For many area millennials, summer is a time of academic enrichment camps and community center programming. This means long days of recorder lessons, rock painting, and poetry workshops lead by recent Bryn Mawr graduates. It’s the creative writing that interests us. What are teens writing about Philly? To answer this burning question, we consulted Teen Ink magazine, a popular teen creative writing magazine stocked in junior and high school libraries across America.

We uncovered some gems: this horror story set at Eastern State Penitentiary (the museum was closed that day, which means that Maggie and her friends saw ACTUAL GHOSTS), an anonymous review of The Art Institute, and this “I am from” poem. There’s some freeform poetry, a bulleted list, and a rap entitled “philly swag boys.”

So there you have it–creative writing by teenagers about Philly. Philly isn’t known for its literary tradition, but you can’t begrudge a kid for trying.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 22nd, 2012 at 2:22 pm.