by Dave Eggers
LYDIA MILLET
Jimmy Carter's Rabbit, The Baffler
STEVEN MILLHAUSER
Phantoms, McSweeney's
TONY MILLIONAIRE
Billy Hazelnuts and the Crazy Bird, Fantagraphics Books
BRIAN MOCKENHAUPT
Hood, Esquire
SCOTT MOXLEY
The Real Squatters, OC Weekly
NATE NEAL
Magpie Inevitability, Mome
ESHKOL NEVO
Before the Next World Cup, PEN America
RICARDO NUILA
Dog Bites, McSweeney's
CHRIS OFFUTT
Ghosts in the Attic, Jelly Bucket
DANIEL O'MALLEY
Max Adler Is Missing, Meridian
SALLY O'REILLY
Performance Night at the Thinkery, Picpus
PATTON OSWALT
Peter Runfola, Zombie Spaceship Wasteland
JEFF PARKER
The Deportation of Evgeny Maximovich, Ghost Town
BEN PAYNTER
Welcome to Armageddon,U.S.A, Wired
ALEX PEREZ
Eggs, Subtropics
ADAM PETERSON
Blood Work, Cincinnati Review
ALFRED PLANCO
Watertowers Are People Too, self-published zine
SHARON POMERANTZ
Oxford Circle, Michigan Quarterly Review
ALAN PRENDERGAST
Wheel Man, Denver Westword
DAVID RAKOFF
Isn't It Romantic?, Half Empty
RICHARD RAYNER
Shoot the Ref, Black Clock
BEN RISTOW
Saint Jerome and the Dumpster Girls, Bomb
COREY ROBIN
Conservatism and Counterrevolution, Raritan
ONNESHA ROYCHOUDHURI
Books After Amazon, Boston Review
PAUL RUBIN
Honor Thy Father, SF Weekly
JIM RULAND
Fight Songs, Annalemma
JUAN RULEO (trans. by ILAN STAVANS)
It's Because We're So Poor, Agni
JOE SACCO
The Unwanted, The Virginia Quarterly Review
MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ
Firing Line, New York Times Magazine
HEATHER SELLERS
Men and Refrigeration, New Ohio Review
LUIS SEPÚLVEDA
The House in Santiago, Make
SAM SHAW
The Silver Lining, Harper's
JIM SHEPARD
Courtesy for Beginners, A Public Space
FLOYD SKLOOT
Something to Marvel At, Prairie Schooner
ROBERT ANTHONY SIEGEL
Sean, Harvard Review
AISHA SLOAN
Fawlanionese, Michigan Quarterly Review
MORGAN SPEER
Turbulence, New Letters
SUSAN STEINBERG
Superstar, Pleiades
TYLER STIEM
Goodbye, Babylon King, The Virginia Quarterly Review
NEIL SWIDEY
One Desperate Night, The Boston Globe Magazine
JILLIAN TAMAKI
Indoor Voice, Drawn & Quarterly
YOSHIHIRO TATSUMI
Black Blizzard, Drawn & Quarterly
STEVEN THRASHER
White America Has Lost Its Mind, Village Voice
WELLS TOWER
Own Goal, Harper's
DEB OLIN UNFERTH
Want, Noon
ANNE VALENTE
A Very Compassionate Baby, Annalemma
WILLIAM T. VOUMANN
Too Late, A Public Space
JOY WILLIAMS
Baba Iaga and the Pelican Child, Electric Literature
GARY WOLE
The Data-Driven Life, New York Times Magazine
GRAEME WOOD
Limbo World, Foreign Policy
ANNIE JULIA WYMAN
A Glimpse of Unplumbed Depths, The Believer
JAMES YEH
9/16/10, Swill Children
RACHEL YODER
Deliver Me, www.therumpus.net
CHARLES YU
Designer Emotion 67, Oxford American
About 826 National
Proceeds from this book benefit youth literacy.
A LARGE PERCENTAGE of the cover price of this book goes to 826 National, a network of tutoring, writing, and publishing centers for youth in eight cities around the country.
