For many young writers in Savannah, the Young Author Project has been a gateway to discovering their creative voices. But did you know that our staff have also been inspired by their time in the Young Author Project? Meet Maria Zoccola, former Deep Program Manager of the Young Author Project from 2017 to 2021. While in this role, Maria helped bring writing workshops into local middle and high schools, inspiring hundreds of students each year to put their stories onto the page. But now, Maria is a published author all her own with her debut book, Helen of Troy, 1993:Poems, where she writes about the power of storytelling flipped on its head, the complexity of Southern identity, and the deeply personal struggles woven into a timeless myth, translated for a modern audience. We sat down with Maria to reflect on her time in the program and how it influenced her own artistic journey as she watched young people fearlessly dive into new genres and found herself rethinking her own creative limits.
Maria alongside Deep volunteers at a community event
Deep: From 2017 – 2021, you worked with Deep–specifically the Young Author Project. What was your experience with Deep like?
Maria Zoccola: It was so amazing. So I ran the Young Author Project, which, as you well know, is Deep’s oldest and largest program—it puts creative writing workshops into the public middle and high schools of Chatham County, Georgia. When I was there, it was serving about 400 young people annually, from grades six to twelve.
We were in so many schools, working with young people from every single part of our community. We were working with volunteers, artists, college students, grad school students—we had novelists and reporters and creative poets and even playwrights and people living a creative life in Savannah who wanted to come and give back to their community and to work with some of the brightest and sharpest and most creative young people coming up through the Savannah-Chatham County public school system. That was such an honor and a privilege to get to be embedded within the community like that, and to be working with the young people who are deeply inspiring, or just truly taught me more about the creative process, and about bravery every single time I stepped foot in the classroom.
Deep: That certainly is a feeling shared by a lot of us at Deep! In terms of the young people, what did you hope for them when you engaged with them to learn via the Young Author Project?
Maria: Many of the young people were trying out and working on creative writing for maybe the very first time, especially with certain genres for the very first time. They were writing some of their first poems or plays or trying graphic narrative or memoir pieces for the first time. My hope for them was always that they just fearlessly dove into these new projects and just tried it out, whether it ended up being a lifelong passion for them or not, they could just approach it with curiosity and see what happened. And almost every single time—really every single time—a young person picked up the pen and turned to the page with that fearlessness, something incredible happened. They were writing stories about their lives. They were putting their truth on the page. They were working on their passion projects, or they were inventing new worlds and new stories, and the results speak for themselves.
We were so lucky to publish the young people in those anthologies that were then for sale in the community and out in the world, so they became published authors at the end of every semester. But reading through those anthologies, you just get a sense of what the young people are capable of, and the light they have inside of them.
Deep: Were there any experiences or events while at Deep that consciously and subconsciously found their way into Helen of Troy, 1993?
Maria: Well, I can definitely say that I don’t think the book might have happened if not for working with the young people at Deep. While all my degrees are in fiction, I always thought of myself as exclusively a fiction writer. I took a few poetry classes, and poetry workshops in college, but the work I was producing further served to confirm that I was a fiction writer and not a poet. I think I had set poetry aside as this genre that just maybe wasn’t for me.
Helen of Troy, 1993, now available for purchase
I think that being in the classrooms with the young people, being in those workshops with young people and watching them fearlessly dive into new genres, trying poetry for the first time, trying playwriting for the first time—that bravery made me think, “Okay, if they can do it, I can also be brave enough to try a new genre, to see what happens if I just pick up the pen and turn to the page.” And I started, really, writing poetry in a serious way in about 2018, while working at Deep, while being with the young people pretty much every day. And it felt like this new world blew open for me, these new pathways opened up for me and I was able to explore a genre in a way I don’t think I would have, had I not been in those workshops with the young people. Started writing poetry and never looked back!
To learn more about Maria, visit her website HERE.
To learn about Maria’s debut book Helen of Troy: 1993:Poems, click HERE.
To learn about the Young Author Project, click HERE.