McKenna Graf Writes
About
McKenna Graf's Journey
McKenna grew up a voracious reader from tackling the Main Street series to Kingdom Keepers to Shadowhunters to various novels when she has time now in her college years.
She wrote her first story in fifth grade as a school assignment and spent the rest of middle school writing stories with her friends for fun and on her own because she liked to.
Freshmen year of high school was when she wrote her first poem. Her english teacher encouraged them to write poetry for homework leading up to a year long poet research project. Before this research project she always thought poetry needed to look a certain way and then began researching E.E. Cummings who was famous for breaking many rules and she was fascinated by it. She continued to find more poets like Rupi Kaur and Atticus whose journey's inspired her. She fell in love with Sylvia Plath and her poem Lorelei. And her obsession with Shakespeare began. Poetry became a way she encountered the world and her emotions. She submitted multiple poems that are featured in magazines such as Creative Communications.
The summer before here senior year (2021), McKenna was accepted to the Kenyon Young Writers Workshop program where she worked with countless other talented writers from around the world and honed her craft. She wrote a lot of prose and learned a lot from her fellow writers but mostly gained confidence in herself as a writer.
In her senior year of high school, McKenna took a class called Females in Fairytales and Film and became fascinated with finding fairytale retellings across mediums which is where she found the poem Lorelei (a famous siren). She even wrote her own screenplay for a retelling of The Swan Maiden and is interested in writing more retellings. In the first semester of this class they created an anthology of retellings for Bluebeard that the class wrote.
McKenna studies at Lafayette College and over winter break she saw an opportunity to join a writing challenge where she would have a published book of poetry by the end. Althought scared to finally go after her dreams, McKenna entered the contest and has taken every step to make the most out of this opportunity. She is writing passionately and learning eagerly and she hopes you appreciate her hardwork. While this may be the first large step into the world of writing there are so many more adventures to come...