so when i felt the need to write and to write some more interactive book i feel like you know they came from god so that that that's what motivates me to write i started at a very young age and we're going to get into next is how how to cultivate this from young author from being a young author and talk about some young authors in just a little bit but i had a book that i felt published that was a very rough very very rough book but it started with poetry so it was my outlet releasing anger and emotions and feelings and it was a hobby so that hobby turned into books five years i could i collectively put it into a book and got it printed i think i'm around twenty two twenty two years old i never sold any copies i gave away some three and while i did get you know some feedback from  wasn't it was tough trying to get published as a poet most people that actually get published are our celebrities and portree because it's not a mainstream high selling thing so i let that i let that die but what always kept me writing was just my passion for writing and then the desire to be published came later plans to write the second book i have plans write a second and third book i'm going to complete change in the face of wisdom and i have i am in the works with another book that's going that's not going to be exactly my normal style of writing but it is going to touch on history and it's going to touch on slavery and it's it's it's stemming from something that's already been really big way back when back about thirty years but we're going to bring it back alive and you know change some things around to make it beautiful but i can't give too much information on that just yet so this is how to publish your book i mean you very difficult to get published and even the process after that it's very it's not i mean depending on your level of passion it can be really hard by other than that if you're passionate about it can come easy and you'll find the right things right place but it takes a lot of work and it takes a level development so again we're going to be talking about the young urban authors and how they have this incredible opportunity to learn about this as a young age because most of the stuff that i've learned i kind of had a fall into  the good in the bad and the great and even the worst but there's just so much work to do so aside from writing to get published and your book is it's a strenuous work so what is your  so yeah looking at these books that these these young seventeen whatever however young age it's it's amazing like my first book was on spiral and i never had a single person direct me as they have this opportunity to be directed stars seen these books and paperback in there even the covers is just amazing i mean i can't i can't believe they had such a such an opportunity and i'm surprised they didn't think of this myself because writing is amazing what amazes me more than anything is that you know they're being sponsored by the the the seattle youth violence protection and i would say that as much as i was into violence growing up i wasn't a good i when i was brought up i was a really good person like i used to do a lot of things that i feel like you know if i had something else to be put into i probably wouldn't do so the fact that they're surrounded to write a book and not just about reading books is amazing because my writing actually changed my direction and where i was going to live so for them have that opportunity to give them to scott history them from a different direction which from watching some of the clips they were able to because they were pushed  i used to work behind the scenes on videos and music videos or movies or whatever like i've i've i've got to see both ends of this and yes being active and self motivated and have these opportunities for people wanting to reach out to you and actually give you like amazon coming to you is amazing i have to learn this thing about myself to be self motivated to do this but to have this kind of come together for these young years is incredible so what you're able to if i started younger i probably would have been published long time ago but the opportunities that they're giving them and all these different out that even my media it's ridiculous and just just imagine what they're going to be next while i'm just you know you know growing and less and of course librarian here at seattle public library central and we are just so delighted and excited to be hosting the young urban authors reading about this afternoon and we can't wait to hear these others read their own work it's going to be fantastic and just before we get started i want to tell you a couple things about our summer reading program program since i know that we're all readers and writers here write for teens we have several things going on one of the things that we have going on is that if you read and three books you can enter to win a candle and so i've got the reading review farmstead the bright orange ones right over here on the table i highly recommend that you fill one out secret it will be a few bucks for because we're giving away a candle just for teens at central and i'll tell you a little secret just between you and me we don't have that many entries yet so you've got a really good shot at winning a candle here view some books for us the other parts of the summer reading program are a scavenger hunt we've got a thousand books had known all over the city of seattle all you have to do is go onto our website as pale dot org and follow the clues to find one of the books then you read it and you for somebody else and the third thing that we have going on as tons of free events like