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YCA Founder, Bob Boone, receiving the 2009 Coming Up Taller Awards, presented by First Lady Michelle Obama in the State Dining Room of the White House, Washington, DC.
At the Coming Up Taller Leadership Enhancement Conference, the first lady handed out several individualized plaques as well as $10,000 checks to the 15 outstanding arts and humanities programs from the U.S., China, Egypt and Mexico. Since 1998, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities have decided which out-of-school arts programs are especially worthy of the award.
“I think we have a very clear mission,” said Young Chicago Authors’ founder Bob Boone. “It’s important to be very specific and not have grandiose plans. We work with young, creative writers. Those are the people we serve. We want to make sure they keep going, and we want to make sure they don’t give up. We want to make sure that we can give them an opportunity to expand on what they can already do.”
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Our History
Young Chicago Authors was founded in 1991 by Dr. Robert S. Boone, a published author and educator with extensive experience teaching teens in Chicago urban and suburban settings. He assembled a group of educators, writers and philanthropists who all believed that young people should have more exposure to creative writing. In the first four years, YCA started up an intensive three-year Saturday program for students who had demonstrated a strong interest in creative writing. Fifteen sophomores would join the program each year and remained in the program through high school. Upon graduation these students would receive $2,000 per year for college. By 1995, forty-five students were taking part in this Saturday program and another fifteen were in college. Headquarters was a converted apartment on the second floor of a building on Division Street in Wicker Park.
In this early period, YCA also offered workshops at schools and agencies. These classes, whether they were held at local high schools or organizations or in distant parts of Chicago, were all young people, especially those who had yet to discover the excitement of creative writing. Requests for these classes grew every year as teachers in the schools reported that they and their students regarded these programs as an effective motivating tool.
YCA was able to fulfill its mission with the help of a devoted and diverse board of directors and the generous support of the philanthropic community. Early supporters, such as The Illinois Arts Council, the Northern Trust, and the Chicago Community Trust were intrigued by the program.s concentration on the single skill of creative writing. The operating budget during these years was $75,000. In addition, YCA began building a special fund for the scholarship students.
In 1995, YCA began offering activities year-round. Most of these were for any young people, not just the scholarship students. Summer activities included writing classes that met several times during the week, readings by poets and novelists, opportunities for performance, trips to theaters, literary events and college campuses. YCA also gave students a chance to work as teacher aides in summer school classes at local elementary schools.
By the end of 1997, the activities of YCA were firmly established as resources for dozens of community service agencies and public schools. The budget had grown to $145,000.
At present, YCA now directly serves 2,500 teens a year through workshops, performance and publication programs, and reaches 30,000 young people and adults through readership of its publications and audiences at its events.
YCA continues to expand. The Writing Teachers Collective, formed by and for writers who teach and teachers who use writing in the classroom, offers workshops on special topics in creative writing. The WTC has been integral in several initiatives, such as the Chicago Teen Poetry Slam, WordWide, GirlSpeak,Men as Allies: Swaggerzine, and Say What, a literary magazine tying together creative writing with youth culture and personal expression. Now the focus of YCA is to reach as many youth as possible.
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