WITS staff have been hard at work this summer compiling and editing our annual anthology featuring the very best writing from the previous year’s WITS program. We are excited to announce that the title of this year’s anthology is In the Sliver of a Second, drawn from a poem written by Hutch School student Abby Rodriguez. The poem presents us with an invocation. In a garden, with the sun growing in light and heat, the speaker “see[s] something move.” It is her shadow, navigating this garden without her, and the shadow and the speaker call to each other. Through calling her own name, the speaker reunites with her shadow—all in the sliver of a second.

 

In the Sliver of a Second seems fitting for a collection of young WITS writers. It at once describes an infinitesimal moment in time and embodies the infinite. In the 2011-12 school year, 24 writers-in-residence taught poetry, fiction, comics, memoir, and playwriting to 5,520 students in the greater Puget Sound region. In a typical residency, each student is taught once a week for a semester, or every day for just two weeks. These days pass in the blink of an eye, the sliver of a second. Yet In that short time, students are inspired to write—and do write—extremely well. These writings sprang from the sliver of an idea, a memory, a moment, a feeling but, through many seconds and minutes and hours of hard work, these young writers composed a moment that will last forever.

 

The poems, stories, memoirs, comics, and plays in the collection are both timeless and very much of this moment. They explore identity, overcome adversity, and shrug off time in their imaginative leaps. They take us on a journey to the Star Cluster 18-0 and place us inside a droplet of rain. We travel with them inside a mind, into a queen’s room, to a busy street in Vietnam. We are led to explore the bottom of the ocean and to witness the introduction of ocean to land. The stories depict breadlines, hard times, deafness, and the ends of worlds. The authors explore their selves, and their shadow-selves.

 

Join us on Sunday, September 30 at 5:00pm at Benaroya’s Recital Hall for a free celebration of the arrival of the book. Many of the young authors appearing in the book will read their work, and then we will all celebrate with a book-signing sweetened by Cupcake Royale. Thanks to Ryan Molenkamp for cover art and Golden Lasso for a beautiful design!