In anticipation of 75-degree-or-higher weather, endless waffle cones of ice cream, and later curfews, we’ve asked teen instructors to describe their upcoming teen class as a pop song. Our next instructor in our YAWP Summer Playlist series is Holly Thompson, author of the verse novels Falling into the Dragon’s Mouth, The Language Inside and Orchards, the novel Ash and picture books Twilight Chant, One Wave at a Time, and The Wakame Gatherers.

In our summer YAWP class Making Motion Poems, we'll be combining poetry and video using whatever smartphone or tablet tools we have to create moving poems. We ...

Interested in taking your essays to the next level? Join us June 27th for an informal Q&A session on our new Essay Incubator program. Instructor Ethan Gilsdorf will be there to answer any questions you have about the program

In anticipation of 75-degree-or-higher weather, endless waffle cones of ice cream, and later curfews, we’ve asked teen instructors to describe their upcoming teen class as a pop song. Our next instructor in our YAWP Summer Playlist series is E.B. Bartels, author of Good Grief: On Loving Pets, Here and Hereafter, forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

My summer class Writing the Risky Sh*t is definitely best summed up by the song "Brave" by Sara Bareilles. In this class, you can be amazing, you can turn a phrase into a weapon or a drug, as we write about the stuff ...

In anticipation of 75-degree-or-higher weather, endless waffle cones of ice cream, and later curfews, we’ve asked teen instructors to describe their upcoming teen class as a pop song. Our next instructor in our YAWP Summer Playlist series is Fox Welsh, who is currently working on a YA novel about queerness, mental health, and living outside the boxes we are expected to fit into.

By Katrin Schumann

Last year, I was thinking a lot about this question as it relates to writing: When is it okay to give in and give up?

Why? Because in the months before publishers began showing interest in my novel, The Forgotten Hours, I had seriously been considering changing careers and giving up writing altogether. This was a huge deal for me since I basically can’t do anything else (at least not well, and with enthusiasm).