Teaching Writing

The Write Time with Author Tina Cane and Educator Janelle Bence

By National Writing Project
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Summary:

 This episode of The Write Time features Rhode Island's former Poet Laureate Tina Cane and Texas educator Janelle Bence. Tina's poetry has been featured in a variety of publications and her second verse novel for young readers, Are You Nobody Too?, was released in August 2024.

Headshots of Tina and Janelle with show title on dark gray background.

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Tina Cane is the founder/director of Writers-in-the-Schools, RI, and, from 2016-2024, served as the Poet Laureate of Rhode Island where she lives with her husband and three children. In her capacity as poet laureate, Cane established her state’s first youth poetry ambassador program in partnership with Rhode Island Center for the Book, and brought the Poetry-in-Motion program from the New York City Transit System to Rhode Island’s state-wide buses. Cane is the author of The Fifth Thought, Dear Elena: Letters for Elena Ferrante, poems with art by Esther Solondz (Skillman Books, 2016), Once More With Feeling (Veliz Books 2017), Body of Work (Veliz Books, 2019), and Year of the Murder Hornet (Veliz Books, 2022). In 2016, Tina received the Fellowship Merit Award in Poetry from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. She was also a 2020 Poet Laureate Fellow with the Academy of American Poets. Her debut novel-in-verse for young adults, Alma Presses Play (Penguin/Random House) was released in September 2021. Cane is also the creator/curator of the distance reading series, Poetry is Bread, and the editor of Poetry is Bread: The Anthology (forthcoming from Nirala Press, 2024). Her second verse novel for young readers, Are You Nobody Too? (Penguin/ Random House) was released in August 2024.

Janelle Bence is a high-school English teacher with 24 years of experience teaching in Texas. Her favorite project is a Spoken Word event where freshmen support a local non-profit of their choosing. She is a longstanding member of the National Writing Project and enjoys collaborating with researchers to deepen her praxis. Currently, two projects she is working on are Transdisciplinary Civic Composing Collective (UT Austin) and Colorado State Sustainable Teaching and Learning (Colorado State University). Her writing is published in Civics for the World to Come: Committing to Democracy in Every Classroom (Mirra & Garcia, 2023) and Teaching for Equity, Justice, and Antiracism with Digital Literacy Practices (Edited By Meghan E. Barnes, Rick Marlatt).

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Topics/tags:
Teaching Writing poetry
This post is part of the The Write Time collection.
Notes:

The Write Time is a special series of NWP Radio, a podcast of the National Writing Project (NWP), where writing teachers from across the NWP Network interview young-adult and children’s authors about their books, their composing processes, and writers’ craft. You can view the archive at https://teach.nwp.org/series/the-write-time/.

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