Write Rhode Island was co-created by School One and Goat Hill as an annual short fiction competition open to all Rhode Island students grades 7-12. Each Fall, this flagship program offers students an opportunity to participate in workshops with a large creative community of writers throughout the state. Students write short fiction with a Rhode Island theme and, in December, submit it to Write Rhode Island. Winners are selected by our judges in February. Winners published in a high-quality print anthology and honored at an awards ceremony at the Newport Art Museum.

For more information about Write Rhode Island’s fiction competition, visit the website.

Our Lives Now

We are all living in an extraordinary moment. Our normal routines have been dramatically altered. Most of us are at home. Schools are all online. Our Lives Now is a nonfiction program that asks the young people of our state to reflect on their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic and tell their own stories. What are you seeing and doing? How have these changes affected your school and family life? What moments have you observed in the world around you?

Student submissions to Our Lives Now are published on the Write Rhode Island Facebook page, website, and included in the RICovidArchive.org, a digital archive co-managed by the Providence Public Library and Rhode Island Historical Society.

Write Rhode Island’s Our Lives Now nonfiction program is a co-creation of School One and local authors Hester Kaplan and Taylor Polites.

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School One

School One is a small, independent high school in Providence that provides an arts-intensive, college preparatory education to an array of students from across Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts.

From our annual flagship creative writing contest, to after-school and Saturday classes, to an intensive summer program, School One offers students the opportunity to find their voice and explore their creativity, while strengthening their writing skills.

For more information about School One programs and admissions, visit http://www.school-one.org.

Hester Kaplan

Hester Kaplan is the author of several novels and short story collections, including The Edge of Marriage, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Prize for Short Fiction. She is the 2020 recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is on the faculty of Lesley University’s MFA Program in Creative Writing and is a co-founder of Goat Hill writers.

Taylor M. Polites

Taylor M. Polites is a Rhode Island-based writer, educator, and researcher. His rst novel, The Rebel’s Wife, was published by Simon & Schuster and his work has appeared in anthologies as well as arts and news publications. He is a partner in Goat Hill and teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Maslow Family Creative Writing MFA program at Wilkes University.

For more information, visit his website at taylormpolites.com.