How Can We Make This World Worth Knowing? Book Release Party

Join the International Library of Young Authors for a celebratation of our newest young author anthology! Enjoy readings from local young authors, activities and snacks. Free and open to the public! All are welcome.

How Can We Make This World Worth Knowing?: An Anthology of Student Writing from Around the World, edited by the International Alliance of Youth Writing Centers, with an introduction by Hanif Abdurraqib, is a collection of writing from young people between the ages of six and eighteen. This anthology's essays, poems, and stories share the imagination, creativity, and power of over 250 young authors from all around the world. The themes and passions within this collection sprawl—from fantastical stories to deeply personal reflections on identity—but each piece works toward the answer to the question How Can We Make This World Worth Knowing? All of these young voices are worth getting to know. 

"The work in this anthology is the kind of work I plan to chase after for as long as I am a writer. It is wonderful to have mentors, and it is a blessing to have elders whom you can learn from as both artist and person, but I believe there is real magic in looking directly alongside you, at peers who are doing work that brings you pleasure, no matter their age or background or writing history. No matter whether the only poem they've ever written is the one they put in your hands in the moments before you read it and then quietly said to yourself, / want to write something like THIS."

– Hanif Abdurraqib

"When young people are given freedom to say what most matters to them, and then we listen to and even amplify their voices, then they will, and always do, write with their hearts bursting."

– Dave Eggers & Ninive Calegari

About the International Alliance of Youth Writing Centers

The International Alliance of Youth Writing Centers was conceived in the summer of 2018, when about twenty youth writing labs from around the world convened in Amsterdam. The leaders of these centers agreed there was a need to unite under one loose banner, while of course remaining independent. We are joined only in a common belief that young people need places where they can write and be heard, where they can have their voices polished, published, and amplified. The Alliance is a movement and our cumulative power gives us strength. The hope in setting up this alliance is to show each other and the world just how many of us there are and to encourage more centers to emerge. This is a time when migrants are being treated with suspicion, when opportunities are being curtailed in many countries for people who are new arrivals, and when xenophobia is not only accepted but celebrated by our most powerful elected leaders. More than ever, we need safe spaces for young people, especially immigrants; spaces where they can learn and be welcomed-where their minds and words are celebrated, not denigrated. Our dream is that more and more like-minded youth writing centers, those extant and emerging, join our movement. This book also includes a guide for how to teach writing like the Alliance does, as well as how to build a writing center.

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Host or Publisher The International Library of Youth Writing