Hunts Point students have a lot to say.

That is what HPAC, through partnership with Kenyon College Young Writers Program, is trying to convey through the work of five local young adults: Stephen Paez, Mercedes Carrasco, Darleny Urena, Nicole Taveras and Jane Francisco.
HPAC encouraged the five students to apply to the intensive Kenyon College Young Writer’s Program in Gambier, OH. All five were awarded scholarships to attend the two-week workshop.

The five students spent two weeks at Kenyon College learning how to express themselves with a pen and paper. During the Young Writers program, students spent about eight hours a day in creative writing workshops. The students experienced the college lifestyle for the first time and interacted with people from all over the country and the globe.
The program selects teachers, many who have been returning for years with a passion for writing, who instruct high-school students on how to become better poets, thinkers and writers. Classrooms are very active and lively, with participation greatly encouraged. The students critique each others’ work, and leave the program with hundreds of pages of ideas.

And the ideas they take home with them are just waiting to burst out of their personal notebooks, and into the public.
The five young adults from Hunts Point will demonstrate what they learned at Kenyon and their voices through their work in progress, The Five Points. This literary magazine, featuring an assortment of hard news, creative writing, personal profiles and more, will showcase the work of five young Hunts Point students.

By mid-August, all five will have authored five different “points” about Hunts Point. Each student will have an opportunity to show people what they think of one of the poorest congressional districts in the country, which is also a place with one of the strongest senses of community spirit.