Teen Writers’ Symposium 2024
Presented in partnership with the CSU Department of English.
Teen Writers Symposium Returns May 4th!
May 4th, 2024
11:30am-3:30pm
Doors open at 11 for check in.
@ CSU’s Mather Mansion
2605 Euclid Ave., Cleveland OH 44115
Grades 6-12
$10
Scholarships available
Walk ins welcome!
Featuring guest writers Siaara Freeman, Jason Harris, Quartez Harris, Helen Maynard, Kortney Morrow, Susan Petrone, and Marie Vibbert!
Join Lake Erie Ink at Mather Mansion to meet and learn from local writers! This year’s event will feature a meet and greet with the authors, a writer’s panel, and workshops led by the authors and LEI staff. Lunch will be provided.
Event Schedule
11:30am-12pm
Lunch + meet and greet with writers.
12-12:20pm
Writers’ Panel
12:25-1:30pm
Workshop 1
1:35-1:45
Break
1:50-2:55pm
Workshop 2
3-3:30pm
Closing reading by participants, to share pieces from workshops.
Register Now!
Guest Writer Bios
Siaara Freeman
Siaara Freeman is from Cleveland Ohio, where she is the current Poet Laureate for Cleveland Heights and University Heights. She is also the unofficial Lake Erie Siren. She is a 2023 Room in the House fellow with Karmau Theater, a 2022 Catapult fellow with Cleveland Public Theater. In 2021 Siaara filmed a commercial for the Cleveland Museum of Art She is a 2021 Premier Playwright fellow recipient with Cleveland Public theater. She is a 2020 WateringHole Manuscript fellow, 2018 Poetry Foundation incubator fellow and a four time nominee for the pushcart prize. Her work appears in The Journal, Josephine Quarterly, Cleveland Magazine and elsewhere. She has had multiple poems go viral and has toured both nationally and internationally..Her first full length manuscript Urbanshee is available with Button Poetry and is a 2023 finalist for the Audre Lorde Award with The Publishing Triangle as well as a 2023 Silver award winner for the Benjamin Franklin IPBA award for Poetry. When she is not working she is likely by a lake, thinking of Toni Morrison & talking to ghosts. She is growing her Afro so tall, God uses it as a microphone and speaks through her.
Jason Harris
Jason Harris is a Black American who serves as Editor-in-Chief for Gordon Square Review. Jason’s writing has appeared in Hobart, Barren Magazine, the Cleveland Review of Books, and more. Most recently, Jason served as a co-editor to the forthcoming nature poetry anthology called Light Enters the Grove: Exploring Cuyahoga Valley National Park Through Poetry (published by Kent State University Press).
Quartez Harris
Residing in Cleveland, Ohio, Quartez Harris was once a second-grade teacher in Cleveland Public City Schools. Harris is the Ohio Poetry Association’s 2021 Poet of the Year. Harris is the author of We Made It To School Alive, a full-length collection of poems published by Twelve Arts Press, and Nothing, But Skin, a poetry collection published in 2014 by Writing Knights Press. He is the first recipient of the Barbara Smith Writer-In-Resident at Twelve Literary Arts and a 2020 Baldwin House Fellow. His poetry and ideas have been featured in The Plain Dealer, Ideastream, and City Club of Cleveland. Harris is represented by McKinnon Literary Agency. His works in progress are two picture books and a middle-aged novel.
Helen Maynard
Broadcast Journalist with extensive experience working in local and network television news, sports, and talk radio. Convention and Special Event planning expert. Multimedia storyteller skilled in, News and Promotional Writing, Avid, Final Cut Pro Editing, Video composition, Social Media content. Mentor, trainer, student advocate. Love to help non-profits – always a supporter of the community, social services and our youth. Political junkie. Lifelong chocoholic.
Kortney Morrow
Kortney Morrow is a poet creating from her studio in Cleveland, Ohio. Her work has received support from 68to05, The Academy of American Poets, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Prairie Schooner, Tin House, and Transition Magazine. She has her MFA in Poetry from The Ohio State University. In 2023, she was awarded the Walter Rumsey Marvin Grant Award from the Ohioana Library Association for her essay “The Care & Keeping of You.” When she’s not writing, she’s co-running Studio Reciprocity—a consulting collective that helps organizations and individuals heal, re-imagine, and transform.
Susan Petrone
Susan Petrone is the author of The Musical Mozinskis (2024), The Heebie-Jeebie Girl (2020,) The Super Ladies (2018), Throw Like a Woman (2015), and A Body at Rest (2009). Her short fiction has been published by Glimmer Train, Muse, Conclave, Cleveland Review, and Whiskey Island. Her short story, “Monster Jones Wants to Creep You Out” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her non-fiction has appeared in CoolCleveland, Belt magazine, and ESPN.com. She is a recipient of an Ohio Arts Council
Individual Excellence Award and was one of the co-founders and first board president of Literary Cleveland.
Marie Vibbert
2023 Nebula Award Nominee Marie Vibbert’s short stories have appeared in top magazines like Nature, Amazing Stories, and Analog Science Fiction. She’s sold over 80 stories and been long-listed for the Hugo and British Science Fiction Award. Her latest novel, The Gods Awoke, is about a telepathic being with amnesia trying to figure out who or what she is. By day she is a computer programmer at Case Western Reserve University.
Thank you to the Teen Writers’ Symposium partners and sponsors!