Four-year-old Savannah Benjamin finishes writing a letter to Santa Claus, with the help of her mother, Joelle Tritelli, at the “Writing in a Winter Wonderland” workshop in Knutti Hall on Saturday. Tabitha Johnston

SHEPHERDSTOWN — “Writing in a Winter Wonderland: A Children’s Writing Workshop and Book Giveaway” was held at Shepherd University in Knutti Hall on Saturday afternoon.

The event was funded by a three-year grant given to Shepherd by the National Writing Project, according to Shepherd English professor and Society for Creative Writing director Sadie Shorr-Parks.

“This is part of the National Writing Project,” Shorr-Parks said. “With our grant funding from it, we do literary events for the community, for all different ages. A lot of the events are focused on teaching about writing and how to make literature engaging.”

Shorr-Parks noted that another such event, focused on an older audience, was taking place concurrently with the “Writing in a Winter Wonderland” event — a lecture given by Hallmark movie writer Brian Ruberry, right next door in Reynolds Hall.

“We were doing these events today, to go along with the other Christmas events happening in Shepherdstown,” Shoor-Parks said. “There is such a vibrant and artistic community in Shepherdstown, so it’s a natural fit to have events like these here, focused on literature and writing!”

Children’s books on winter themes fill a table at the “Walking in a Winter Wonderland” event in Knutti Hall on Saturday. Tabitha Johnston

According to workshop organizer Valerie Stevens, who is also an English professor at Shepherd, the event was created to encourage children to enjoy reading and writing from an early age. This was done by offering two activities: writing and decorating letters to send to Santa Claus and creating books using blank, hardback notebooks provided by the university. Children were also given a free hardback book, “Winter Tales,” and a wide variety of Christmas-themed snacks: hot chocolate, apple cider, candy canes, Pepperidge Farm gingerbread men, frosted sugar cookies and bags of Mountaineer Popcorn’s theater-style butter popcorn. Those interested in reading books about winter were encouraged to pursue that interest, by checking out 16 children’s books from the Shepherdstown Public Library, which were displayed together on a table in the room.

By providing children with positive early experiences with writing and reading, Stevens said she hoped the children would grow up into well-rounded adults.

“Sometimes by the time students come to us, they don’t necessarily love writing anymore or find joy in it. Plenty of them see writing as a chore or something formulaic,” Stevens said. “We want to nurture a community where there is joy in creativity and writing, so that students don’t just see it as a chore that they must do for a test.

“I think something like this gives children the freedom to do what they want to do with writing which, I think, helps them to see it as something they can love,” Stevens said.

Shepherd University secondary education major Joelle Tritelli could be found at the event with her nephew and her four-year-old daughter, Savannah. For her, seeing the two children get excited about a literature-focused event was very encouraging. She said she wished events like this had been going on when she was younger, as she hadn’t became aware of the joys of reading and writing until she was in middle school.

“Things like this give children a reason to love literature, because they get the exposure to books like this that they wouldn’t necessarily have known about! There’s so much that children can learn about when they read — culture, history and science, to name a few,” Tritelli said. “I try to incorporate literature in everyday life for my kids, because I know that if I had been exposed to it earlier, my love of literature might have grown further than what it has.”