To wrap up this year of stories, poems and drafts yet to finish, the students of the Advanced Creative Writing course had the wonderful opportunity to get together for a laid-back night of reading our own texts and enjoying a snack.
After a break of two years, on the 27th of April, our school’s lovely assembly hall (Aula) was once again open to friends, family, and to anyone with a knack for writing to come and listen to the fourteen Advanced Creative Writing students presenting their texts in this year’s Night of Reading.
With the help of our teacher and editor, Ms Sara D. Nyffenegger, we spent this year crafting our texts, sometimes – although very hesitantly – even sharing them with our peers. Events like this give many young writers the opportunity to present and perform what they have worked hard to create. Putting your thoughts into words can be a very personal thing, so, to many of us reading them out loud can be a very gratifying but also an exhilarating occasion. Especially with regards to the prompts of the Swiss Creative Writing Prize which we received for the 2022 competition. Starting in December up until the very beginning of April we put our heads down to brainstorm and come up with poems about identity and short stories based on the word offline. Each year the Advanced Creative Writing course at KWSE steps up to the challenge and submits many wonderful and successful texts to the competition.
This year’s audience had the pleasure to listen to prize winning stories and poems, such as the poems of last year’s winner, Imè Esenam (G3A). She not only won 1st prize for her poem «Black coffee or To all the girls with hard to swallow names», but also claimed 2nd prize with «To be black, to be woman». Jil Hug (G3C) got to read her short story «Trapeze Act», which was short listed in 2021, as well as a new story, «Radio Silence», with which she reached 3rd place in this year’s competition. The school also placed well in the poetry section this year, as Carole Meier took home the 2nd prize for her poem «Nothing Left», and both Vrinda Arora (G2A) and Sulamith Tamborriello (G4A) were short-listed. The night was a success and after an hour of listening to different genres of writing, the evening came to a close with lively chatting and engaging discussions accompanied by a tasty apéro riche.
We were excited to welcome everyone back to our campus this year after the pandemic and are already looking forward and working towards getting to invite you again to next year's Night of Reading.
