Introduction

One of the key components of a Writers in the Schools, or WITS, lesson is the incorporation of an example text. Usually written by a contemporary poet or author, this text shows students how a literary device can be used in a way that feels efortless. It also exposes them to the tradition of what came before — in addition to showing students what can be written, it gives them an idea of what has been written and enjoyed. I ind that while I don’t look back at the literary canon(s) perhaps as much as would beneit my writing, as someone new to this job at The Cabin, I apply the use of example texts almost daily. If 2020-21 were a normal school year, I would have paged through each back issue of Cambia to see what students, teaching-writers, and program managers before me produced. I would have studied the expectations and igured out how to deliver on them enough to make the anthology familiar and how to deviate from them enough to keep things interesting. But of course, I didn’t need to read 20 back issues of Cambia to igure out that this year of WITS was unlike any other. Besides maybe an Octavia Butler story or two, there was nary an example text that could prepare us for how most of us would wake up each morning this year, let alone teach writing during a global pandemic. We couldn’t step foot in most of our residency schools, so our teaching-writers had to innovate ways to inspire students to tell their important stories via iPad, or in the case of one of our residency sites, through a single laptop propped on a desk in the front of the classroom. School administrators scanned student poems so our teaching-writers could type heartfelt letters to the students, encouraging their skills and their bravery. And this, of course, has been the one constant of WITS, pandemic or no pandemic. The young writers published in this anthology continued to be creative and unapologetic thinkers,

feelers, and experimenters. They understand how literature can deliver them from coninement for at least a moment, whether they’re being restricted by the terror of ambiguity, the pandemic, or actual incarceration. In their poems and stories, they visit the zoo, the mall, the woods, the past. I feel transported as I read their writing, as I’m sure you will as well. It’s our pleasure to share with you our favorite poems and stories imagined by WITS writers this year. – Megan Williams, Program Manager