Every person has a story and every person’s story matters, is a phrase English teacher Kynda Faythe lives by. Faythe loves to read and write just about anything from journals to horror fiction. In the past couple of years, Faythe has taught the creative writing class at the high school. Through this Faythe has created her own publishing company called Faythe Publishing.
The class started with only 28 students and is now up to around 60 students per semester. In the past few years, Faythe has helped NHS writers become published authors. Faythe wants to give people the opportunity to share their voices.
“I think it’s important that our community and people know how amazing our writers are cause I don’t think people understand how, and what people here go through and how they write. I don’t think they have a voice in the whole mixture of TikTok and [other] websites,” Faythe said.
Faythe has published around 150 students’ writing and around 500 people throughout her career. She has also published around 20 books. Faythe Publishing is not just for NHS students. She has writers in the school, adults in the community and students from other schools. Faythe hopes her company can expand.
“I would like to have Newton turn into a writing hub. There is nothing around here at all. The closest thing might be in Kansas City. There’s nothing out here for writing and writing gets a bad rap because nobody likes writing. So we should change it,” Faythe said.
One of Faythe’s students, senior Abigail Shepherd has written her book and published it through Faythe Publishing. Shepherd’s book is called “Finding Light”. It is about an imaginary character she made up as a kid while she was on a family camping trip. The book is about an adventure in which the character goes on to defeat a creature that represents mental illness.
“[Working with Ms. Faythe] was really helpful. I really had no idea what to do or where to start but you know I went up to her and said I have this idea, it might be entirely stupid let me know,” Shepherd said. “She just encouraged me right from the start and made it super easy to take it step by step so I wouldn’t get overwhelmed and knew exactly where we were heading and what the process was.”
Faythe has many goals for her publishing company. When she had the idea she began doing some research and reading on how to create her publishing company. She said that she didn’t know what she was doing and she knew she was going to have some failures but wanted to go for it.
“I have so many ideas. I would like this to become a hub right I mean for example Wichita has the River Fest, or Lindsborg has a Swedish festival. I want to have this be a writing mecca as crazy as that sounds. I want everybody to know that everyone has a story and everyone’s story matters. I would like to have a festival. I think that would be really cool. I think it’d be cool to have workshops,” Faythe said.
Faythe and English teacher Ryan Kopper have also formed a writing society for writers. Their writing society is a where people can come together to brainstorm ideas, look at different writing techniques and edit.
“We would like the writing society to attract many community members so we can sit down and have a big group of just writers where we brainstorm and bounce ideas off of each other. We want to use this writing society to start making connections with other schools and communities,” Kopper said.
Both Faythe and Kopper hope to use the writing society to encourage people to share their voices and stories. Faythe’s brand for her company is “Support the Writer’s Journey.”
“Our [logo] is a unilume and I equate that to storytelling. So you start out in the middle and you twist and turn and you don’t know where you’re going and it’s confusing. Maybe you have a subplot and maybe you have some shady character. And then after you get through the twists and turns you kind of come out to this end,” Faythe said.
Faythe has even written and published her own work. She has written a journal, a reference book, a scary novel, poetry and a memoir.
“I always felt insecure about my writing until I found out you can break the rules. Once you can break the rules, then you can write anything that you want,” Faythe said.
