MASFI + KRISTINA
ABOUT MASFI
Masfi Khan is a high school sophomore at Queens High School for the Sciences at York College. This is her first year as a mentee at Girls Write Now. To her, writing serves as an outlet of sharing her thoughts, ideas, and emotions. She enjoys writing fiction. Because all books are amazing in their distinct ways, she does not have a favorite book, but The Kite Runner, The Bell Jar, and The Bluest Eye are some of the best novels that she has read (so far). When she isn't writing or reading, she enjoys taking naps and listening to music.
ABOUT KRISTINA
Kristina Rodulfo is a journalist currently Associate Editor at ELLE.com. Her work as also appeared in InStyle.com, HarpersBazaar.com, Time Out New York, and Into the Gloss. She has a diverse reporting background including interviewing celebrities at red carpet events and designers backstage at New York Fashion Week, profiling up and coming musicians, testing the latest fitness and health trends, and highlighting leaders of social movements like immigration reform. She graduated from New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study with a degree in Creative Nonfiction, a major she created. Kristina realized her calling for writing early on, becoming a published author at 15 years old when she won the Diverse Minds Youth Writing Challenge and had the children's book she wrote and illustrated, The Other Von Higgely, distributed across NYC libraries and elementary schools.
This project expands on my poem About a Lemon Tree. Words on a page are powerful, but a story can be expanded in other ways. Polaroids in the photo collage are specifically used to convey the nostalgia surrounding the speaker’s thoughts. The audio recital displays how I, the poet, imagined the poem’s rhythm, while background music enhanced the emotions portrayed. With visual images and audio, I hope to strengthen the reader’s experience of the poem. —Masfi Khan