IRENE HAO
YEARS AS MENTEE: 1
GRADE: Sophomore
HIGH SCHOOL: Stuyvesant High School
BORN: New York, NY
LIVES: Brooklyn, NY
PUBLICATIONS AND RECOGNITIONS: Published in Teen Ink
MENTEE’S ANECDOTE: I’ve read my work to people before. To myself. To my sister. To my classmates. But never to someone who will spend time with me to go over every line, every worry, every piece. But reading a poem I’d written freshman year to Lauren at the Whole Foods café in October, I found myself excited to share more. Lauren has introduced me to so much—to a magazine, to opportunities, to a new habit of using Google Calendar so much it’s become more like multicolored time slots atop one another than a calendar. I’m so grateful for what we have now.
LAUREN VESPOLI
YEARS AS MENTOR: 1
OCCUPATION: Senior Editor, The National
BORN: New Haven, CT
LIVES: Brooklyn, NY
MENTOR’S ANECDOTE: Over the holidays, Irene and I followed through on one of our fall goals: to take ourselves outside of the Whole Foods café we usually write in and go to a museum. We ended up visiting MoMA and had a lot of fun exploring the peculiar Bruce Nauman exhibit, which we later used—how else—as inspiration for a writing exercise. I’m always impressed by Irene’s sharp observations of the world around her, whether she’s commenting on a piece of art, recommending an anime show I should watch, or digesting the world through her poetry or high-concept science fiction.
Red and yellow—together they make orange. These warm colors can be bold. Being bold is being yourself. Because we are bold. We’ve always been bold. We just need to see the colors around us.
Red is my favorite color
The shade of leaves in the crisp autumn
The light that stops traffic for me
The ruby lipstick option that I tried on the Kylie Jenner Instagram filter
The color that will never look good on me
Red is a color I sometimes dislike
The spicy peppers and kimchi my parents will always sneak onto my plate
The pen my grammar-oriented English teacher loves to correct and grade my essay
The clothes I shove to the back of my closet because they’re screaming “Look at me!” to every unwanted onlooker on the street
The color of the flame I burned my finger on when I was young
Red is the color of my reminiscences
The first color of the first rainbow I caught
The summer sunset my friends and I would watch in the park across the street
The strawberry ice pops melting in the flaming heat so we would always slurp up the sticky dribbles on the Popsicle sticks
The color of the burning sky surrounding our silhouettes
Red is a color I fear
The stain of my underwear every few months
The crimson liquid seeping from my fingers when I accidentally scrape them against my homework assignments in my haste
The complexion of my friend’s face when she finds the devil in the details of my elaborate lie
The color of her eyes as she struggles to stay furious at me
Red is a color I love
The YouTube logo I tap on every day
The carnation I received from her on Valentine’s Day with a note attached revealing the words “I’m so glad we met that day in the park” in her barely legible handwriting
The rosy blush on her cheeks when she receives all the roses and chocolates and adoration she thought she didn’t deserve
The color of my favorite phrase: You yourself are your most loyal lover
Red is a bold color
Bold enough for me to dye my hair the hue myself
Bold enough for me to color code my Girls Write Now reminders on my Google Calendar
Bold enough for me to dig out those garments from the back of my closet on days I feel good about myself
Bold enough to make me aim to make every day red because
Red is my favorite color