New Worlds: The 2013 Girls Write Now Anthology

Introducing our new #ThrowbackThursday anthology feature series.

Did you know that Girls Write Now has been publishing anthologies for over twenty years? Our publications showcase the best fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and memoir from the teen writers pushing past boundaries and writing new worlds. In celebration of Girls Write Now’s 25th Anniversary this year, we’ll be highlighting a different one of our anthologies each week for #ThrowbackThursday.

This week, we’re highlighting our 2013 anthology, New Worlds. New Worlds: the Girls Write Now 2013 Anthology celebrated Girls Write Now’s 15th Anniversary and is available for purchase on Amazon.

New Worlds showcases the incredible diversity and creative fearlessness of Girls Write Now’s intergenerational community with writing that surprises and challenges readers to stretch their understanding of the world and themselves. In doing so, we look back on our past to creatively interpret our future.

As mentor alum Jillian Gallagher writes on page 123 of New Worlds:

History. Roots. Legacy. However we think of it, our past is a wellspring of emotion and memory. A source of power and sometimes of pain. It’s where we come from, and can give us clues to where we’re going. And perhaps most importantly, our history is where our story begins.

Whether our respective roots are close enough to touch or fading from memory, rich with joy or rooted in tears, they’re irrevocably woven into our identities.

Our histories teach us about where we came from, and may light the way to where we could be going. They illuminate the people around us, and enlighten us to what we hold inside ourselves.

And whether we prefer to embrace our past or run from what we think it means, our histories are a rich source of introspection, self-discovery, and inspired storytelling.

In the end, whether our histories shape us or shame us, make us laugh or provoke questions, they’re a springboard for every story we wish to tell. And for that, we are grateful.

Read an Excerpt: Loving In New Ways by Ava Nadel

“¿Cuantos años tienes tú, Norma? “Dos.”

Dos? I thought. That’s odd. Norma had to be older than 16. Later that night, after dinner, my homestay mother told me that Norma has an intellectual disability: she is twenty-eight and doesn’t know how to read or write.

Because my Spanish wasn’t entirely perfect, I was unsure of how I should
go about communicating with Norma. I had tried conversing with her using my Spanish, but even then she seemed not to understand basic phrases I was saying. So I sat there, at the dining table, shelling the lima beans for dinner. I could feel her staring at me, smiling as I plopped the shelled beans into a bowl. She then stuck one of them in front of my face. I had put the unshelled lima bean into the bowl with the shelled ones. She started laughing both with her mouth and eyes, and I did the same. We may not have been communicating using words, but using our emotions was enough.

For the next four days, I didn’t feel so nervous around Norma anymore. I found that just by smiling and laughing, we could read each other’s minds just fine. The next few mornings, I would be applying sunscreen in the bedroom and she’d come in, freshly showered, combing her silky, long black hair. We’d sit there in silence, taking care of ourselves separately, but fully aware of the other’s presence. Much as I had when peeling the lima beans, I found that if I pulled off humorous actions, we’d improve our communication. I would play around with the stray dogs and cats and have her try and throw food in my mouth. One way or another she’d burst into a fit of giggles.

Through forming this sisterly bond with Norma with hardly any speaking, I learned perhaps one of the most valuable life lessons that any teenager could learn at my age: relationships don’t need to be built on much. Norma and I surrounded each other with smiles and laughter and I came to realize that positive energy and emotions were all we needed.

The last morning of my homestay, my homestay mother, Carmela, was cooking us breakfast. Norma turned up the radio, humming along to what I assumed was her favorite song. She took me by the hands and started dancing with me. I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes—the tears I refused to let fall because I knew that if I showed her how weak I was, I wouldn’t be able to explain it.

I miss her. I miss her cooing at the stray cat underneath the dining table. I miss her combing her wet hair as she watched me spray sunscreen on my mosquito bites before I left to weed the garden. I miss the dimples in her cheeks from when she’d get herself into a fit of giggles and couldn’t stop laughing.

Sometimes the best love is the one that can exist without words.

From the Foreword

"These pages also mark a final performance, and the many rooms in the house of this anthology are a bristling intrigue. Whether in fiction or fantasy, in essays of humor or personal heartbreak, in free verse or dialogue, it is a compilation of work that calls us to pay attention. By cutting the ribbon on New Worlds: The Girls Write Now 2013 Anthology, we celebrate both the basis of the Girls Write Now community and the hard-shine polish of the written word as it has been altered, expanded, reworked, cut, and perfected on the page." Read the rest of Adele Griffin's foreword

Praise for New Worlds

"To write from the heart is to illuminate one's existence against many kinds of darkness. These young writers are going deep, feeling hard, self-defining what has as yet no public face. What a refreshment to me as an older writer. To feel what is so true, so real, so liberating in this work. After all, it is the hard on freedom we gain ourselves that is truly our own." — Alice Walker, The Color Purple

"It’s not easy being a woman of color in this world. But I write because I still have hope that things can be changed. Whenever I falter, I look over my shoulder and see the next generation of women writers rising — I hear the bold voices of these brilliant young women and I forge ahead knowing the change we need is already underway." — Zetta Elliot, Ship of Souls

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