Young 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.
A happy belly is a happy soul. Or a happy belly can be a somewhat alleviated soul, anyway. This week’s featured writer, Isabelle Chen of Bradford, considers planning a crafty “Ferris Bueller” to avoid the next day’s Vermont chill, but in the end allows a simple sandwich to satisfy her woes.
Hope between the lines
By Isabelle Chen, 17, of Bradford
She found hope between the buttery, melted lines of her grilled cheese.
A hope for warmth as the weather outside continued to freeze.
On her walk home, the chill from the breeze
was enough to make her sneeze.
She begged her parents to let her stay home tomorrow, with a “please.”
When they ground out a disapproving no, she sank to her knees,
and hugged her dog with a gigantic squeeze.
Perhaps she could make up an excuse that she’d fallen ill with some infectious disease
and lie through her teeth as she looked into the eyes of her parents —
after all, that was her expertise.
But there were no guarantees to this plan of hers.
So she laid back into her chair with ease,
and found hope between the buttery, melted lines of her grilled cheese.