Guest post: Girls Write Now pair sings the blues

by Andrea Simon

GWN mentor Vani Kannan (left) and her mentee Cherish Smith.
Photo credit: Meghan Hickey
It began with a text message. While in school, 15-year-old Girls Write Now mentee, Cherish Smith, wrote to her mentor, Vani Kannan, “I hate Mondays.” The response: “Me 2.” This was, as the famous movie line goes, “the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
In its first major get-together of the season, the New York City nonprofit organization, Girls Write Now (GWN), which matches professional writers with underserved high-school girls, holds an orientation for all its mentors and mentees, this year numbering 55 pairs. At last year’s orientation, Cherish, then a sophomore from Far Rockaway, Queens, and Vani Kannan, an associate managing editor of psychotherapy books at W. W. Norton & Co, who lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, were placed in the same subgroup. In an exercise dubbed, “speed dating,” a mentee sat with a mentor for five minutes, shared an intense “get-to-know” session, sprang up, and proceeded to the next candidate. At the end, participants wrote down their secret choices. “We got along right off the bat,” Vani said, “and we each requested the other.”
Vani and Cherish decided to meet weekly on Sundays, forestalling the dreaded Mondays, at Barnes & Noble in Brooklyn. During one of their early meetings, Cherish mentioned that she was taking guitar lessons in school. Vani also played the guitar and the two planned a jam session. Remembering that text message, “I hate Mondays,” they had their first line. Before long, they added, “I hate Tuesdays, because Tuesdays follow Mondays.” Wednesdays also turned out to be no good; and Thursdays, well, they were the absolute worst days for Cherish because it was when an annoying boy Anthony would try to kiss her in gym, a behavior she of course loved to hate. Hatred culminated in Friday when everything was “due.” Adding melody to these lyrics flowed just as naturally and before long, “The Weekday Blues” was born.
GWN required participants to select a pairs writing piece to read during “Girls Write Now Day” on March 8, 2009 at The New School. The reading could be written for the occasion, it could evolve from the one-on-one writing exercises, or it could develop from a GWN workshop on memoir, poetry, fiction, or playwriting. Originally, Vani and Cherish thought of their song as a lark; then they changed their minds and took the risk. “I was nervous at first; I don’t like to get on stage,” Cherish said, “And it was early in our relationship; I hardly knew my mentor.”
They practiced a lot. They visited music stores and found a kazoo, the perfect accompaniment to solidify the song’s humor. And best of all, they solidified their own relationship. “We had a lot of laughs,” Cherish said. “Vani is not only my mentor but she’s now my friend.”
The GWN event was a celebration of the Second International Support Women Artists Now Day, popularly know by its acronym SWAN Day, the purpose of which is to inspire communities around the world to recognize and support women artists. If ever there was an occasion for GWN’s talented ducklings to turn into SWANS, this was their time of writerly awakening.
During the day, the pairs recited poems and stories. Vani and Cherish walked onstage with their guitars; there was a sudden hush. The composers sat on chairs, positioned their instruments, and introduced their song, “The Weekday Blues,” bewailing, “I hate Mondays, Mondays are no fun.” The audience chuckled. But when the pair got to Friday and sang, “I want to scream “I’M THROUGH!” and Cherish bleated her kazoo while Vani invited the audience to sing-along, it was clear that these songwriters had a hit on their hands.
More on GWN and Andrea’s bio after the jump.


SWAN Day Celebrates “Herstory.” This year Vani and Cherish continue to challenge their creative spirits. “What is great about GWN is that by introducing the girls to different genres,” Vani explained, “it helped Cherish get out of her comfort zone, which was fiction.” For their upcoming pairs reading, they chose two monologues based on prompts they did during freewriting exercises. Cherish, who loves acting and auditions for commercials, wrote a piece flowing from the line, “I could be an actress if …” Vani’s began, “I could be a musician if …” Vani said, “One of the reasons we chose these two lines was to help us with self-doubt, to overcome the terror of succeeding or failing in the arts.”
But the musical muse has been calling them again. They could just change their minds and perform another song. There’s one in the works about Cherish’s cute Spanish teacher and Vani’s cute French teacher when she was in high school.
SWAN Day this year will be celebrated on March 27th. Since 2010 is the 75th Anniversary of the federal Works Progress Administration (WPA), special recognition will be paid to those female artists who helped stimulate the economy during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Girls Write Now has scheduled one of its spring reading series (CHAPTERS) as a Swan Day event, for Friday, March 26th. It will be held at The Center for Fiction, founded in 1820 as the Mercantile Library. The only organization in the country devoted solely to the art of fiction, The Center provides an intimate atmosphere in an historic building. Special guest will be Nami Mun, author of her award-winning first novel, Miles from Nowhere, the heartbreaking story of a teenage runaway. And, of course, the stars will be the mentee/mentor pairs, who like Vani and Cherish, will surely combine their talents in unique and moving ways.
Also in conjunction with Swan Day, on Saturday, March 27, Eileen Fisher will sponsor a sale at its nine New York area stores. Ten percent of all proceeds will benefit Girls Write Now. By appointing GWN as its philanthropic partner, the Eileen Fisher Foundation helps fulfill its mission of empowering women and girls, true to the spirit of its founder. Fisher started her business 25 years ago when she was an interior and graphic designer who “couldn’t sew and only had $350 in the bank.”
In another honor, Girls Write Now was nationally recognized as one of 15 youth arts and humanities programs to receive the prestigious 2009 Coming Up Taller Award. Founder and Executive Director Maya Nussbaum, along with third-year mentee, Tina Gao, traveled to Washington, D.C. in November, and accepted the award from First Lady, Michelle Obama.
Girls Write Now is the first and only East Coast organization to combine mentoring and writing training within the context of all-girl programming, which also includes anthology publications and college preparation assistance. Since 1998, Girls Write Now has helped nearly 3,000 deserving teenage girls from New York City’s public high schools. A hundred percent of its seniors go on to prestigious colleges and many have received a Scholastic Art & Writing Award.
Nussbaum helped create GWN in order to debunk the myth of the isolated writer. “I wanted to build an organization based on the guiding principle that writing is actually a communal enterprise,” she said. “It’s so much easier to take creative risks like the ones Vani and Cherish boldly have when we feel the safety and pleasure of writing together, with people we trust.”
Cherish summed up their relationship, “I have not only learned from Vani, but I think she has learned from me.” Though she aspires to be a pediatric psychiatrist, Cherish has begun to have doubts. “My mother thinks I’ll be a writer,” she said, “a novelist.” It’s no wonder since Cherish and her twin sister Joy, also a GWN mentee, have already co-written a novel called Alexei in Hell about a teenage girl who lives in a city called Hellix. The plot is chock-full of family drama and romance. Luckily for Cherish, she doesn’t have to go far for help; Vani is busy editing the manuscript. Wherever this unique writing pair decides to go, they have built the foundation that only words can describe.
Andrea Simon is a writer and photographer who lives in New York City. She has worked as an editor and writer for many years, and was the co-owner of an editorial/production company that specialized in health-related educational materials. More recently, she has devoted her efforts to fiction and literary nonfiction, including her published memoir/history, Bashert: A Granddaughter’s Holocaust Quest. Several of Andrea’s stories and essays have also been published; and she has been the recipient of prestigious literary honors, including first place in the Ernest Hemingway First Novel Contest and Authors in the Park Short Story Writing Contest. Andrea’s photography has been featured at numerous venues. She is a proud Girls Write Now mentor. Her website is: www.andreasimon.net
To learn more about SWAN Day, run by WomenArts, go here.

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