Woodbridge Students Publish NPR-Inspired Essays

Forty-five students in Woodbridge (WO) Associate Professor Indigo Eriksen’s ENG 111 and 112 classes publish NPR-inspired nonfiction essays in Cultural Daily. 

In addition to showcasing student experiences and writing, this publishing opportunity also supports NOVA’s QEP, Writing Ourselves In: Developing Our Voices for Equity & Excellence, which aims to “strengthen ENG 111 students’ ability to use writing to articulate their ideas, experiences and identities.” 

Through a collaboration with Cultural Daily, student writers learned about the writing process from brainstorming through publication. Professor Eriksen’s ENG 111 and 112 students spent the first weeks of the fall 2021 semester listening to NPR’s This I Believe podcast and drafting their own nonfiction essays, which cover diverse themes from mental health to philosophy to sports to the importance of hard work and role models. The student writers then met with Professor Eriksen for one-on-one feedback and mentoring as they revised their work. 

Chiwan Choi, editor of Cultural Daily, and Professor Eriksen recorded an interview explaining the basics of submitting work for professional publication and the importance of revision, editing and proofreading as well as having something worth saying. Students were then invited to submit their own work for publication.“The personal essay forces the world to hear the author’s voice and to acknowledge that the person writing it exists and has a say in how the world is shaped” Choi explained.

Cultural Daily “is a free platform for independent voices, often overlooked and suppressed. This is participatory civic media with new and necessary perspectives shared every day” that is edited by Chiwan Choi, a frequent guest speaker at NVCC. Click here to read the essays, which will be published weekly.

Submitted by:
Indigo Eriksen, WO-English, IEriksen@nvcc.edu