This Week: General

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Special thanks this week toThe Bay and Paul

FoundaTions

Thanks from YWPabouT The ProjecT

Each week, Young Writers Project receives several hundred submissions from students across Vermont and New Hampshire. A team of staff, mentors and students selects the best writing and images for publication. This week, we present responses to the prompt, General writing. Read more at youngwritersproject.org, a safe, civil online community of writers.

Young Writers Project is an inde-pendent nonprofit that engages stu-dents to write, helps them improve and connects them with authentic audiences in newspapers, before live audiences and on web sites, young-writersproject.org, vpr.net, vtdigger.org, and cowbird.com. YWP also publishes The Voice, a monthly digi-tal magazine with YWP’s best writ-ing, images and features. To learn more, go to youngwritersproject.org or contact YWP at (802) 324-9537.

YWP neWs & evenTs

check ouT YWP’s neW Web siTe

youngwritersproject.orgA safe, respectful community of writers and artists who take

creative risks and have fun doing it.

The calvin

Writing Challenge

Write to win $1,500 and a trip to NYC to be honored at a reception! Young Writers Project partners with the Calvin Coolidge Foundation to promote and help curate entries for the 2015 Calvin Prize for Vermont Youth. This year’s theme: Do You Think higher eDucaTion is WorTh The cosT To You anD Your familY?

Submit writing (fewer than 1,000 words) in any genre and address the question above. Due: sePT. 25 More details: coolidgefoundation.org.

Go to youngwritersproject.org for your FREE subscription!

ToWn foresT WriTing challenge

Vermont has more than 300 town forests and this year marks the centen-nial of the legislation that started them all. The Vermont Town Forest Centen-nial Celebration, in partnership with Young Writers Project, invites young writers to explore these forests and write!

Prizes: 1st: $100; 2nd: $75; 3rd: $50. All winners will also receive a 2016 season pass to Vermont State Parks and have their work published.

hoW To submiT: Any genre: poetry, prose, essay, letter, and no more than 750 words. Due: ocT. 25

For more information, go to young-writersproject.org/forest15.

Sunset runningI disappear into the setting sun, my feet

carrying me at a fast, steady pace.The trees glow, almost like they are

welcoming me into the forest. My feet pound down on the dirt road,

but the pain doesn’t come. Instead, con-tentment floats through my body like the feeling I get when I hit the finish line. Birds chirp and the crickets have started their nightly songs as I hit mile two. Two and a half more to go.

I smile. Water from the lake laps up against the rocks. A few people who share my love of sunset running pass me – we nod a quiet exchange, acknowledging the beauty surrounding us. My feet hit the ground with a rhythmic pattern sending up little plumes of dust after each step.

I turn around and start my journey back home, saving a bit of energy for that last hill. After recovering from injuries, this just hits the spot.

– sTorY anD PhoTo bY abhi DoDgson, age 13, souTh hero

Dear Reader

I write to remember who I was and so people can see who I am.I write to those forgotten moments,the ones they will only hear in an echo’s residue,the ones I still hear screaming in my mind.I write to the infinities of my dreams,write when I’m half asleep so later I know how I feel,what I see in the midst of now,so I can read how I felt at the heart of then.I write to the I love you’s I forgot to sayso I can feel my heart thunder and hope yours is tooin the silence we have created with dis-tance,no matter how it came about,no matter how far away.I write to rip my heart out of my chestso I can see what I have left,which parts need stitches.I write to pick myself up,to tell myself it’ll be okay.I write to discover thatmaybe we think too much of ourselves in the way we love – isn’t it jealousy searching for something to be purely ours?But isn’t that okay?I write to feel,let it show,then let it be.And it’s all in these letters,signed only with sincerity.Love,Me

– erin bunDock, age 17, shelburne

Crossing roadsPardon me if you find me rude, but this

just ticks me off so darn much. How could you allow a city to endanger

school children – especially on a cross-ing mobbed by cars, where the school bus doesn’t visit?

I was 5 when I started crossing there daily, and at least once a week I watched a car zoom by just feet from my feet.

We had a light, a crosswalk, a guard, and still we were threatened weekly if not daily.

Our guards quit because they felt unsafe; anyway, what good would they be protecting our safety if they spent the whole time fearing for their own?

When I was in kindergarten, my mama wrote a grant to buy signs that would inform drivers of their speed as they ap-proached our crossing, so maybe they would think before they ran over a 6-year-old.

She organized it, paid for it, and waited and waited and waited.

I was in sixth grade and no longer crossing there daily when they placed them.

Six years later.Now our neighborhood has shifted

focus to the traffic circle down the road, the circle I will cross daily throughout middle school (now) and high school (later).

The most dangerous street I cross daily had no crosswalk until a few weeks ago. Still there is no guard, no light, no anything else.

I’m told they made plans to renovate and make the circle safer in 2008, but we’ll still be waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting until 2020, the year I graduate from high school.

Maybe I am selfish. All this will benefit kids, but not me. I will live a jeopardized life, commuting to school.

Maybe you find me rude, but this still ticks me off so darn much.

– sTorY anD PhoTos bY isiDora baillY-hall, age 13, burlingTon