Jennifer Chiung is an emerging artist from New York. She enjoys tackling novel concepts and social issues through her digital work. Her work has been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers.
Literary Journal for Young Writers
By Jennifer Chiung
Jennifer Chiung is an emerging artist from New York. She enjoys tackling novel concepts and social issues through her digital work. Her work has been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers.
By Annika Gangopadhyay
Pretend for a moment that you are on the sun. Pretend
for a moment that gravity is a pulse. Pretend that
it squeezes you, (look at your lover’s eye, morphing)
Pretend that you yearn for flatness, for compression beyond closure.
Pretend time is an orbit around your finger around your eye
like a sunspot is an afterthought–let it collapse on you,
let it scorch & evaporate.
Pretend you can feel the synapse underneath your lover’s eye
pulsing across your eye:
now look at the moon looking at you lapsing into fission–
pretend this is sound & sing for love &
maybe the photons will sing you to dust,
arms stretched out, feet
half molten, lungs punctured into corneas &
eyes detonated,
Pretend the embers hold you & your bones
(not to scorch, but to hold) &
this gravity is peace.
Annika Gangopadhyay is a student and aspiring writer from California. She enjoys morning walks, music, and vintage postcards.
By Maria Polizzi
Imagine this, crime is not punished by prison, but by changing the color of the prisoner’s skin, and public shame. This is what Hannah faces in When She Woke by Hillary Jordan. Hannah had been changed to the worst color imaginable. A color representing murder. She is red.
Hannah finds herself in a difficult situation in When She Woke. Love has driven her to change the course of her life. Maybe forever. Worst of all, she is caught. Now she has to live her life as a red.
Hillary Jordan tackles themes of love, loss, and the weight of your choices in When She Woke by using colors to represent crime and discrimination. Some of the best things about this novel are its sensory details, such as describing what skin changing feels like. It is paced very fast, and the characters all go through changes in the book as they face different problems.
The genre of this book is science fiction and is set in a futuristic United States. Hannah is from a small town in Texas, a very Christian community.
Readers will be taken on a journey of self discovery with Hannah as she grows and matures. This is a story that any teen will enjoy, If you wants a story that creeps you out, and makes you think, pick up When She Woke at the nearest library.
Maria Polizzi is a high school student, and this is her third publication. She found she enjoyed writing two years ago, and it is something she plans to continue doing as she moves forward in her education.
By Julia McCarthy
Robert Beatty fans will not be disappointed in his new novel Willa of the Wood. He sticks to his themes about the importance of having family and friends as he writes about Willa, who has neither.
Willa finds herself alone with a clan that doesn’t care about her and humans who try to kill her, but just when she feels the most alone, the forest helps Willa, and she ponders one kindness that contradicts everything she’s learned. All the events steadily build to the climax where choices are harder than ever, and Willa has to decide if she should do what’s right even if it will hurt her in the process.
Beatty’s writing is rich with sensory details about the Great Smoky Mountains, Willa’s home, with its gigantic mountains, flowing rivers, still lakes, and lush forests. Beatty also compares nature to people and man-made tools, like when he writes that people are alike to wolves because they both hunt and kill what they need to survive. Willa also idolized the wolves because of the way they work together. She longs to be part of their pack and hunt alongside the wolves.
There are many secondary characters who shape Willa’s life. Willa learned the most from her grandmother who taught her the old ways of their people and how to use her powers in good ways. The leader of Willa’s clan, the padaran, taught Willa a lot, too. Most of his teachings were wrong, but they influenced Willa’s decisions since she trusts him.
The plausible dialogue between Willa and those characters shows Willa’s age and curiosity as she asks many questions and wonders about her place in the world around her.
Beatty writes about so many themes as Willa wanders the woods, but the most important one is about having a family and friends to guide you and support your decisions. Each time reading Willa of the Wood reveals more of Beatty’s themes.
Beatty’s usual magic is included which means Willa of the Wood is a fantasy book. Much like the Serafina series Beatty wrote, myths become reality, and Willa has some magic of her own.
The beautiful scenery mixed with brilliant themes make this novel one of the best. Lovers of the Serafina series will appreciate and enjoy Willa of the Wood because of the main characters’ many similarities, like their love of nature and forests and their longing for adventure. Serafina even makes an appearance in the novel, so if you like Serafina or if you want to disappear into a twelve-year-old girl’s mind with the beautiful scenery of the Great Smoky Mountains, then read Willa of the Wood.
By Elizabeth Lei
Elizabeth is a high schooler based in Texas. In her free time, she enjoys reading fantasy novels and baking banana bread.
By Lynne Inouye
In between swaths of clouds, where space meets sky and Earth fades from view, a clock lays—ticking.
Its gears stretch for miles in a sea of gleaming bolts, and rust flakes underfoot. There is the groan of metal in the air—the gasping breath of ancient machinery. It is a familiar tune to the Timekeeper. He shuffles across moving cogs with light, practiced feet.
As he walks, a distant shape emerges from the cloud cover. The second hand–lurching closer, pausing, struggling on again. The hour is just past eight, the minute stretching off to six; his shift is close to being over, the Timekeeper notes. Thank God. At times, he crouches near interlocking gears or examines the great width of a clock hand, but there is not much to be done at this hour. And he is only one person, barely a speck of dust against this grand design.
The second hand drags on, nearly upon him, and he ducks to avoid its path. Balanced on a spinning gear, the Timekeeper is mindless of the dizzying drop–the emptiness that reaches to envelope him. Time feels almost slower than before. The whine of metal vibrates something deep in his chest as he watches the start-stop-start of the clock, and with a scowl, he rubs at his knees.
Blasted thing. Piteously groaning, the noise of the clock is practically too much to bear. The second hand staggers back and forth like some massive, injured thing, and the Timekeeper blinks, shifting closer.
He does not stand–it is a few feet from him now. But the clock itself seems to fight it, gears pushing and pulling, with rust like fallen blood. He squints. The Timekeeper has worked his job for forty years, but never has he seen something quite like this. Broken cogs, yes–oiling and soothing little aches and pains, but this–
The second stretches. His knees ache from crouching. And with a striking sigh, the churn of time stops dead.
The Timekeeper stares. Cloud is thick in front of him, but the sight, the silence, speaks true. The clock has stopped. The gear he’s on is motionless while the world holds its breath, and a hum builds. The smell of iron builds with it–it is raining, crying, red as it turns 8:32.
The clock shudders, and then the second hand resumes its path. Only–
It is traveling backward, now.
The Timekeeper rubs his eyes, bewildered. His tools are small at his side, his hands calloused, but not skilled. This is above his pay grade. And he is not affected, so he only turns away as the world reverts–as the cries start from below.
Lynne Inouye, 17, is a queer fiction writer with an interest in all things unnatural or otherworldly. She runs her school newspaper and enjoys acting, spending time with her cat, and using far too much imagery.