Agnes Scott College - Emerging Student Writers

Join us in the Decatur Library to hear from Emerging Student Writers! These special sessions feature talented student writers from Georgia colleges reading their original work in 45-minute sessions throughout the day. 

The stage will be situated alongside The Book As Art v.14: Ghosted exhibit, creating a vibrant atmosphere where visual art and creative writing come together.

This session will be held on the Fourth Floor of Decatur Library. To reach the Fourth Floor, you'll need to take the elevator on the right (when you're facing the elevators–it's labeled). If the other elevator opens when you call, please take it to the third floor, exit, and press the up button again to call the correct elevator.

This event is free and open to the public. No tickets are required, and seating is first come, first served.

About the Agnes Scott College Emerging Student Writers:

Amelia Lenz is a senior majoring in English Literature/Creative Writing and minoring in History at Agnes Scott College. She was a finalist in the Fiction category of the Stephen R. Guthrie Memorial Writers' Festival Contest in 2026, and her poetry can be found in Agnes Scott’s literary magazine, The Aurora. She is currently serving as an editorial intern at a/b: Auto/Biography Studies and a tutor at the Center for Writing and Speaking at Agnes Scott.

Mariana Ramirez-Pineda is a Mexican-American Creative Writing major from Agnes Scott College. Her main interest is fiction and nonfiction writing, but she has recently discovered a love for editing. Themes such as queer representation, Hispanic representation, and diving into interpersonal conflicts within culture and family are important to her and centered in her writing. When she isn't writing, she can be found organizing events with her team as the president of Latines Unides, the Latinx student organization at Agnes Scott College that focuses on preserving and promoting the culture and customs of Latinx, Hispanic, Latinx-Carribean, Afro-Latinx, and Indigenous people of Latin America.

Cayla Sales is an African-American writer and literature lover in her third year at Agnes Scott College located in Decatur, Georgia. Sales’s main genres of writing include nonfiction and life writing with a concentration on exploring diverse gender, race, and queer identities. In her freetime, Sales enjoys reading Victorian gothic literature, social commentaries, and young adult fantasy novels. Post-undergrad she plans on pursuing a career in the publishing industry.

Elise Smith is a junior at Agnes Scott College majoring in English Literature-Creative Writing and History with a focus in creative nonfiction and post-war American counterculture. Smith's work has been published in the Agnes Scott student-run newspaper The Profile and the independent online literary magazine Dazed Magazine where she contributes in her roles as Section Editor and Staff Writer respectively. Most recently, her essay “Hair Abecedarian” was featured as a finalist in the nonfiction category at the Agnes Scott 55th Annual Writers’ Festival student contest. In her free time, Smith can be found playing Dungeons & Dragons, secondhand shopping, and scrapbooking.

Leocadia Wanjira is a senior at Agnes Scott College from Nairobi, Kenya pursuing their B.A. in English Literature-Creative Writing. Primarily a writer of poetry and nonfiction, her poem “Detail of the Harpsichord” was published in the Spring 2025 issue of Agnes Scott College’s literary arts magazine, the Aurora. Her fiction work has been published by Storymoja, an East African publishing house with whom she interned in 2025. Drawing from her Kenyan-American heritage, Leocadia is passionate about exploring identity and race through her writing. Their minors in Philosophy and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies also inform their pieces about existentialism, colonization, and queerness. When she is not writing or reading in a library, Leocadia can be found playing piano or taking nature walks in Decatur.