Welcome, Ragini Gupta, WITS Intern!
November 1, 2019
We’re giving a warm welcome to Ragini Gupta of the University of Washington, who recently joined the SAL team this fall as a Writers in the Schools intern. We’re so grateful to have such a talented creative writer on board—learn a little bit more about Ragini’s passions below.
Welcome, Ragini! Tell us a little bit about yourself!
Hello! My name is Ragini, and I am a senior studying Creative Writing and Journalism at the University of Washington. I’m really interested in exploring how my love for creative writing can enhance my experience as a journalist. I love feeling my chest collapse or swell, all in the span of a single poem.
What are some of your favorite things to do outside of school and interning?
Outside of work, I love going to poetry events, open mics, making art or exquisite corpses with my friends with some music in the background. I love getting to know my friends through their art—it unravels parts of them I didn’t know previously existed and helps me appreciate them from a new light. I also like drawing different variations of the same alien-like face over and over again.
What most excites you about the upcoming season?
I am really excited to be working with WITS because growing up in a STEM and business-driven environment, I never realized that writing could be an option to pursue until I was part of a Creative Writing in Rome program with SAL Associate Director Rebecca Hoogs. I feel really lucky to be a part of a program that gives students the framework to creatively express themselves in a classroom environment. As someone who’s writing is at an experimental prose-poem stage, I hope to attend Natalie Diaz’s event, as I am really intrigued by the intersections in poets who are essayists.
Where’s your favorite place to go read in the city?
I would like to believe that my favorite place to read is on a branch of the tallest tree in Ravenna Park, but I’d be lying if I said I’ve ever managed to get any reading done there. Instead, I find myself reading poems on buses, cross-legged on a carpet in a friend’s room, or still under the covers in the morning when Poets.org emails me with my Poem-a-Day.
What was your favorite book you read as a child?
My favorite books as a child would be the Famous Five series by Enid Blyton. I really looked up to George—as a child who was sometimes confused about gender constructs, it gave me comfort to know that living outside preconceived norms was cool (my seven-year-old self believed George was really cool).
Thank you, Ragini!