Maryland Voices

Greetings, all:

In 2003, when I decided to establish Maryland Voices as a statewide creative nonfiction journal for all high school students, I knew that I wanted to make the publication FOR the students and created, designed, and produced BY the students. Since its inception, student editors have been the ones “behind the scenes” doing all of the hard work, from start to finish.

Along the way, we have encountered some lows and highs. We hit our first peak in 2007 and 2008, but when the recession hit, my student editors were stretched thin with familial obligations and commitments; club activity decreased significantly, and it was a real challenge to hold our staff together as they shifted their time away from Maryland Voices (and with full understanding on our end).

In 2018, we had an outstanding team and were re-establishing ourselves with school systems throughout the state, but Covid struck in 2020, and we limped through the pandemic the best we could. When we returned to school, we did our best to recapture the hard work we had invested, but we just couldn’t reach students in our 23 counties and Baltimore City like we had in the past.

Last year, in 2024, we received so few submissions, we did not have enough accepts to publish Vol. XIV. I presented our student editorial team with a very hard decision to make:

Do we continue on and give it one more try in 2025-2026? Or do we close the journal for good with gentle gratitude for the run it had for the past two decades?

My senior editor, Saisha Agrawal, understood the gravity of what I was asking her to discuss with her team. We both agreed that, as optimists, we needed to carefully consider what we would need to do to bring Maryland Voices back to its respected form, offering student writers space to share their stories that we have always believed matter – not only to them and to us, but to future Marylanders as an archival document of what it is like to be a middle or high schooler in the 21st century.

Saisha asked for the weekend to talk it over with her team. They considered the pros and cons of continuing, the commitment that would be required, and the consequences of holding a call for submissions if we could not follow through with a publication.

In just 48 hours, Saisha got back to me via email with her decision. Well, it was more dramatic than that: she asked for a meeting to discuss their Zoom meeting they had just concluded.

I had to wait another day, but when we finally met, Saisha could hardly contain her enthusiasm.

“We have decided to stay together and keep Maryland Voices alive!”

I was thrilled to hear this, and just two days later, on Wednesday, October 1, Saisha and her full team had a strategy meeting with me.

I have to tell you, we all left that meeting energized by the organization and renewed commitment to this publication.

Therefore, I am happy to tell you that Maryland Voices is back, stronger than ever.

If your work has been accepted in the past year, and we notified you of your acceptance, we have not forgotten you. We will be publishing your work in Volume XV, which will be released throughout the state in October, 2026.

We will be reaching out to middle and high school students throughout Maryland in the coming weeks, and we ask you to help us spread the word. We will be publishing up to 50 of the best student-written creative nonfiction works, and we are determined to have every region of the state represented.

If you are wondering what creative nonfiction is, here’s some more information that will help you get started.

If you are working on a piece of writing now, or have a polished piece ready to go, here is the link to our submission page. There is never any fee for submitting your work for consideration.

If you are interested in joining our team as a satellite editor for one of our seven regions, send us an email at marylandvoices@gmail.com.

If you have any general questions about submitting work to Maryland Voices, please email Saisha and our student editorial team at cnfmarylandvoices@gmail.com.

Bookmark our site – https://marylandvoices.org – as we will be posting updates and opportunities in this space throughout the year.

THANK YOU for sticking with us. Let’s all get behind our student editorial team as they set their sights on publishing the best creative nonfiction – the stories that matter – from our middle and high school student writers.

Rus VanWestervelt, Founder and Advisor of Maryland Voices