CHILDREN from around Georgetown are set to benefit from a three-day workshop, as self- published author, Maya Collins, attempts to increase the pass rate of English at the Caribbean Secondary Examination level, in Guyana, through her “Local Writer host Youth Writers” workshop.

In an interview with the Guyana Chronicle, Collins said, “Guyana’s English score in CXC is not very good and I believe that if I am able to instill just a tiny bit of passion in writing, it would definitely help them in their English A and English B scores. It would definitely help them get the jobs that they want and the universities that they want to go into.”
The camp, which commenced on Tuesday, July 16, 2019, will resume on July 23, and will end on July 30, 2019 at the Guyana National Library, from 8:00hrs to 12:00hrs. The workshop, which is the first of its kind to be held by Collins, targets 50 children, 12-years-old and over.

Collins indicated that in order “to develop skills as a writer, students need three things: ownership of their writing, guidance from an experienced writer, and support from a community of fellow learners.”

She added that the workshop is designed to streamline instructions, to achieve the most critical objective, which is to give the participants time to write, while having fun doing so. Collins also pointed out that the workshop setting is framed to motivate children to take their writing seriously and to view themselves as writers.

Collins is a young Guyanese writer who is passionate about the expression of one’s self through words as a form of Art. She believes anyone can write, and with sufficient support, young individuals can remain occupied while developing their skills.

“I have a passion for writing but it didn’t really start like that, it was quite late on, I was probably 12 or 13 and before that, I didn’t really think the art of writing was encouraged in schools, so I just thought maybe it would be great to have students together and I’ll teach them what I know, about my journey as a writer to them and hopefully that could ignite the same passion that I had when I was a kid,” she explained.

She is hoping to start-up a writing club provided that the children are interested and is also open to having more workshops of this nature, in the future.

Maya Collins is a young Guyanese literary giant with a passion for fiction fantasy. Maya started writing when she was just thirteen years old, self-publishing her first novel ‘If Emotions Could Kill’ in 2014.