A Mahoning Valley native who’s written a hit for Blake Shelton will help others tap into their creative gifts next month at SMARTS.

Kirsti Manna, a Youngstown State University graduate who grew up in Poland, will lead a Songwriter Girl workshop at the arts school on May 10. The night before she will team with fellow singer-songwriters for a performance at SMARTS.

“(SMARTS President) Becky Keck and I have known each other for a really long time and really have a mutual passion for helping people get more creative and more connected to their own creative self,” Manna said.

“When we started talking about doing the workshop, I said, ‘Why don’t we do something that’s real Nashville? Why don’t we do a songwriter round?'”

A songwriter round is part concert and part storyteller event. Songwriters take turns sharing their songs as well as the stories behind them.

“It’s something that they do in Nashville all the time,” Keck said. “It’s really a big deal. They were generous enough to offer to do it and help us to connect to other folks. Why wouldn’t you do it and offer that as a nice way for the community to come together here at SMARTS the night before? It hopefully will engage more women to come the next day.”

Joining Manna for the songwriter round will be Leanne Binder, who still is based locally but has recorded in Nashville, and Taylor Borton, a Liberty native now based in Nashville.

“Leanne actually came to one of my Songwriter Girl workshops in Youngstown,” Manna said. “I’ve known her for a long time.”

Manna learned about Borton and her local ties from Manna’s song plugger, a person hired to pitch a songwriter’s tunes to different recording artists and record labels.

“I called her that night and told her what I was planning to do,” Manna said. “She was all excited, so I invited her to be on the show too.”

Manna has plenty of songs from which to choose. She cowrote Shelton’s first number-one country single “Austin” and her songs have been recorded by acts ranging from Big & Rich to Tiffany.

Manna originally moved to Nashville with her husband, Boardman native Bill Warner, with dreams of being a singer, but they first achieved success as a songwriting team. Warner shifted to the recording studio, working as a producer and engineering records for such artists as Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood and Michael W. Smith, while Manna stayed focused on songwriting. The couple co-owns the independent label LuckySky Music.

Manna also started doing workshops to encourage women to chase their creative dreams.

“I used to go speak at a talent event that was held twice a year in the Carolinas,” she said. “I remember one time I was speaking at one of the workshops, and there were a lot of young girls at this event. I realized that when the guys started coming in the room, the girls started acting different. They would take a back seat, they wouldn’t ask questions, things like that. I thought, I’ve had a lot of experience in the music business, and I’ve had a lot of success, and I wanted to share what I knew. So I thought, I’m going to just have an event for girls and women, and that’s where it all started.”

The goal was to create a supportive environment. Men can be competitive, but those instincts manifest in a different way with women.

“Girls are really into comparison shopping,” Manna said. “They compare each one to themselves. They beat themselves up, and they’re self-effacing. I wanted to create an environment that was a real confidence-building experience.

“For a lot of girls that would come to my camp, it ended up being about more than actually writing a song. If you’re going to put your creativity out in the world, you have to have a certain kind of confidence, because you have to be willing to be rejected. In life you get rejected for all kinds of things, but when you’re doing something creative, you know it’s really coming from you, so it takes a lot of guts to share that with the world.”

Keck said she was impressed at the atmosphere Manna created in past Songwriter Girl sessions at SMARTS.

“When you put your art out there in a group. It’s like sharing your children, right? It’s very private,” Keck said. “Sharing it in a community, in a safe community that she makes it, those things go away and people really open up, women really open up to it, and that helps them to learn. I think that these things are successful because of who she (Manna) is.”

If you go …

WHAT: Kirsti Manna, Leanne Binder and Taylor Borton

WHEN: 7 p.m. May 9 with VIP meet and greet at 6 p.m.

WHERE: SMARTS, Ohio One Building, 25 E. Boardman St., Youngstown

HOW MUCH: $20 VIP and $10 general admission and tickets are available online at smartsartschool.org/swg25/.

ALSO: Manna will lead a Songwriter Girl workshop from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. May 10 at SMARTS. The cost is $50, and participants can register at smartsartschool.org/swg25/.