this one are going on all over the city all summer you can find out about those either on our website or and these brochures with the space needle on them over here behind me on the table that was very very nice mr haden best thank you i'm not going to take up a lot of time because this is a group of young people show today i am always honored when we take something that did not exist once before and then make it in something tangible that you can put your fingers on that's taken the wheel and making it real there's evidence over there as to what can be done when you take the dream when you take a vision and you work hard as frankie rowe has worked hard on which i'm going to have the honor to introduce her and talk a little bit about her afterwards but anyway i want to say that when i set out to help these groups are god has blessed me very well he has empowered me with a list of skills and accomplishments that i could only dream of a one time as in a city poor youth work not in academia with all of those big fancy places and i'm a grassroots person i'm out here to help people that need my skills and talents because that's what god empowered me to do last night yesterday afternoon whether i had an opportunity to teach a social media's quest social media networking class to a group of new residents in the united states they were ethiopian somalians and others and it was just  incredible how much these people here to want to murder and want to be a part i want to participate in the plural this model of american democracy i learned a lot from them and they learned a lot from me so it's not a one sided thing tomcat part has worked with and dependent publishing fail for over six years through create space to develop their focus publishing solutions today he is the community outreach manager responsible for spreading awareness of independent publishing opportunities through amazon and you know the first the first hardest part of writing a book is getting the pen to the paper the second part is publishing in the third part is marketing it was what they're here to do today so thank you for choosing create space as your platform to publish the book to leave it here these are the these are the books that are available thank you guys for writing your books and for using our platform thank you and you come up here until the story of this hello everyone and thank you guys off for coming i was going to write a little something but i decided just to go off of my head because i tend to be a little i don't know a little bit more energized when i go right off the cuff so young urban authors who was something that came to me basically in a vision i work with young people and i noticed when i was interviewing them quite a few of the ladies said that one of the things that they wanted to do was to write a book and that was really interesting to me because i myself was in the process of writing a book and so i had gone to a book publishing had gone to a book publishing forum and i was so excited by what i had heard that by the time this grant came out i kn exactly what i wanted to do and so that's what the grant had called for with the innovative program for young teenagers between the ages of twelve and eighteen and so i told some really really close friends of mine and w so i get the opportunity to work with really really smart beautiful ladies every day and that's what makes me get up in the morning that's what makes my heart sing and so with young urban authors this is just one way that i get to work with individual on a day to day basis but i also get to work with a team of professionals who are really smart and intelligent and really humble and it just makes me happy when people come together to do a greater good for individuals like these young ladies who are present and some that are not present so a little bit about the program again it was that basically going back to those fundamental learning like reading and writing and being able to become an entrepreneur based on some of the things that we were taught in the first in the second and the third grade and a lot of the times you know our people our kids get left behind because they don't read they don't write or you know the system passes them on and if you have to opportunity to be creative in your writing then you get an opportunity to express yourself in a way that you may not just of reading any old book that the school gives you or that the school t eachers tell you to read so sometimes reading your own story and being a part of a community is a different way to change your life or to change the way that you think about reading and writing so without further ado a pro will burn i'm going to read the first two chapters and i'm home and at that thanks once it became dark all i heard was the comforting tune of my mother's song the slam of a door of heaven was what had startled me all the ones i've known to live for were no longer there to catch me it all started in sixth grade the beginning of my middle school year walking in there i never thought i'd come out who i am today someone once told me everyone was put on the earth for a reason and when you find that reason you find yourself i had this in my mind as i was worried about living a life and purpose back insidious grade i thought i knew what i wanted i thought i knew everything there was to know the students an upperclassman never seemed so boggled my mind had spaced out and my words became lost i had never in life looked in the eyes of so many different people from then on i kept to myself distance myself from people around me and stay quiet to observe them vironment nothing but rude snotty little bitches with