YWP’s hub of inspiration: All our challenges are here!
Challenges
Weekly
Visual Art
Deadline
Zodiac
Draw, paint, sculpt, or photograph your zodiac sign. For an extra challenge, add other birthday-month elements: make your birthstone color prominent, or add a spring setting if you’re a Taurus, etc.
Writing
Deadline
Recipe
Write a poem in the form of a recipe: a list of ingredients (in the form of foods or emotions, etc.), then a list of instructions adding those ingredients together to make something new.
Writing
Deadline
Shoulder
Your character looks back over their shoulder one last time, wrenching themselves away: a last goodbye. What are they bidding farewell to? Respond in poetry or prose, real or fictional.
Great Artists
Visual Art
Bunny Harvey
Walks in rural Vermont helped inspire these dreamy abstract landscape paintings.
Visual Art
Ted Walsh
Recipe for a striking painting? Limited color palette, a spare style, and the gorgeous play of light and shadow.
Visual Art
Claude Monet
How did the Impressionist movement get its name? It started with this painting by Claude Monet and an art critic's insult.
Great Writers
Writing
Toni Morrison
In Black History Month, we honor Toni Morrison, the first Black woman to be awarded the Nobel laureate in literature, gained worldwide acclaim for her unvarnished exploration of Black identity in America. Have you read her work?
Writing
John Keene
Words matter. John Keene has a poem about that.
Writing
Naomi Shihab Nye
"Before you know what kindness really is, you must lose things," writes poet Naomi Shihab Nye.
Online Workshops
Visual Art
Photo Workshop: The Rule of Thirds
A foundational principle of photography and other visual arts is the rule of thirds. It helps create balanced and visually engaging compositions. Join YWP Alumni Advisor Kevin Huang for this online workshop.
Writing
Wondrous Writers: Editing - Polishing your Writing
This workshop explores key elements of editing that will make your story stronger.
Writing
Writing Workshop: Free Verse Poetry
Free verse is freeing! You can write any way you like, break lines wherever you decide, and end a poem whenever you want.
Contests
Writing
Deadline
Human Rights – Writing
Consider how rights are diminishing for LGBTQ+ people, women, Native Americans, people of color, people with disabilities, and other historically marginalized groups. Write about the impact this has on you, your friends & family, your community.
Visual Art
Deadline
Human Rights – Visual Art
How do you celebrate human rights through art? How do you protest their erosion in America today? In photography, painting, sketching, digital art, or another medium of your choice, send a powerful message through your art.
Writing
Deadline
Democracy & Ethics – Writing
A democratically elected government might not be enough to uphold the tenets of democracy in America. Can President Abraham Lincoln's vision "of the people, by the people, for the people" be saved? What needs to change to protect democracy?
Opinion & Commentary
Writing
Resistance
Resistance is bubbling up in the first weeks of the Trump administration. What are you seeing and thinking?
Learn More
Writing
Hope & Resilience
Poetry steps in where uncertainty and chaos take root. Poetry lifts us up and moves us forward with determination. Explore these poems of hope and resilience. If you are inspired, share your own.
Learn More
Writing
Protests Begin
Americans are starting to rally against the Trump administration in a grassroots effort to build a national movement. Read about it. Write about it.
Learn More