Girls Write Now: Two Decades of True Stories from Young Female Voices

“Important work . . . A beautiful example of what happens when you let girls write and share it with the world.”―Samhita Mukhopadhyay, Teen Vogue

Teenage girls tell their most urgent stories, punctuated by inspiration and advice from Zadie Smith, Roxane Gay, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Gloria Steinem, Alice Walker, and more of today's great writers.

Girls Write Now: Two Decades of True Stories from Young Female Voices offers a brave and timely portrait of teenage-girl life in the United States over the past twenty years. They're working part-time jobs to make ends meet, deciding to wear a hijab to school, sharing a first kiss, coming out to their parents, confronting violence and bullying, and immigrating to a new country while holding onto their heritage. Through it all, these young writers tackle issues of race, gender, poverty, sex, education, politics, family, and friendship. Together their narratives capture indelible snapshots of the past and lay bare hopes, insecurities, and wisdom for the future.

Interwoven is advice from great women writers—Roxane Gay, Francine Prose, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Zadie Smith, Quiara Alegria Hudes, Janet Mock, Gloria Steinem, Lena Dunham, Mia Alvar, and Alice Walker—offering guidance to a young reader about where she's been and where she might go. Inspiring and informative, Girls Write Now belongs in every school, library and home, adding much-needed and long-overdue perspectives on what it is to be young in America.

Girls Write Now mentors underserved young women to find their voices through the power of writing and community. Founded in 1998, Girls Write Now is New York’s first and only writing and mentoring organization for girls, and one of the nation’s top after school programs as distinguished twice by the White House and the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. Girls Write Now has been honored twice by the Nonprofit Excellence Awards as one of New York City’s top ten nonprofits, and twice by the New York City Council as one of the city’s top girl only initiative. Girls Write Now writers have performed at Lincoln Center and the United Nations, published original work in Newsweek, Elle India, AOL Cambio, Huffington Post and the Girls Write Now award-winning anthology, and earned hundreds of Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.