Voice/Craft

Voice/Craft, sponsored by Parkland College’s Division of Art & Sciences, is a program designed to nurture and celebrate the distinctive voices of the District’s middle-school students. All students who submit work to Voice/Craft receive personalized feedback and notes of appreciation from the editorial committee, which also chooses representative original works to publish in book form. This collection assembles together all submissions to the program organized by year, including those not selected by the editorial committee for publication. We think you will agree that the writers and the works included here demonstrate extraordinary creativity and insight and show that District 505 students are benefitting from excellent writing instruction. We wish to thank, especially, the teachers who have put in the hard work of nurturing these students and their writing and have made this collection possible by encouraging them to submit their work.

See the Voice/Craft Homepage for more information.

Current Volume: Volume 1 (2026)

Introduction

We asked District 505 middle-school students what they had to say. This book is their response.

The young writers featured here have crafted an impressive and wide-ranging set of voices and stories. From poems--both silly and profound--to literary reviews of books they've read and imaginative and creative fictional narratives (and everything in between), these works demonstrate that the craft of good writing--creative, joyful, insightful--is alive and well in our District 505 middle schools. It is our pleasure to share them with you in this inaugural issue of Voice/Craft.

Schools represented in this issue:
Countryside School
East Prairie Middle School
Heritage Junior High School
Judah Christian
Next Generation School
Paxton-Buckley-Loda Junior High School
Unity Junior High School

Voice/Craft is sponsored by the Parkland College Division of Arts & Sciences. The program nurtures and celebrates the distinctive voices of middle-school students in central Illinois.

Voice/Craft

Current Volume: Volume 1 (2026)

Introduction

Fiction

Nonfiction

Poetry

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