nothing on their plate but drama twenty four seven after several weeks had passed i began to loosen up and make friends oh boy was i wrong about that my friend choices i had the good the bad and ugly but my mains were a select few of girls jackie jamie natasha and sandy this was my posse i rode with every day then there were the boys jordan michael and james the only boys that had good head on my shoulders i wouldn't say that we were the ones to be around or to hate on but i knew we were top notch from the point from our point of view nobody could stop us  character that i created is reflects myself in a way because it's realistic fiction and some of the moments some of the things that happened to my characters happened to me and i just wanted be reading that chapter chapter four in my book do you feel as if you have grown up too far as i do i feel like i wasn't patient enough to be a certain age and do everything at a time like my mom ses everything has it's time i wish i have listened to her i stopped playing around with my friends to just hang out with them because everybody at age thirteen didn't seem to play anymore but this was just people  d i wish my childhood would have been longer i don't feel like i enjoyed it very well but your childhood doesn't have to stop at a certain age just have fun actually do what you want to do and not others what do be yourself and don't be a certain way just to fit in are please others i didn't many things to be all grown up all grown up as a teenager when at thirteen i still look like a little girl i didn't look like a teenager at age fourteen either i always worried about what changes would think of me if they saw me being silly silly or playing around but then there was there was always others who didn't care and they did what they wanted to do i just never seemed to want to hang out with those people and i just wanted to hang out with the other crowd and they weren't popular anything but i liked how they were now i hang out with whoever i want i don't care what others think or say i have my own friends and they have theirs i have friends are silly and others to act more mature but i hang out with all of them and i don't care what people think of me i've changed a lot and i'm so proud of myself for many things i gave up yeah there was a time when i did many things that weren't good and i mean they weren't bad things because i learned from them now i know how it is to have friends that get to get you to do things that seem cool  and my last poem called everybody is something no nobody now is nothing everybody has something everybody has a special spark inside a poet a singer a writer we all got something inside even if you don't know yet you'll find it sooner or later and never too late to make your dreams come true this is just one dear diary today after school and i decided we're going to go to the mall i've been dying to get a pair of shoes i saw last weekend when we went it's today is my lucky day we were walking out of school to the bus stop and we saw tons of students running past to the back of the school with a huge crack build as i kind of stared for a second i didn't know what was going on or why everyone was in such a hurry i took a second process day and i realize this is what happens when there's a fight at school and i looked at each other and without a word we decided to follow the crowd as we turned the corner of the building we saw two guys standing nose to nose in the field they were yelling and everyone is cheering them on i looked around for us that going inside everyone's talking with their friends some people were laughing and others were just surprised what was going on i looked back to the two guys and tried to figure out who they were and if i knew them the guy on the right was wearing a gray shirt jeans and gray shoes the guy on the left was wearing a black shirt dark jeans and white shoes i sort of recognize the guy with the black shirt i always thought he was one of the calmest boys in my grade but talked to him like twice and he was always so mellow and worry free think is name was nick zoomed back into reality and noticed the guy a whole bunch of guys ran into the field behind the two boys i guess they were their friends one guy in the bunch of friends tried punching the boy in gray but one of the other guys started fighting with the guy who interfered so there was another fight going on i looked over to the left and saw a girl against a wall i recognize there she was the girl i always  around school and never talked to every time i saw her she had bruises somewhere on her body she always was alone and looked depressed the only person i would see with her once in a while was a guy who i assumed was her boyfriend sometimes i heard she would go get high with him and some other people at that she was to the girl trying that's point to her yeah let's go sonja started walking in without hesitation i followed her as we approach the girl i thought huge bruise on her arm it looks super purple like she just got it she covered the bruises as if she was trying to protect the was running down her face and she looked up from the ground to clean it with her fingers and while she cleaned her face she noticed us walking towards her she mediately sat up straighter and finished cleaning off her face of salty tears and asked to be make up hey what's wrong i asked i reached down to stretched her hand to hold the girl's hand and help i looked back to the fight and sure enough there were many teachers in the middle of it the school security guard was die having out of his car and heading towards the boys their friends were still standing beside them and some