![“[I love to photograph volleyball] because I play it myself and I like how fast-paced it is. It’s very action based," said Tanner Hering.](https://rampage.d127.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Screenshot-2026-05-13-212955.png)
This year at Grayslake Central High School, the annual Writers Week celebration ran from March 30 through April 3. Throughout the week, classes rotated in and out of the theater, where students attended 30-45 minute sessions designed as a mix of assembly and workshop to explore writing beyond the classroom. Writers, musicians, poets, journalists, and ASL interpreters all brought their expertise to the stage.
For presenter Marissa Payne, that journey started unexpectedly. As a junior at Grayslake Central working on the school’s magazine, Rampage, an English teacher told her she was a strong writer, something she had not recognized in herself. She said joining yearbook and journalism got her “out of [her] shell… [and that] it’s really meaningful to come back and talk to certain students about what I do now… [because] there are so many ways to use writing to find your voice and amplify the perspectives of people around you.”
Now an Iowa Statehouse reporter, Payne described a career that “doesn’t wait for certainty.” Her days, she said, “can either be very calm or very chaotic.” She encouraged students to find a specific angle and interview people on multiple sides of an issue to create deeper, more meaningful journalistic stories.
Poets Nathan McDowell and Neal Allen Shipley emphasized collaboration in their discussion of poetry. McDowell said, “If I send it to Neal, he is going to make something that I couldn’t have made on my own.” He also encouraged students to break large ideas into smaller parts to make writing more manageable.
Sara Fujimura, a young adult author based in Illinois, encourages people to collaborate and dive deeper into the subjects they write about. She said, “I love doing my research. I usually have to ask people to help me, and so I’ll write the universal story, and they help make it specific and correct. It’s fun, just using my research and being able to go down rabbit holes and finding it in real people’s stories.”
Connie Richardson, author of Rapid City Summer, spoke about persistence in writing. Her novel took four months to draft and three and a half years to revise, receiving 65 rejections before publication. “A no just means not yet,” she said.
Richardson encouraged students to continue writing even when it feels difficult, adding that writing “takes showing up and persevering.” She compared the process to fly fishing. She said that, “You’re not going to catch one if you’re not on the water …[similar to how] you’re not going to write a book by don’t opening your Chromebook or notebook.”
On the final day of Writers Week, American Sign Language expert and advocate Matt Maxey, otherwise known as Deafinitely Dope, performed alongside his friend and colleague Julian Ortiz. Maxey has interpreted for major hip hop artists like Chance the Rapper, and most recently interpreted for Kendrick Lamar’s iconic 2025 Super Bowl halftime performance. This year, Julian Ortiz interpreted in both ASL and LSE for Bad Bunny at the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show.
The two performers taught hundreds of students different signs in American Sign Language and Lengua de Signos Española (LSE), and performed interpreted hip hop songs like Count Me Out by Kendrick Lamar and NUEVAYOL by Bad Bunny.
By the end of the week, hundreds of Grayslake Central students had heard from different writers and perspectives, but a consistent message emerged that writing requires persistence and not giving up, in order to tell your own, unique story.
