Autobiography By Emma Zwickel As an avid reader of Harry Potter in kindergarten, Emma was a child suffering from a mid-life crisis. So she resorted to poetry. Her pen and later her keyboard, Began to spit out words at random, Transforming a whirlwind of verbally undesirable thoughts, Into well crafted written word. Inspiring one of her most recent poems, Is the B ook of Qualities. In contrast to her other tales of lost and longing, “Love’s Waltz” personifies, The complex emotions, Many of our hearts know all too well. Life cannot be purely designed, With just one element. Three is not enough. But for now, “Love, Loss, and Longing”, Will remain a preview, Of experiences yet to come. 50
Students participated in four 90-minute workshops where we shared personal narratives, and wrote creative fiction pieces and poetry. We shared our writings with our group members and offered constructive feedback. In a very short time, we became a real community of writers! This collection of writing highlights the talents of our students, their creativity, and their dedication to their craft. We are incredibly proud of their accomplishments. 51
About the Authors Ali Baskind h as been teaching English at Cornwall High School for seven years, but each day feels like a new adventure. She often turns to writing, especially poetry, when she wants to process, reflect, and discover. She is grateful to be a part of such an amazing writing club, and she can’t wait to embark on this writing journey again next year! Her piece was inspired by Mary Ann Larson’s, “A Random Autobiography.” Nina Creta is a 17 year-old writer. She uses her writing to express herself. She does this through poetry, short stories or other forms of literature. She loves to find new ways in her writing to express herself, and organize her feelings. To Nina, art and literature are the same thing as if pen offers the same amount of creativity as a paintbrush. She’s loved English since she was a young child and could read on her own without her parents assistance. Since then she’s wanted to one day write a book of her own or publish some of her poetry. Her favorite form of poetry being black out poetry, which she’s been especially fond of since she found out about it her sophomore year. Overall Nina is extremely excited to be apart of the English Writing club and has absorbed lots of inspiration and new knowledge provided. Isabella Crow is sixteen and a recent arrival to New York from Michigan. She’s been writing since she was little, and now primarily writes free-verse poetry and spoken word. She’s been a poetry slam city finalist and has written a one-act play that has won her former school’s award for “Best Short Fiction”. This particular poem was partially inspired by Mitski’s “Last Words of a Shooting Star”. Faith Darling grew up in Cornwall, New York with her five brothers, John, Luke, Brett, Keith, and Paul. Her favorite color is pink and ever since she was younger, she always loved being creative. Or at least attempting to be. She only recently discovered that she had a knack for writing, after she realized that she could sit and pour paragraphs out onto a page for hours without getting bored. Outside of writing, Faith also is on the varsity swim team at her school, takes pointe ballet, iceskates, and participates in the Orchestra at her school. She is currently still unsure of what her future plans are, but after writing this, she knows that writing isn’t out of the question. Aidan Hoff He was given life on an island soon to be scarred by death from the sky. He does not remember much from living in Manhattan other than an obscured moment in Central Park. He struggled with speech, but the therapist did point out his mastery of his “k’s”. He remembers tee-ball and line-drives to the stomach. He was a handful to say the least, but his mother and father still loved him so much. He remembers his trains phase, but he is still in his astronaut phase. He stands by the river that he has spent years rowing on to admire the beautiful life he has been given, before his education takes him away to different beauties. 52
Connor Hurst is a student form the class of 2021. The excerpt from above is the epilogue of his pet project, Omega Rising, that he may or may not ever finish and writes out of order (hence why there’s an epilogue when he has only written two chapters as of March 14th, 2019). He enjoys fantasy, and has an unhealthy obsession with dragons, medieval era combat, and all things nerdy. You can often find him staring off into space thinking about whether or not penguins have knees (they do), that embarrassing thing he said ten years ago, or absolutely nothing (if you happen to find him doing this, please bring him back to reality. He can stay in that state for hours at a time). Martine Louis is currently a senior at Cornwall Central High School. She enjoys playing volleyball with her team where she was one the captains. On her free time she enjoys diving into the alternate universe within books were the possibilities are never ending. She expresses herself through her use of poems whether it be love, pain and oppression, but not only for herself she hopes to reach the many others that can relate. James McGill i s a senior at Cornwall Central HS. He believes the human mind is beautiful and loves to write stories surrounding its intricacies. Jessica McGuire: This piece mentions a collection of memories that that are the first that pop into my mind when I look back on my childhood. Writing this made me realize how much I have grown and how much time has passed even though it doesn't seem like it. The inspiration to write this came from the “Random Autobiography” and the neighborhood map. Being a part of the writing club helped me to find my voice as a writer and I wrote something that I am genuinely proud of. Alexandra Raposo is a 15-year-old sophomore who developed a love for writing in her years at CCHS. All kinds of art - fine art, music, cinema, literature - are very important to her and inspire a lot of her writing. Dr. Lee is no exception. Jeanne Rose is an English teacher at CCHS. She was born and raised in Cornwall and chose Cornwall as the place to raise her own family. She has loved participating in the Writer’s workshop and considers herself fortunate to be among the talented writers here in the high school. Her personal narrative was inspired by The Neighborhood Map activity Lizzy Walklet is a Junior at CCHS. She grew up in Cornwall, but was born in Brooklyn. She usually plays sports, but finds peace in art, music, and writing. She hopes she can continue writing in the future. Her piece was somewhat inspired by “A Random Autobiography.” Jessica Wu thinks her piece speaks for itself, so she’ll skip the biography. Inspired by the autobiography writing exercise they did during the writing workshop, Jessica wrote this piece mainly for her blog, Femme Feitale, which you can find at www.femmefeitale.com. Kobe Zagon: I am an 11th grader. I joined the writing club because I found that I had no time to write, but I really enjoyed doing so. Writing always allowed me an outlet and a way to forget about the stress that I always felt from the pressure of school. I just always loved developing new 53
characters and seeing where their stories went and exploring the different paths that I could take with them. This piece was inspired by many of the writing seeds that we did in the club, and actually was a combination of three. One was where we were tasked with characterizing an adjective, and mine happened to be imagination. The second being forming a character around a random object- that object being a pint brush for me. Finally, the third was an exercise where we picked a picture and just simply wrote about it, and I picked a picture of times square with a clock in the middle of it. I feel like I got lucky, and was able to create a connection between all three writing seeds with my character, and felt like it was a character worth further exploration. Emma Zwickel hopes to continue in her poetry journey. Whether that will be through career or hobby, that will be determined at a later date. For now, she will simply write. 54
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