibilities along with fellow English teachers, Mrs. Dyan Naslund, Mrs. Mary Kate Schoenbeck, and Mrs. Karen LeMaistre.

These teachers work for over a year to plan and organize the best group of presenters they can find. They must juggle a variety of factors, including cost, availability, variety, and overall quality of the writers’ presentations.

“We have to make sure that they’d actually be a good public speaker and that they’d be entertaining; sometimes you can tell, and sometimes you can’t,” explained Mr. Schmidt.

Writers Week also provides an opportunity for LHS students to actually present their own work in front of their peers. Each period of the day begins with a few student presenters as a sort of precursor to the professional presenters. All students were encouraged to submit their own original work to one of the teacher coordinators during first semester in order to be considered for presentation.

“It’s definitely rewarding when you see that other people are actually impacted by your work,” remarked Katie Prinz, an LHS senior and a second-year student presenter.

Much to many students’ dismay, the purpose of Writers Week is not just to give teachers and students alike an easy first week back from break to mourn our beach vacation memories; it actually serves to educate.

“We want [students] to see that writing can be something that is enjoyable that can really make an impact or an impression. And they should take a little bit more care with how they do their own writing,” said Mr. Schmidt.

Link to Writers Week 2016 Schedule