Dedicated to cultivating writing and storytelling skills, The Writers’ Club inspires and teaches young writers how to express their incredible ideas through lots of different literary possibilities. With hundreds of stories thought of every day, only Writers’ Club brings those daydreams to life with words.
Every Wednesday after school, the nearly 56 enrolled students line up outside of Room 131 in the English hall for the Writers’ Club weekly meeting. Writer’s Club is run by Ryan Sirisena, Jeffery Chen, and Namish Gogna while being supervised by Ms. Dos Santos. Each week, there is a lesson and activity for the members to learn from and use in their studies. For example, in a recent meeting, writers were given a lesson on fanfiction. They learnt what it’s used for, why we write it, what good it can do for the author, the types of fanfiction, and how to write it. Afterwards, in groups, writers were tasked to make a character, something they were taught to do in a previous meeting! In a surprising twist, the groups had to team up with another group, and fuse both characters in one story! Some ended very sad, some exciting, and others very silly.
Since October of 2023, Jeffery Chen, a grade 11 student, has been a co-executive for Writer’s Club, alongside Ryan Sirisena and Namish Gogna. Contrary to what we previously thought, Writer’s Club has been up and running since the 2022/2023 school year– Chen and his co-executives simply pushed the club into the spotlight, during the 2023/2024 Club Fair.
After the club fair, the member count spiked at a massive thirty-six people attending the meetings. But the member count fell to seventeen active members over time. Chen mentions that he would be quite happy for new members to join.
After being abruptly interrupted by the PA system, Chen went on to inform us of their ongoing event: a writer’s competition! “North Park Writer’s Club has been graciously granted the opportunity by Ms. Boutros for the first ever North Park Writing Competition for the 2023 to 2024 school year. It’s a competition that hopes to promote creative writing and academic literature for the student body in a friendly and competitive environment so writers can hone and improve their skills,” he explained. The stories can range anywhere from 1000 words to 2000 words, and the theme is “The Butterfly Effect”. Submissions end April 21st, 11:59 PM, so now is a perfect time to start! And to top it all off, the 1st place prize is a $50 Indigo gift card.
Chen thinks that collaborations could be on the table for them, specifically with Newspaper Club! Although more than anything, he’d like to reach out to more people, saying, “A lot of people don’t know that the club exists.”
Chen recalls that the funniest moment he’s had in Writer’s Club was when the writers wrote stories on the second-ever meeting of the 2023/2024 year. A student wrote an entire story while rhyming words with “banban,” and it was hilarious.
Writer’s Club accepts new members with open arms, regardless of experience, every Wednesday afternoon. So it’s never too late to jump in, especially with the ongoing competition!
THE NORTH STAR 