Christy Williams, a senior at Ypsilanti High School, participated in the 2005 Write-Link Community Connections program.

Tradell Hawkins interviews Drexia McGuire about her life for an essay during the creative writing session of the week-long Write-Link program.

Joe Williams of Detroit Public Television talks to students about how he wrote and published his life story during the creative writing session of Write-Link 2005.

Special Projects > Write-Link Community Connections Project

The Write-Link program, launched in 2003, is a community-focused summer writing project that gives Detroit Metro area junior and senior high school students a chance to explore the four main writing fields of journalism, public relations, technical communication and creative writing, while interacting with the community. This five-day writing program, which relies on grant funding to remain free to students, is held at Eastern Michigan University (EMU). It involves English department faculty and outside writing professionals who teach students the history, trends, and various forms of the writing disciplines, each of which is presented a different day of the week. The students learn about and apply writing techniques to community issues, such as race relations and intergenerational communications.

What sets Write-Link apart from other pre-professional writing programs is community participation. The students who are involved in Write-Link not only gain valuable writing skills encouraging them toward higher education, but they also come away from the program with a heightened awareness for community issues and a greater sense of how the writing professions can affect these issues. For example, in past sessions, students have interviewed one another about their perceptions of race and developed feature articles, essays and poems, which were posted on Detroit Public Television’s (DPTV) Web site as part of their “Matters of Race” program. Most recently, students interviewed senior citizens at the City of Ypsilanti Senior Citizen Center and developed feature articles and essays that were featured in a published book. Some of the writings were again posted on DPTV’s Web site as part of their community programs link.

A description of the Write-Link program and students’ work is featured in such publications as EMU’s Community On-Line (.pdf), a newsletter published by EMU's Office of University Relations.

For more information about how to participate in or help support Write-Link Community Connections, please contact Melissa Motschall at mmotschal@emich.edu, or call 734.487.0147.

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