We’re excited to introduce you to our January Author of the Month, Alesha! Alesha joined 826NYC when her school did a Young Writers Publish book project with us a few years ago, and has been an active member of Teen Writers’ Collective since.
What is your favorite thing you’ve written recently? Tell us a bit about it!
It’s something I recently started working on for a class. I’m basing it on Brizo, a minor Greek goddess. It’s basically a love poem, but it will be LONG. It’ll focus on this mortal in this fishing town, and he has to take care of this temple. After being there, he started to get entangled with the goddess—because she’s the goddess of fishing, as well as dreams. I just started working on it!
What are three words you would use to describe 826NYC? How would you describe 826NYC?
Gnarly, cozy, and amazing. I was telling a few friends of mine about this place recently: it’s this amazing writing program where you get to learn different genres and meet people with different writing styles, and expand on their own writing. It’s just a cool place to be overall!
If someone was considering joining 826NYC, what would you tell them?
You should 100% come! It’s amazing, if you don’t come we’re all gonna cry sad, sad tears and we’re gonna miss your amazing writing skills!
What advice would you give someone writing for the first time?
Be true to yourself, open your mind to feedback, and make sure that the voice that you’re writing in is yours.
What advice would you give someone writing a story for the first time?
Go with the flow. When you first start writing, there will be a lot of ideas, and you should stick to the ones that really resonate with you. Even if you end up dropping or scrapping it, you should still return to the ideas that have an impact on you.
You’ve been part of 826NYC for so many years—what’s one moment that stuck out to you?
The 2025 graduation. It was my favorite because it was the first I could come to! It was amazing to see how it was done and hear all the readers. I was so proud of everyone, especially my good friend Shamsun.
How do you hope writing will continue to be a part of your life after graduating?
I know for sure I’ll be writing a lot of papers haha! I most definitely want to continue writing pieces that are true to me and what I know. I want to continue writing for fun—it’s one of my best outlets for emotions. I want to inspire my younger brother to write more too!
Discover opportunities for the young writers in your life with our upcoming programs!