Young Writers Project (YWP) is an independent nonprofit that began in 2006 in Burlington, VT, with a mission to inspire, mentor, publish, and promote young writers and artists. All programming is free and revolves around the YWP website, youngwritersproject.org, where teens create and connect with each other, receive mentoring and support, and experience the joy of being published.
Join us for a day of poetry and with Joanne McNeil Hayes. Growing up in a Chicago suburb, Joanne McNeil Hayes wrote poems about mid-western life before moving to southern Vermont. Her poems have been published in Plum, ENOUGH, Crosswinds, and Valley and Beyond. She has three collections: I am the Prairie; We begin in fragrant fields; and Riding out the Risk: A Conversation with Poet and Painter.
Neil Shepard lives half the year in Johnson, Vermont, and half in New York City, where he teaches at Poets House. An award-winning poet who has published nine books of poetry, most recently, The Book of Failures (Madville Publishing, January 2024). His previous books include How It Is: Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry, 2018) and Vermont Poets and Their Craft (Editor, Green Writers Press, 2019).
GennaRose Nethercott is the author of a novel, Thistlefoot, a Vermont Book Award winning short story collection, Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart, and a book-length poem, The Lumberjack’s Dove, which was selected by Louise Glück as a winner of the National Poetry Series. A writer and folklorist alike, she helps create the podcast Lore, and she tours nationally and internationally performing strange tales (sometimes with puppets in tow). She lives in the woodlands of Vermont, beside an old cemetery.
Margaret Draft is a poet based in Bennington, Vermont. Winner of the Vermont Book Award for Poetry and Emerging Artist Award in Literature from the St. Botolph Club Foundation, Margaret has also been awarded the Ethel Olin Corbin Prize and fellowships from The Frost Place for their Conference on Poetry. Her poetry has appeared in Radar Poetry, Southern Humanities Review, Vermont Almanac, and on Poetry Daily. Margaret’s debut collection of poetry, Nowhere Was a Lake, was published by Four Way Books in 2024. It was subsequently featured by the New York Public Library as a poetry collection worth reading.
Mary Elder Jacobsen is the author of Stonechat (2024), her debut collection of poetry, winner of a Silver Award in The Book Awards at IPNE. An editor, illustrator, community volunteer, former hands-on-nature tutor, and Coordinator of the Words Out Loud reading series held in tandem with Art at the Kent in Calais, Vermont, Jacobsen holds a BA in Art from Goucher College and graduate degrees from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins and UNC-Greensboro. Her poems have appeared widely in print, online, and on the air. She lives in Calais on a dirt road surrounded by water, woods, and meadows.
White, disabled, and genderqueer, Eli Clare lives near Lake Champlain where he writes and proudly claims a penchant for rabble-rousing. He has written two books of essays-- Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation and the award-winning Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure--and a collection of poetry, The Marrow’s Telling: Words in Motion. His newest book, a mixed genre volume titled Unfurl: Survivals, Sorrows, and Dreaming, was released in September 2025.
Our seasonal “Words in the Woods” program allows Vermonters and visitors to enjoy our state’s natural beauty while listening to and reading literature in the outdoors.
Humanities Camps are filled with reading and writing projects, field trips, and outdoor activities.
We won a 2020 Schwartz Prize for best public humanities programming in the U.S. for Vermont Reads 2019: “March: Book One.”
We supported the Chandler Center for the Arts’ Global Connections Youth Outreach program, which highlights artists from around the world.
Our free public events help bring the power of the humanities to communities across Vermont.
