Based on her extraordinary talents, Ward Melville High School junior Maya Peña-Lobel was selected to participate in the New England Young Writers’ Conference, a selective program for aspiring writers held at the Bread Loaf campus of Middlebury College in the Green Mountains of Vermont, this past spring.

The New England Young Writers’ Conference is an annual, four-day, writing-focused workshop for high school students from around the country. The days are filled with writing seminars, workshops, readings and opportunities to meet other young writers. 

During the conference, Maya was part of a small workshop group where she was instructed by a published author and worked on her fiction piece, along with her peers. She also attended poetry craft classes and went to daily readings and performances, as well as many other fun activities.

To attend, a student must first be nominated by a teacher and their school. Maya was nominated by Dr. Kelso (her WMHS teacher from a 10th-grade elective course in Writing Fiction and Poetry) and by Dr. Alan Baum, WMHS principal. Second, the student must submit a writing sample. Maya submitted her poem, “The Human Experience” and a short story written in the style of magical realism. Admission to the conference is based on the quality of writing in the submission, which is evaluated by a panel of judges that includes professional writers.