were trying to get the teachers away from the fray i looked back to santa and the girl i looked back to the girl they were both walking away sagna signals for me to walk behind them and quickly i caught up to them instead on the opposite side of the girl she turned to me and gave me a welcoming look things for helping me i didn't mean to look dramatic or anything it's just that michael the guy in the gray shirt is my boyfriend and he saw me with make the guy in the black chair when he saw me he grabbed me he grabbed on to my arm and dragged me away it hurt really bad when he pulled me because he has such a strong grip it's he's done it before but this time he held on stupid say i figured he was more upset than normal i fell against the wall and michael started yelling at me he thought i was cheating on him with nick he looked over to his right and sonic staring at what was going on and he went over to confront him and that's how it all started i just don't know it's do anymore she looked over at the fire and saw that the boys were separated they were about one hundred feet away from each other the crowd lingered around to see if anything else was going to happen she turns back around and said by the way my name is abby oh my goodness abby are you ok i don't know why you would bother staying at the boy who treats you like that you deserve way better than you replied we both reached out to give abby a hug as their arms wrapped around her she started crying we stood there in silence swaying back and forth and her crying was our read them and after about twenty seconds we started walking to the bus stop do you want to go to the mall with us or do you want to go home get some chill time i stayed quiet most of the time there was a lot to take in all at once she's so young and she's already in an abusive relationship and says drugs maybe she used to them to escape from the sadness when her boyfriend abused her i felt terrible saying this i don't even know if there was anything i could do but if there are as i want to help i think i should go home thanks so much for letting me talk to you no one has ever reached out to me like that before i'll see you at school she said she walked off to catch the bus which was already there but was to get on and walked to the back of the best i don't know how to feel i didn't know if if i wanted to go to the mall anymore all this negativity was bumming now i look down at my phone to take the time it was already four o'clock sunday and i both walked up to the hill catch the bus i was thinking it would be better to just go home and make plans for tomorrow i'm so she was thinking the so i just want to thank all of the authors and i want to thank everyone for coming out i do have a couple of people that i want to acknowledge just a few ever possible without partners and sponsorship and first of all i want to recognize him r t i that's multimedia resources training institute they are the young people that are here filming and taking pictures and thank you very very m writers i think they're done terrific work really enjoyed myself i recommended for young people that have an interest in writing or even if they think they have an interest in writing i think this is a terrific thing to do so you have my support any way i can help i appreciate it hi my name's local and i really like today's presentation i think that a lot of young kids can learn a lot from other people that spoke today thank you hi my name is tamar boynton i learned about the event through miss francie ro it was an amazing experience i've been trying to write a book for at least five years and all i have is the  hi my name is dire need a howard and coming to this program was quite inspiring i think it's touches the lives of you as well as adults regardless of one person's background or the experience or their authors association program i publish this book called life as it is and by doing this i noticed that you can do anything you put your mind to and when teenagers think oh you can't do this can't do that because other people tell you not to do it or you can do it and try to put you down don't listen to them and always follow your dreams because you are so capable of doing so much not just worry you are told from other people that dislike you or don't want you to do well in life but always remember to always follow your dreams because that will get you so far in life thank you i so i am hayden bassa team services librarian here at the seattle public library and today was basically just the kind of day that  services librarians dream of because we had these wonderful teens from the young urban authors program reading from their work they're obviously incredible writers and so incredibly poised not just in reading their own work but also in answering all the questions that the audience had for them and so that was amazing to see and then we also have these fantastic young people from the m multimedia research and sit shoot which is just fantastic they're here to do this filming and take pictures and everything so for me it's an amazing showcase of teen talent and teen ability that's the whole event is basically teen run and that's the kind of thing that the library loves to see and at the library loves to support so i'm just really excited that i got to be a part of it today hello everyone my name is frank you're on the founder of the young urban authors and i'm really excited to say these young people are doing amazing things they are telling their stories and really given the opportunity to unleash creativity in be someone that a lot of times people don't think that they can be and so i am really proud that they get