- Welcome back.
I'm hanging out with Mo Amer and Lauren Graham.
Give it up everybody.
(audience cheers and applauds)
- So, as you know, writing has always played
a very significant role in my life
or you may not know that but it has
and that's one of the reasons we teamed up
with our season long partner Pilot Pen
because we are both passionate
about encouraging others to put pen to paper.
It's a great outlet y'all.
Earlier this hour, we talked about Lauren's talents
as both an actress and bestselling author.
She's also committed to mentoring the next generation
of young female creatives
through a non-profit called WriteGirl.
This organization matches young women
with professional female writers, people like Lauren,
who mentor them in creative writing and leadership.
Here to talk about WriteGirl is Karen Taylor,
the founder and executive director,
along with Grace, a recent participant.
(audience applauds)
So Karen, tell everybody,
I went like a deep dive last night.
I love this organization, it's so cool
but tell everybody what it's about.
- So we pair women writers together with teen girls
and gender expansive youth for group workshops
on poetry, fiction, journalism, screenwriting.
They also work one on one with a mentor.
So they get that, you know, one on one mentorship..
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- [Karen] And we've had a 22 year record
of sending a hundred percent of our girls onto college.
- [Kelly] Wow!
- We even got an award.
(audience applauds)
Thank you.
- That's amazing.
- It is...
- [Kelly] 'Cause that's opportunity.
- [Karen] It's opportunity.
- Those people might not have had.
- Absolutely and and we got,
we got an award from Michelle Obama
- [Kelly] Wow!
- [Karen] For our work, which was super..
(siren whoops)
- [Kelly] No big deal, she was dropping Michelle's name.
I just called her Michelle.
(laughs)
- Okay.
- And you may know our most famous alum, Amanda Gorman.
- [Kelly] Yes.
- [Karen] Who was the poet
at the presidential inaugration.
- [Kelly] We've had her on, yeah.
- [Karen] And we're so proud of all
she's doing to raise her voice in the world
and bring poetry forward and show young women
what it is to raise your voice and be,
be a voice out in the world.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- [Karen] We're expanding.
We're growing internationally as well as nationally
so it's super exciting for us to be able
to reach girls all over the planet.
- Mhmm, especially the girls that don't have the opportunity
that ones might have here.
Like that's, that's the thing I love
about traveling with my kids is that,
I'm like, yeah, you should,
your education, you should prize it.
Like not everybody gets those opportunities.
- [Karen] Absolutely.
- That's a big thing.
- It is a big thing.
In fact, our teens just wrote 55 letters of hope
to some teens in Afghanistan who can't go to school.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- So we're helping teens all around the world
in different ways like that.
You know, building their confidence,
building their self-esteem.
- [Kelly] Building that network for woman.
- Network for women, right.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- Girls club, women club.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- I was the Girl Scout, whatever.
I got the badges, the flair.
So what inspired you to be a part of it?
- I joined WriteGirl when I was in middle school
and I'm so glad that I did.
I really had sort of no idea how to articulate from,
how to articulate my thoughts or advocate for myself.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- And WriteGirl helped me a lot with that.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- They also helped me a lot with my college application.
I now go to Scripps College.
I'm studying English and economics.
- [Kelly] Congratulations!
- I wanna be a playwright.
- So how did you get involved, Lauren?
- I just picked up the phone.
It was a few years ago
and I just wanted to do something to
share my love of writing and, and reading
and I found this organization
and I just went to a mentor workshop and got started
and was paired up with a mentee
and just have done what I can to stay involved
and just get the word out
'cause I think it's,
it gives girls a tool, you know,
an actual thing they can use, whether it's college
or if they become a writer.
It's what you're saying, it's the power of putting pen
to paper no matter what you do with it.
It's, it's just, as an exercise,
really positive experience.
- Yeah, you know, it was funny, I was,
looking all this stuff last night online
and I was like 'cause I have a son and a daughter
and I was like, oh, this would be awesome for my daughter
and then I was like, actually my son, he loves,
he loves being creative like that too
and I think growing up in the South,
boys were always expected to not be so vulnerable.
They weren't,
they weren't asked things that maybe they wanted to give
or had to give and I think, I don't know about you, Mo
but like it would be a cool thing too,
like a WriteGuy, like to have that for guys as well
because it's a powerful thing that,
yes, for girls especially in countries where females don't,
they don't have that right or that opportunity
but at the same time, it's also a really good thing, I think
for men to have that from childhood to go,
it's okay to express your feelings in this way, be a writer,
be a advocate for yourself and, and that as well.
- Yeah, it was tough to leave football to do, you know,
plays in theater.
- That's that I'm saying though.
So my son is like that, he loves like dressing up.
He loves, he's like a little Harry Styles.
Like he's like, I'm just like I don't know
where he is going, what he's gonna do, but like, but he,
I love that, I embrace that.
Not a lot of guys, like I grew up in the South,
that was not like kind of allowed
and people made fun of guys that did that,
that played football and then did drama, you know.
- I did both.
I still was able to do both and be part of both communities.
But what, what,
what theater did for me is very, very special and unique
and I'll echo what you said, like you know, you had a lot
of the meaning and a lot of people don't have the words
for how they feel and what they mean.
So this is really, really special thing
you guys are doing.
- That's what I mean.
It's just so great for humans to write it out.
Like I had such a hard time with my feelings as well
and that's how I became a writer.
So it's so important.
- [Karen] That's fantastic, it is important
and boys need it too, you're absolutely right.
We do some work with boys under the name Bold Inc. Writers
'cause we don't want them to be Write Girl.
- Oh okay, yeah.
- And we work with youth who are incarcerated,
youth who are on probation.
So we're trying to reach boys
and girls who need this the most but I mean, they all do
but it's really special for us to be able to reach teens
who are at risk of dropping out of high school.
- [Kelly] 100%.
- At risk of lots of things and you know, I used the term
at risk in a gentle fashion.
Between us, we never try to label our youth
with a label like that.
- [Kelly] Yeah, well as I mentioned earlier,
Pilot Friction Pen, the go-to erasable pen
of the Kelly Clarkson Show loves to honor those who write
and create fearlessly just like y'all
so to help you continue encouraging young women to write
and create, they are gifting WriteGirl $5,000
just to help out.
(audience applauds)
- Oh wow!
That's so great.
Oh my God.