From The Diary of Anne Frank to Frankenstein to The Outsiders, all written when Anne Frank, Mary Shelley, and S.E. Hinton, respectively, were teenagers, young writers have long been transforming us with the power of their words and their stories.

We're proud to publish teenage writers and celebrate the contributions of young people to literature.

During winter quarter of my senior year at Stanford University, I woke up on a Sunday morning to learn that a student named Brock Turner had been arrested for sexually assaulting an unconscious young woman, Chanel Miller, close to where I lived. I watched my campus, and later, the entire country, erupt in outrage. I found myself sitting down with my younger sister and her friends, who openly wondered if they would get sexually assaulted when they left for college. I found myself feeling hopeless after learning that, despite it being a case with evidence that few survivors would ever have, Brock Turner would be sentenced to 6 months of county jail, of which he would only serve three.

The seemingly intractable issues of our time would stay intractable if we cannot even bear to talk about them. Later, as a health educator, I would use young adult literature, such as 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher, Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chobsky and I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson, to talk to high school students about sexual violence. What gave me hope was watching students go from intense discomfort with this topic, and understandably so, to sharing personal stories and having some of the most lively and thoughtful conversations that I have ever witnessed. I wanted to tap into this power of literature and youth storytelling, and soon, the idea for Novelly Publishing and Youth Authors Week was born.

When we talk about the characters, plot and dialogue of stories about protagonists that young people relate to (or even wrote themselves), we create a space where young people can be the experts on the most complex issues. Only when we create such a space, one that meets young people where they are, can we hear their voices and their stories. Novelly Publishing and Youth Authors Week are born out of a concern for a generation that has grown up with a global pandemic, social unrest and widespread reckonings with inequities, but most importantly, out of a respect for their rights, their creativity, and their power. We have barely scratched the surface of what young readers and writers are capable of and it is my hope and dream that Novelly Publishing can play even a tiny role in what they have in store.
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