Daniella Cardona

Gabby Roldan, 18, one of the youngest students to attend a Dodge Festival at the NJ Pac Theatre in Newark, has been inspired to pursue her dream in Journalism.

 Out of her whole high school, only two people were chosen to attend, and she was one of the lucky ones.

Gabrielle Roldan said, this is good…put attribution at the end of the sentence “My teacher saw a future for me in journalism and told me she could not think of anyone else she would have rather chosen to attend the festival.”


With that in mind, Gabby got motivated to become a Journalism and Media Studies major. Wanting to become an author, of course this was her first step at achieving her goal, she said.

During the festival Gabby found her favorite poet, Mojgani. Mojgani is a slam poet. In other words, is involved in a competition where people read their poems and get scores based on their poems. This poet is still fairly young, is known but not yet that big, and has published a couple books such as: Songs from Under the River and The Feather Room.


Gabby said she connected a lot to this poet because Mojgani is very descriptive and it made gabby want to take her own poetry into that perspective. Meeting Mojgani encouraged her to share more using more metaphors and similes.

“I want to paint pictures with my stories rather than just stating. I think that is the problem with most authors at the moment,” Ms. Roldan told me during the interview. These words came exactly from the future author herself, so you know what to expect in the next couple of years.

Gabby mentioned, “My goals in life include publishing books mostly concerning family because I have had to deal with so much throughout my whole life,” and then later added,“I then want to turn my books into movies,” the future author told me.


Although Gabby is focusing on her schoolwork, she writes poetry on the side just to help her get into a better mood. Some people take naps to feel better, nope, Gabby writes poetry. Only being a freshman at Rutgers University, Gabby has landed a job with the RU-TV right here on campus. She plans to do big things with this, get her foot out the door, and gain experience from this amazing opportunity.