By Sara Ballenger

Photo by Joe Hu, Town Crier

By reading from his love story between two teens in a group home, author Stephen Elliott hoped to inspire students at Los Altos High School to write from their own life experience.

Elliott, who spent time in a group home while growing up, read from his book, “A Life Without Consequences,” during the 17th annual writers’ conference at Los Altos High School last week. Elliott was one of 28 writers to participate.

English teacher Galen Rosenberg helped coordinate the event with parent volunteers.

A variety of authors, from journalists and poets to children’s book writers, visited various classes and distributed their work to discuss with the students.

Many of the speakers during the conference, including Elliott, are from the Wallace Stegner postgraduate creative writing program at Stanford University, which awards two-year fellowships to 10 writers and poets annually.

“I think my students are understanding that you don’t need any sort of classical training in writing, and that a lot of writing is experience,” said Michael Smith, a 12th-grade English teacher. Elliott spoke to one of Smith’s classes.

“Writing truly is limitless. Your ability to write goes as far as you are willing to train it,” Smith said. “There are a lot of students who have an innate fear of writing, because they haven’t found a topic or experience in life that they found rewarding enough to write about.”

Elliott stressed that every person has a story that is worth writing about.

“Writing is about getting things off your chest and communicating, it’s not about getting published, especially in high school,” he said. “They (students) can grow emotionally through writing - that’s what they should be doing.”

Elliott hopes students realize that writing has the power to provoke thought and that his own story will get students thinking.

“One of these students is going to go on and run a group home or make an impact in the child-welfare community,” he said. “It’s in their consciousness now so it’s good. They can write about anything they want.”

Smith acknowledged that writing involves risk, especially when telling a personal story, but he said the risk is worth it.

“Until you take those risks that are involved in writing, that’s when you are going to find out if you can do it, ” Smith said.

Elliott’s story caught the attention of Smith’s students.

“It’s good to have those different kinds of perspectives, to be aware of different issues,” said Alex Merino. “I think it’s good that he has been successful because he has a valid point of view from his personal experiences.”

Although student Lu Tong doesn’t see herself as a writer, she appreciates what Elliott said through his writing.

“To see that he chose another life and became an accomplished writer was inspirational,” Tong said.