• We accept submissions from contributors aged 18 and older.

• Submit previously unpublished or works to which you own copyrights.

• In the submission form, you will be asked to select a primary and secondary theme for your submission. 

• You may submit multiple poems, stories, and essays for different themes. Complete one form for each submission.

• All short submissions should be typed and single-spaced in a Word or Google doc 8.5x11 with one-inch margins with a 50-word third-person bio at the bottom of the page.

  • Poems must fit on one page in no smaller than 10-point font (about 20 lines) including your bio.

  • Short fiction and essays must be under 1,000 words, so no more than 999 words– fit on two pages or fewer and still include your bio. See next bullet point.

  • At the end/conclusion of your poem/story/essay, include a brief bio (50 words or less), written in third person, introducing yourself and highlighting any relevant experience or background that informs your work You may include references to other work(s) that may interest the reader by you or others. This bio will be published as is and serves three purposes – one your credentials and two to introduce readers to more of your work. Finally, we want your identity and bio to be visible with your work if printed or shared.

• Note: The “short” texts are a response to teachers’ requests for thematic, open licensed, not-censored texts. They seek a resource of beautiful writing that is free and easy to print & distribute to students; teachers seek texts that may be read/explored within a single class period, typically 45 minutes (and TL:DR trends). See flash, sudden, micro fiction like this, this, this – but with youth-focus. This also means that the text does not contain profanity or explicit sex.

• Please submit through this form https://forms.gle/Bj98ZRLy1B5ReY2E6.

• All contributions must be revised, edited, and polished before submitting. Drafts or works-in-progress are ineligible. We regret that we are unable to provide people with individual feedback due to the large volume of submissions and limited staff as this is an unfunded project.

• All contributions will go through a review process with an advisory board of teachers, high school students, authors, and YAL scholars: about 20 poems, 5 stories, and 5 essays will be selected for each theme/volume. 

• Youth Complexity: The selected texts should feature a youth character/voice with  intellectually stimulating, offering multiple interpretations to foster rich discussions in the classroom. 

  • Consider “Sonrisas” by Pat Mora and “Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke but updated and with a young adult persona reflected. 

  • Consider fiction in a variety of genres like historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy, horror, romance, mystery, etc. 

  • For essays, ensure they help readers (students & teachers) to imagine nonfiction ways of engaging with the world (e.g., creative nonfiction, op-ed, speeches, open letters). If you write them, if we publish them,  teachers will hopefully imagine how their students can write beyond the 5-paragraph essay.

• Inclusivity: We strongly encourage submissions that feature inclusive and affirming representations. We are seeking texts written by diverse adult authors, exploring themes related to geography, class, race, language, religion, gender, sexuality, and ability. We welcome multilingual authors, drawing on their entire linguistic repertoire and appreciate poems, stories, and essays that celebrate linguistic diversity. We invite your consideration of this article (and other sides of the debate) as you decide text features. Maybe this will be the subject of your contribution.

• Connections/Counternarratives to Canonical Texts: Submissions could explore topics that can be in conversation with/against canonical texts typically taught in high school classrooms. This offers a rationale for teachers to bring in youth-focused texts to update their curriculum and shift their framing with contemporary perspectives.

​Publisher: The digital publication will be openly licensed and published by OSU Libraries and OpenOKState. For an example, see: Bridge the Distance: An Oral History of COVID-19 in Poems. We will facilitate non-revenue generating publication and global distribution of a physical copy of the final product.

Open Licensing:  Individual authors will retain copyright of their work, with Creative Commons licenses used to communicate how others make access and use the work. The overall book will be licensed CC BY-NC-SA. Authors and editors will not be compensated for their work but will be credited as the author. Poems, stories, and essays will include an author biography with references to the author’s other publications and recommended resources.  Layering Creative Commons licenses over existing copyrights provides clarity regarding others' legal access and use of the materials. This open licensing encourages sharing of knowledge and creativity and enables the work to be considered an open educational resource (OER). Teachers and students will be able to reuse, translate, and share the work so long as they include attribution, use it for non-commercial purposes, and carry the same license forward on works which build on or incorporate portions of this book. Because OER are free, they expand equitable access to learning and make it possible for teachers, families, and schools to distribute high-quality learning materials widely.  While there are various OER websites, some have a registration fee and some are not curated by young adult researchers and educators, so their collections are not necessarily inclusive and affirming representations of youth.

Dr. Sarah J. Donovan’s professional interests include ethical, inclusive curriculum, methods, and assessment practices in secondary English classrooms.  She is a former junior high English language arts teacher of fifteen years and an Assistant Professor of Secondary English Education at Oklahoma State University. She wrote Genocide Literature in Middle and Secondary Classrooms (2016) and the young adult novel, Alone Together (2018).  Sarah also edited Rhyme & Rhythm: Poems for Student Athletes (Archer) and Teacher-Poets Writing to Bridge the Distance (OpenOkstate). She is a co-editor for the online journal Writers Who Care. Dr. Donovan was the Books in Review columnist for The ALAN Review (2019) and serves as a state representative and former board member for The Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of NCTE (ALAN). She is the founder of a blog and poetry writing community for teachers, Ethical ELA, and has contributed chapters to The Best Lesson Series (Talks with Teachers, 2018), Queer Adolescent Literature as a Complement to the English Language Arts Curriculum (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), Moving Beyond Loss to Societal Grieving (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), and Contending with Gun Violence in the English Language Classroom (Routledge, 2019).