About the Young Writers Project
YWP, an independent nonprofit based in Burlington, Vermont, engages young people to write and use digital media to express themselves with clarity and power and to gain confidence and skills for the workplace and life. YWP publishes about 1,000 students’ work each year here, in newspapers across Vermont, on Vermont Public Radio and in YWP’s monthly digital magazine, The Voice. Since 2006, it has offered young people a place to write, explore and connect online at youngwritersproject.org, which has only one rule: Be respectful. For more information, please contact YWP executive director Geoffrey Gevalt at ggevalt@youngwritersproject.org.
Ani Menkov, a eighth grade student at Frances C. Richmond Middle School in Hanover, New Hampshire, writes about a surprising discovery she made about her older brother. This piece was published in Young Writers Project’s most recent anthology and she read it during YWP’s Celebration of Writing in the fall.
Music in the Attic
By Ani Menkov
[I]t woke me in the middle of the night.
Could’ve sworn that I heard – what was that?
Faint, sweet music.
But from where?
The attic.
So I rubbed my sleepy eyes,
and, warding off thoughts of monsters
with huge dinner plate eyes and long legs and altogether too many teeth all waiting …
No. Stop.
I walked up the stairs of the attic, music getting ever closer.
I peered around the corner,
and there was my tough, older brother –
with a viola.
I was tempted to stay and listen to the slow, sad tune.
But I realized that perhaps it was better never to ever have seen this –
at all.
So I left.
