[Y]oung Writers Project, an independent nonprofit based in Burlington, engages young people to write and use digital media to express themselves with clarity and power, and to gain confidence and skills for school, the workplace and life.
Check out the most recent issue of The Voice, Young Writers Project’s monthly digital magazine. Click here.
Each week, VTDigger features a writing submission – an essay, poem, fiction or nonfiction – accompanied by a photo or illustration from Young Writers Project.
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, share their photos, art, audio and video, and to explore and connect online at youngwritersproject.org. For more information, please contact Susan Reid at sreid@youngwritersproject.org.
Charlotte Dodds, 13, of Burlington writes an empowering piece about standing up for herself against the negative critique of a “friend.” She realizes that she doesn’t really need that friend at all.
Interest in the Pig Snorts
By Charlotte Dodds
[Y]ou think my hair is strange,
just because it isn’t straight and regular.
You think my nose is too wide,
and long,
and not proportioned in any direction it goes.
You think my eyes are plain
and not interesting,
not in the slightest.
You think
that my laugh sounds like a pig snorting.
But I think that my hair is good hair.
I think that my nose isn’t too wide or long.
I don’t think my eyes are plain.
They’re not stunning,
but that doesn’t mean they’re ugly.
And I don’t care if I sometimes snort when I laugh,
because at least I’m enjoying myself when I’m laughing.
And you may never take the slightest bit of interest in me,
might always think I’m butt-ugly,
might always think of me as
the girl who has too much confidence.
But I could stop investing my time in you,
faster than a quick snap of the fingers.
And you sure don’t seem
to need me in your life.
You have more than enough friends,
so I think you could get on
easily enough without me.
We do not have to be friends
if you do not want to hear my piggy snorts.
