February 4, 2026
Category: Academics, North Shore Young Writers Conference, Writing
On January 30, 2026, Waring welcomed high school students from across the Greater Boston region for the 35th annual North Shore Young Writers Conference. More than forty young writers from 11 different schools and three award-winning authors joined us on campus for a day filled with small group writing workshops and readings. The day culminated with students reading some of their pieces for the group and celebrating their accomplishments.
The North Shore Young Writers Conference is an intensive writing workshop where peers and mentors can practice their love of poetry, short essays, creative writing, or personal essays. It is an ideal opportunity for students from across the region to unplug from social media for the day and write under the mentorship of accomplished writers.
During this year’s conference, mentors led workshops throughout the day, advised on writing techniques and styles, mentored students, and shared their writings with workshop attendees. This year’s mentors included the talented writers Talia Mailman ’02, Catherine Con Morse and M.P. Carver.
This year’s published mentors are accomplished writers who bring a wealth of experience and a passion for the craft of writing, and they hope to share it with aspiring writers.
Talia Mailman, a Waring alumna, earned her undergraduate degree from Williams College and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Houston, where she served as the nonfiction editor for the Gulf Coast Literary Journal. She has held teaching positions at the University of Houston, Macalester College, Augsburg University, and Endicott College. Her short stories and reviews have appeared in publications such as Untoward, Bluestem, Flyway Journal, and Gulf Coast. Her literary mystery novel is currently under submission to publishers.
Catherine Con Morse holds a B.M. in piano performance from the University of South Carolina, where she attended on a music scholarship. A Kindiman fellow, she received her Master’s of Fine Arts from Boston University, where she taught undergraduate creative writing for several years. She also holds an Ed.M. in Arts in Education from Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Catherine’s debut novel, The Notes, was a 2025 Chinese American Librarians Association Honorable Mention and was shortlisted for the CRAFT First Chapters Contest. The coming-of-age novel explores themes of self-doubt, perfectionism, and mental health, drawing from her own experiences. While writing The Notes, she was one of the inaugural Writers in Residence at Porter Square Books. Her most recent novel, The Summer I Remembered Everything, explores themes of coming-of-age, family dynamics, multicultural identity, illness, finding your place, and difficult choices. Her work appears in Joyland, Letters, HOOT, Bostonia, and elsewhere.
M.P. Carver is a local poet and visual artist hailing from Salem, MA. As a longtime community organizer, she has served as Director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival since 2021. She is also the miCrO-Founder of Molecule: a tiny literary magazine, and teaches creative and digital writing at Salem State University.
Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Rattle, Mantis, Jubilat, and Love’s Executive Order. She has received funding from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Essex Community Foundation. In 2023, her poem “In Vitro” was named a finalist in the Connecticut River Review’s Experimental Poetry Contest. In 2022, her poem “You & God & I” was awarded the New England Poetry Club’s E.E. Cummings Prize. Her chapbook, Selachipmorpha, was published by Incessant Pipe in 2015, and a chapbook with Lily Poetry Review Books, Hard Up, is available now from Lily Poetry Review Books.
A Waring Tradition This year’s conference was a full day of writing, workshopping, sharing and working alongside experienced mentors. It was amazing to see young writers taking risks with their writing and learning from both the mentors and fellow conference attendees as they brainstormed and shared their techniques. Under the direction of Jill Sullivan, Writing Department Chair, the workshops, readings and performances were a huge success!
