In this issue, we highlight the voices of youth writers who have participated in Barrio Writers workshops. Barrio Writers (BW) is a creative writing program founded by author Sarah Rafael García, which provides free college level writing workshops to teenagers in underserved communities and aims to empower teens through creative writing, higher education, and cultural arts. We received work from several Barrio Writers programs across Texas and California, across experiences, languages and forms. They all have in common that they exemplify the bold voices of youth who know that writing is healing, writing is survival, and that writing is where they can derive power , thus why we end each workshop by discussing, as Sarah tells us, that "your voice is your weapon." While not all of the writers who submitted identify as Latinx, they are responding to an American political regime and systems of power that want to erase them and their voices. My hope is that you read their words and consider how much there is to learn by simply listening to the young people in our communities. Clearly, they have a lot to say.
Leticia Urieta