Photos: Cover art from recent Youth Communication publications

True teen stories by teens for teens

"I'm Natasha Santos, I'm from New York City, Queens, and the first story I worked on was the one that took be two years to write. I remember the first edit, and the story was going to be about love-but no-o-o. Every time I sat down to write it, it would not come out that way. What would happen is that I'd write these ranting pages of like 'People suck, life sucks, I suck, bleh, bleh.

"She [my advisor] would ask me these questions, these deep questions, and I'd go around them or use my words to mask what I was saying, and she'd say like 'you aren't telling me something.'

And then one day I walked into her office and I'm looking at her folders and one has my name on it and it says 'Natasha Anger.' I'm like, 'what's anger?' She's like, 'that's what your story is about!' I'm like, 'my story is not about anger, my story is about love.' She's like, 'no it's about anger, did you read the drafts?' I read them over and I'm like 'maybe.' She said, 'I think we should work from there [from the anger].' And we did."

— From the film Changing Lives, One Story at a Time produced by Ric Burns in honor of the 25th anniversary of Youth Communication


For twenty-five years, Youth Communication has been teaching writing, journalism and leadership skills to diverse New York City's teens like Natasha—Latinos and African-Americans, teenagers in foster care, recent immigrants, youth from the most marginal of circumstances. MacArthur Fellowship winner Keith Hefner began Youth Communication in 1980 in response to a national study that found racial exclusion, censorship, and mediocrity the rule in high school publications.

Each year, more than a hundred youth participate in Youth Communication school year and summer journalism workshops. They become writers for two magazines. Some write for New Youth Connections, a general-interest youth magazine, distributed monthly to a readership of 200,000 New York City teens. Others write for Represent, a bi-monthly magazine by and for young people in foster care.

"Writing is a tool where you are not being judged at all," says Antwaun Garcia, who grew up in the projects with drug-addicted parents and uses writing to fight back at those who labeled him a "crack baby." "You're just using your own thoughts. You'd never assume it had so much power or so much of an impact on you and others."

In addition to publishing two magazines, Youth Communication periodically gathers its young writers' essays into theme-based anthologies. The most recent, The Courage To Be Yourself, features 26 teens writing about cliques, conflicts, and overcoming peer pressure. The story titles speak volumes: "In Defense of Misfits," "Sticking with Your 'Own Kind,'" "Lighten Up on Heavy People," "Beating the Bullies."

"The teaching and editorial process begins with discussions between the adult editors and the teen staff, during which they seek to discover the stories that are both most important to each teen writer and potentially most appealing to the magazine's readers.

"Once topics have been chosen, students begin the process of crafting their stories...

Read more about how Youth Communication works with its teen writers.


In her story, "Sticks and Stones," 18-year-old Yen Yam writes: "I always thought being Chinese was a curse. When I was growing up, I lived in a mostly black neighborhood and I had friends, but I didn't fit in. At first, I didn't think too much about my race. Then, in first grade, two boys started calling me 'small eyes' and making some karate noises. At first I didn't know what it meant. I was only 6 years old."

Youth Communication magazines and books have won dozens of awards, including the Coming Up Taller award from the President's Council on the Arts and the Humanities for being one of the best youth programs in the nation and the Judges' Award for overall excellence from the Association of Educational Publishers. Its alumni include a national book award finalist, bureau chiefs for Newsday and the New York Times, young novelists and writers—and a corps of 2,000 young believers in the transforming power of writing.


A Leader's Guide to The Courage To Be Yourself by Al Desetta and Sherrie Gammage provides teachers, counselors, and advisory leaders with an array of discussion tools and activities to use with students in conjunction with The Courage To Be Yourself. Both books are published by Free Spirit Publishing and are available from Educators for Social Responsibility, a partner in the project.


Return to "It's hip to be deep: Making writing essential to teens' lives."