English and creative writing teacher Kynda Faythe has been teaching intermittently for the past 20 years. Since the fall of 2021, she has begun a book launch in her creative writing class. This project allows her students to write pieces such as short stories, poetry and many more different styles to be published in a book all together by the end of the semester.
Faythe has a strong passion for creative writing and has been inspired to teach it to students here at Newton High School.
“I think it’s important because everybody has a story to share and I think it’s also important for students to find and develop their voices,” Faythe said.
Faythe has decided to take a step further with her writing passion in her non-profit organization, Faythe Publishing Inc., and she has begun to branch out and do more with her love for writing.
“I started it last July on a limb, on an idea on what can I do to take [writing] a step further,” Faythe said.
Faythe then began to meet with people and watched webinars to see what she could do to make this organization possible. The goal of this project is to publish work from non-professional writers who are either adults or students. To be able to publish work from these writers, there is a process of how it gets from someone’s imagination to the pages of a book.
“First we have to get the people to write, so I do have adults sharing and they’ll just share their work [with me] and I’ll do a process of editing and revising,” Faythe said.
This process has also helped Faythe publish this year’s anthology of the 2023 creative writing class titled “Listen to Us.” The cover of this book was designed and created by sophomore Zoey Hoskinson. The front cover of this book was made from different ideas that the creative writing class had brainstormed themselves. Hoskinson considered everyone’s ideas and was able to use them to create the cover using Canva.
“I just tried to see what fit and what didn’t fit and just figured it out,” Hoskinson said.
Hoskinson submitted her pieces of work to be published in the book as well. She wrote three pieces that included two poems and one short story, but only her two poems were included in the anthology.
“The first one was about a character who [had] somebody leave them and they’re just reminiscing about everything,” Hoskinson said.
Most of Hoskinson’s writing ideas have come from personal experiences that she can express through writing.
“I went through something pretty harsh a couple of years ago so I feel like a lot of my creativity stems from personal experiences,” Hoskinson said.
Sophomore Jessi Bailey has been able to express herself through this class and has taken her personal life experiences and turned them into poetry for the anthology as well.
“I think I wrote 20 to 30 poems just about a bunch of different things,” Bailey said.
The anthology was published on December 8 and can be found on Amazon. The book will include pieces written by students currently in the creative writing class.
“Everybody has a voice and everybody wants to be remembered in some way shape or form and I think it’s just good that they have an opportunity to share,” Faythe said.