the opportunity to share their stories to share their opportunities and to be all that they can be today and moving forward still thank you for all your support thank you for everything that you've done and we look forward to being a part of more in the future can contact us by reaching us on our web site www dot young urban authors dot org with their media trainings and also there are media requirements causes now a lot of organizations out there doing what they are doing so we want to say thank you for empowered in communities through media thank you multimedia  youth in focus there are many organizations inside of it but we're going but you can focus is in the second building we're visiting other members of our group where they're focusing on how to develop film paper which is at that point the most sensitive object that we so will you be doing a program like this next year in the summer i hope so i don't know what the plan is for next year i know that we did have one last year something similar so i'm hoping we have the same one or it evolves to be something more film photography and digital photography it's a way for our teens to express themselves in a healthy manner our people noticed about this program we have flyers out we have applications downstairs a lot of our students actually hear about the program through other students and through friends who've taken the program before do you have to pay or is it true they offered no it's completely free and it actually equals about a thousand dollars of a scholarship per student and it's completely free for every student to take classes here and like how long does it take usually the classes while the summer classes are about nine weeks and the classes during the school year are equal to a semester of classes first school so students can't get credit for these classes as well and this is over the summer over the school year it's both we offer one spring first semester and second semester so a fall a spring a you know all of those credits because the staff here gets to know the students really well and there's you know you can start at beginning and go all the way up to advanced like an age group you specifically focus on yeah we start the youngest are thirteen and fourteen and the oldest are about nineteen  so what's the room behind so this room is our dark room and that's where all our film photography happens and so students learn how to process film how to roll them on canisters and make you know the pictures show up on the film and then once that happens over there they bring it into the dark room and they can actually print on photographic paper and so they go and use and larger as they learn how to use the chemicals they learn how to put the chemicals in the right order and how to print and what the exposure is and the class will have a different project per week and that's what they get to print in there so sometimes we do you know photograph the same thing for twenty four hours in see what happens or do a self portrait you know what is a self portrait mean to you and that doesn't necessarily mean take a picture of yourself or your face it could mean you know take a picture of your favorite object and then they get to print that so it's really they get to pick their favorite photos that they took pictures of and printed in the darkroom how much experience do you need to enter the darkroom do you study before going in there the teachers are all the teachers and mentors there's a teacher for a class and usually three mentors per class and they're all in there with you and we have anywhere from beginning students to advance so you actually don't need any experience whatsoever in the  program and my observations are that it's really important for the young people to have a voice at the table and i'm encouraged and excited about the possibilities for the youth voice in the redevelopment of  and i feel like our improve our input has the biggest impact in this situation because we're the youth and the youth they never get their voice heard by everybody around their community so once i heard that they're doing all this without telling him no to find people people who is not understand who is by lingual for example my family and his family thereby lingo our parents they don't know what's going on and whatever to tell them i feel like is not really explaining to them or really trying to help them out yeah our families impacted because they told us we have to figure out everything for in eighteen months i don't think my family will be ready for this new redevelopment they said that they'll pay for everything and go help us out but honestly i'm really knows but i don't feel like their plan is way different and they don't really want to tell us it's really one i seen a lot of people was mad a lot of people had mixed feelings everybody else was there was a group that wanted us to chose to give redevelop knows the community and i feel like the community came together to tell them about how they feel about the i think if if they're playing goes right i think it will be good for the neighborhood but yes just right now it's one hundred percent low income housing and they said when the whole thing re develops is only going to be eleven percent of low income housing and everybody else is just going to be rich old white people hello my name is michael and i'm with the right tech program and i'm working out with the m m r type program and with here we have picture taking and video editing so what are so far over this week what i have what have you done so this is the first week saw every morning around nine thirty the kids come to the community center so every morning i