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Ms. Jana Maiuri's ninth grade English students discuss a writing assignment. The Gregory School nurtures and produces extraordinary writers. Our alumni consistently cite the writing skills gained here as instrumental in their college success and beyond.

New faculty, new opportunities in the '21-'22 Writing Center 

The Gregory School nurtures and produces extraordinary writers. Our alumni consistently cite the writing skills gained here as instrumental in their college success and beyond. Our Writing Center, modeled on those of many colleges and universities, is among the ways we support student writers. 

The 2021 - 2022 Writing Center will be co-directed by Ms. Jana Maiuri (Ninth Grade English) and Ms. Joni Wallace (Writer-in-Residence). The Writing Center will continue to serve Upper School students by offering appointments with trained and certified peer tutors. TGS peer tutors offer their fellow students helpful feedback on written assignments at any point in the process, including brainstorming, outlining, drafting, revising, and polishing.  

New to the Writing Center this year will be the Listening Lab, offered on Exploration days during E4. Listening Lab will be a place for Upper School students to engage with readings, craft talks, and podcasts by contemporary writers on various aspects of creative writing. The Listening Lab will also be a place of ongoing experimentation with a student’s own writing: a place where students can interact with other texts and expand their own work in exciting new ways. To this end, we have received a small donation of refurbished vintage typewriters for student use, and are hoping to acquire a tabletop letterpress in the near future. With the addition of the letterpress, we will be able to expand the contours of our creative writing program and student publishing.  Students will be able to learn letterpress print techniques and create beautiful, handmade broadsides, postcards, and other publication ephemera incorporating their original writing. 

About the Writing Center Faculty

Jana Maiuri comes to us after many years teaching English and drama in Oakland, California. She directed an urban theater and spoken word program devoted to teaching critical analysis of major canonical works and producing diverse productions of Shakespeare’s plays. She earned her bachelor’s degree at the University of Oregon and is excited to work with TGS students and Joni to set up the Writing Center as a student-centered place to focus on the craft of writing.

Joni Wallace earned her MFA at the University of Montana and is the author of three books of poetry: Kingdom Come Radio Show, Barrow Street Press, 2016 (finalist for the Colorado Prize); Blinking Ephemeral Valentine Four Way Books, 2011 (winner of the Levis Prize selected by Mary Jo Bang); Redshift (Kore Press, 2001). She is the recipient of a poetry fellowship from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the Baltic Writing Residency (2017), and has served as writer-in-residence at the Gullkistan Center for the Arts in Laugarvatn, Iceland, in 2016. She has most recently taught poetry at the University of Arizona Poetry Center and San Antonio’s Gemini Ink.