Every Good Story Needs a Strong Protagonist

   By Beth Dolinar

               Forgive this writing lapse, but let’s begin with a cliché: Gina Catanzarite has a personality as fiery as her red hair. Yes, she has red hair and blue eyes and if I’d written that hackneyed opening phrase in one of her university writing classes she would mark a big red slash through it. And then she would tell me it was a good try anyway.

Luminari Teen Writer! Camp
Director Gina Catanzarite

  And then she would encourage me to keep writing, because words are vibrant and beautiful and, at times, the only true things on this planet.

    If that seems overly dramatic, it’s because Gina finds the drama in her work. As the director of Luminari’s TeenWriter! Fantastic Fiction camp, she coaxes young writers to find the right words. Next summer, Gina will lead the camp for the seventh time, coaxing fresh perspectives from middle and high school students in her writing workshop. Her teaching departs from the typical classroom approach of research, syntax and grammar. She is selling the idea of a sentence as a living, breathing thing.

     “Emily Dickinson said, ‘I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine,’” Gina said, quoting the 19^th century poet.

      ‘When you write from the heart you can see the words shine,” Gina said, adding that it is through finding the gleam in a word that a writer finds his or her own, unique voice.

    Her love of language has filled her career. Her work as a writer and producer for both commercial and public television have earned her eight Emmy awards and countless other accolades. As a contributing producer for WQED-TV, she has tackled topics as widely varied as human trafficking, the gender pay gap and efforts to save Pennsylvania’s bats. She is the author of non-fiction books and has written for newspapers and magazines.

     A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, Gina has taught journalism and broadcast courses at Robert Morris University and, currently, Point Park University. Her students are simultaneously frightened and awed by her dynamic and inspirational classroom style.

     “We had a hash tag of #wwgcd while we were there,” said Claire Gysegem, a student in Gina’s class at Point Park in 2012. “It meant, What would Gina Catanzarite do? She had a way of making an impression that would stick.”

    Gysegem, now a graduate student in public media at Ohio University, credits Gina with igniting her love of television production and writing. “She is upfront and honest and blunt, but probably the most encouraging person you’ll ever meet.”

     Gina is known for her intense, demanding teaching style—suffering no foolishness, laziness or phonies.

    “She expects you to be authentic and be yourself,” said Gysegem. “She taught us that your voice is your own, and when you write, you have to claim it as your own voice.”

     That conviction is evident in the way Gina leads Luminari’s Teen Writer! camp. Last summer, she took students on a field trip to Phipps Conservatory. It was the hottest week of July, and the students stood perspiring in the humid hothouse jungle.

   “Describe what it feels like!” Gina shouted. “If you’re uncomfortable because it’s hot, find the words to say it.”

     That direct and inspirational style was evident to Danny Allman, another Point Park student who served as Gina’s teaching assistant for the Luminari writing camp in 2009.

    “Those students learn from the best,” said Allman, now a news assignments editor at a TV station in Baltimore. “Gina puts so much energy and exuberance into making sure her students enjoy writing, and that they succeed.”

    Gina says enjoys teaching teenagers, because of how they view the world.

    “The kids that age believe they can do anything, “ she said. “There is a lot of life ahead of them, and they tend to be thrill seeking—they enjoy the exhilarating feeling of putting their thoughts down on paper.”

    Gina likens her role of teacher to that of a mother falcon.

    “She carries her babies up high and then throws them off,” she said. “They learn to fly in the free fall. The magic is in the free fall.” It’s a take on life with which she is well acquainted: Gina and her husband Howard Shapiro are the parents of twin teenage sons.

     Her home life feeds her personal writing. She has journaled every day since she was a child, a habit that has left her home littered with “stacks of notebooks everywhere.” They are the words of a woman whose mind travels many miles a minute. To converse with Gina is to be welcomed into a tornado of smart ideas.

     I chose to write this piece in the first person, because Gina is my friend. Our occasional coffee chats are always the liveliest and most inspirational few hours of whatever week I’m in. When Gina talks, you can see all the wheels turning, the eruption of ideas firing along the synapses, all the shining words rolling out. She is aware of how all that energy affects people. She is a lot.

    “My tombstone will read She Meant Well,” she said, laughing.

     This article about Gina began with a cliché. Do I dare insert another?

     What, I ask, is her philosophy of life and teaching?

    “Like me or dislike me; I’ll at least make enough of an impression that students will react to it, “ she says.

    “Do something to let people know you were here.”