Lauren Hilger
(2002)
How would you characterize the influence of your YWW experience in your life?
YWW provided the first opportunity for me to introduce myself to others as a poet. As a sixteen-year-old, I was treated as a real writer, not someone who wanted to be one when she grew up. I’m grateful to have been affirmed in that way, even before I’d begun. Without it feeling like work, and along with all my friends, I was able to learn and practice form, performance, and collaboration.
The workshop setting at YWW became a model, a standard of respect and inquiry that I’ve attempted to recreate as a teacher and co-facilitator of my own creative writing workshop in NY.
I remember that first summer I attended both YWW and cheerleading camp. Needless to say, YWW provided a different kind of confidence. It was a crucial support and acknowledgment of my drive to be a writer. Also, taking the “African Dance” and “How to Check the Oil of your Car” mini-courses have stayed with me.
What’s the best advice you can give a Young Writer (in general or in your specific genre)?
Take notes. Always be taking notes, even if you are teased for always taking notes. Everywhere you go, take notice. Type up your notes at the end of the day and realize they weren’t long enough. Take longer notes. Pay attention and write into what you wish could happen, what you want people to really know.
What do you find yourself most often reading or listening to lately and why?
Sylvia Plath, Frank O’Hara, John Berryman. You end up memorizing them, and then you can recite “Lady Lazarus” at any slight prompting.
The soundtrack to my work is very American standard — Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, et al. I’m a romantic. I love how earnest those songs feel to me.
Also reading Spinoza at the moment.