An online literature and art journal published by high schoolers in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, is preparing to launch its third issue on Sunday.
Emily Pulfer-Terino is an English teacher at Miss Hall’s School. Her students call her Miss P.T. She’s the boarding school’s faculty advisory for “Girls Right The World,” which she helped launch three years ago. By way of disclosure, the school has been a WAMC underwriter.
“We had been producing the school’s internal printed literary art magazine, and we had a vision to broaden our scope and to really advocate for our artists and writers outside of Miss Hall’s School, and to sort of expand our sense of global connectivity," said Pulfer-Terino. "We’re a really global community at Miss Hall’s, and we really wanted to build on that.”
The journal’s current editorial staff is composed entirely of juniors, who have been working for months on the release of the third issue.
“Together we read submissions from all over the world, including not only literature, but also art and photography and all that amazing stuff," said Maggie Zhang – a junior from Guangzhou, China. She's one of four editors. Submissions must come in English from writers and artists between the ages of 14 and 21.
“We are basically looking for different kinds of voices shared by girls or female identified authors or artists from all over the world that demonstrate their point of view from different things, including things they are really interested in, including things they wanted the world to know," said Zhang. "We really appreciate that each time we learn new things from them.”
“It doesn’t necessarily have to be ‘girls are the greatest,’ or whatever – it doesn’t have to be a feminist piece of art to be empowering," added Matilda Tran. "Sometimes it can just be a girl who probably has been told throughout her life that she’s not as worthy as a boy and is still writing and making art and trying to get her voice heard. It doesn’t have to be political – it can be about anything.”
Tran – of Hanoi, Vietnam – is another member of the editorial staff.
“It being from a girl’s perspective itself can be pretty empowering for girls because we have a history of not being heard and being told that we can’t really make art,” she told WAMC.
“I think I really appreciated just the people submitting, because it’s really interesting just seeing people my age submitting such beautiful work," said editor Evelyn Stewart, from New Jersey. She pointed to a poem called “Skin Deep” that spoke to her from the crop of submissions that poured in for the new issue.
“It was kind of like, valuing the darker skin colors and really showing how beautiful they are as well," said Stewart. "I really appreciated that, because I feel like sometimes it’s not seen that – that darker skin types can be beautiful and should be appreciated as much as others.”
Editor Rea Rice, from Kentucky, says the team has a unique method for determining what makes into the final draft.
“We do a thing where we do ‘Fist To Five,’ so we’ll hold out how many fingers on a scale of, five, we want it to be published the most, zero, not," explained Rice. "And we add them up, divide by four, see if we should publish it.”
She says she treasures the bios that come in with submissions to the journal, which allow her a window into the lives of her peers around the world.
“It’s just really exciting to give young female-identified writers a platform to speak,” she said.
On Sunday, “Girls Right The World” will celebrate the release of its third issue at The Mount in Lenox, Massachusetts, with each editor sharing selected visual and written pieces from the journal.
