Author Zadie Smith with Girls Write Now Mentees, Natalie Mojica and Daleelah Saleh, holding Rise Speak Change: the 2017 Anthology (Photo by Janette Pellegrini/Getty Images for Girls Write Now)
ANNOUNCING RISE SPEAK CHANGE
The next installment in Girls Write Now’s award-winning anthology series, Rise Speak Change, was released on Tuesday, May 23rd at the Girls Write Now Awards and is available on Amazon.
This literary celebration showcases the girls and their mentors’ best work, from poetry and fiction to screenplays and memoirs. Girls Write Now would like to thank Random House for their help producing this year’s anthology, as part of their Random Acts of Kindness initiative. Porscha Burke, Random House Publishing Manager, says: “We count it a privilege to join Girls Write Now in their important work and are excited to contribute our resources and energy to empowering brilliant young women whose ideas and art can change the world.” This collection is also made possible thanks to a charitable contribution from Amazon Literary Partnership.
Honorees at Girls Write Now’s Fifth Annual Girls Write Now Awards holding Rise Speak Change (Photo by Janette Pellegrini/Getty Images for Girls Write Now)
Rise Speak Change explores our evolving creative narrative, celebrating the importance of igniting change and starting anew as writers, thinkers, women, and media makers. It features a foreword by Lisa Lucas, Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, and an introduction by Tanwi Nandini Islam, author of Bright Lights and last year’s March CHAPTERS keynote speaker. Lucas writes, “The stories in this anthology harness the power of women. Read them. Share them. Do whatever you can to make sure that the young women around you know how valuable they are to the future.”
The Girls Write Now anthology series has been recognized as the Outstanding Book of the Year in the Independent Publisher Book Awards, and has earned additional honors from the International Book Awards, National Indie Excellence Awards, Next Generation Indie Book Awards, the New York Book Festival, the San Francisco Book Festival, and the Paris Book Festival.
Our anthologies have received praise from Gloria Steinem, Roxane Gay, Meg Wolitzer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Christina Baker Kline, Eve Ensler, Isaac Fitzgerald, Emily St. John Mandel, Janet Mock, and countless others. Says People magazine, “It’s hard not to be inspired.”
Honorees and Broad Street girls, Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson, holding Rise Speak Change at the Fifth Annual Girls Write Now Awards (Photo by Janette Pellegrini/Getty Images for Girls Write Now)
Awards emcee and editor of Teen Vogue Elaine Welteroth holding Rise Speak Change at the Fifth Annual Girls Write Now Awards (Photo by Janette Pellegrini/Getty Images for Girls Write Now)
PRAISE FOR RISE SPEAK CHANGE
“This book is a resounding affirmation of young female life, in all its multiplicity.”
—Tavi Gevinson, editor of Rookie
“Giving young women the ability to express themselves with clarity and force is an act of great potential social and political power. Girls Write Now harnesses that power.”
—Zadie Smith, author of Swing Time, On Beauty and White Teeth
“Dear Future: meet your leaders. Girls Write Now is training a generation of blazing, brilliant women who prove in this anthology that they are already sharp advocates for themselves, for their communities, and for the world at large, thank goodness. I can’t wait to see what these young women will do next.”
—Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies
Girls Write Now showcases the power of what happens when we set young women’s voices free. This anthology is full of essential, passionate and creative writing that will motivate you too to “Rise, Speak, Change.” I know I will sleep better at night with this important reminder that the future is female.
—Julie Buxbaum, author of Tell Me Three Things
“Each word in this volume is a whisper in the dark – a lifeline to a fundamental truth that the world, again and again, hides from girls: that you matter; your story matters; your voice matters; your impact on the wide world matters. The path from girlhood to womanhood is dark and twisted and terrifying, and it is ever so easy to become lost, or injured, or diminished. What helps us make it through are stories. I can think of no greater gift to give to a girl about to make this journey.”
—Kelly Barnhill, The Girl Who Drank the Moon
“To read the essays in a Girls Write Now anthology is to witness lives being changed. The girls’, by their mentors. The mentors’, by the girls. And, quite possibly, your own, by what you’ve just read.”
–Jennie Yabroff, author of If You Were Here
“The revolution is on the page, in black and white, in their own voices.”
—Tracey Baptiste, author of The Jumbies
- Read excerpts from the Anthology
Rise Speak Change Toolkit