Since the birth of 826 National in 2002, our goal has been to assist students ages six through eighteen with their writing skills while helping teachers get their classes passionate about writing. We do this with a vast team of volunteers who donate their time so we can give as much one-on-one attention as possible to the students whose writing needs it. Our mission is based on the understanding that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention, and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success.
Through volunteer support, each of the eight 826 chapters—in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Seattle, Boston, and Washington, DC—provides after-school tutoring, class field trips, writing workshops, and in-school programs, all free of charge, for students, classes, and schools. 826 centers are especially committed to supporting teachers, offering services and resources for English language learners, and publishing student work. Each of the 826 chapters works to produce professional-quality publications written entirely by young people, to forge relationships with teachers in order to create innovative workshops and lesson plans, to inspire students to write and appreciate the written word, and to rally thousands of enthusiastic volunteers to make it all happen. By offering all of our programming for free, we aim to serve families who cannot afford to pay for the level of personalized instruction their children receive through 826 chapters.
The demand for 826 National's services is tremendous. Last year we worked with more than 4,700 volunteers and nearly 24,000 students across the nation, hosting 469 field trips, completing 167 major in-school projects, offering 387 evening and weekend workshops, welcoming over 300 students per day for after-school tutoring, and producing over 850 student publications. At many of our centers, our field trips are fully booked almost a year in advance, teacher requests for in-school tutor support continue to rise, and the majority of our evening and weekend workshops have waitlists.
826 National volunteers are local community residents, professional writers, teachers, artists, college students, parents, bankers, lawyers, and retirees from a wide range of professions. These passionate individuals can be found at all of our centers after school, sitting side-by-side with our students, providing one-on-one attention. They can be found running our field trips, or helping an entire classroom of local students learn how to write a story, or assisting student writers during one of our Young Authors' Book Projects.
All day and in a variety of ways, our volunteers are actively connecting with youth from the communities we serve.
To learn more or get involved, please visit:
826 National: www.826national.org
826 in San Francisco: www.826valencia.org
826 in New York: www.826nyc.org
826 in Los Angeles: www.826la.org
826 in Chicago: www.826chi.org
826 in Ann Arbor: www.826michigan.org
826 in Seattle: www.826seattle.org
826 in Boston: www.826boston.org
826 in Washington, DC: www.826dc.org
826 Valencia
Named for the street address of the building it occupies in the heart of San Francisco's Mission District, 826 Valencia opened on April 8, 2002 and consists of a writing lab, a street-front, student-friendly retail pirate store that partially funds its programs, and satellite classrooms in two local middle schools. 826 Valencia has developed programs that reach students at every possible opportunity—in school, after school, in the evenings, or on the weekends. Since its doors opened, over fifteen hundred volunteers—including published authors, magazine founders, SAT course inst
ructors, documentary filmmakers, and other professionals—have donated their time to work with thousands of students. These volunteers allow the center to offer all of its services for free.
826NYC
826NYC's writing center opened its doors in September 2004. Since then its programs have offered over one thousand students opportunities to improve their writing and to work side by side with hundreds of community volunteers. 826NYC has also built a satellite tutoring center, created in partnership with the Brooklyn Public Library, which has introduced library programs to an entirely new community of students. The center publishes a handful of books of student writing each year.
826LA
826LA benefits greatly from the wealth of cultural and artistic resources in the Los Angeles area. The center regularly presents a free workshop at the Armand Hammer Museum in which esteemed artists, writers, and performers teach their craft. 826LA has collaborated with the J. Paul Getty Museum to create Community Photoworks, a months-long program that taught seventh-graders the basics of photographic composition and analysis, sent them into Los Angeles with cameras, and then helped them polish artist statements. Since opening in March 2005, 826LA has provided thousands of hours of free one-on-one writing instruction, held summer camps for English language learners, given students sportswriting training in the Lakers' press room, and published love poems written from the perspectives of leopards.
826 Chicago
826 Chicago opened its writing lab and after-school tutoring center in the West Town community of Chicago, in the Wicker Park neighborhood. The setting is both culturally lively and teeming with schools: within one mile, there are fifteen public schools serving more than sixteen thousand students. The center opened in October 2005 and now has over five hundred volunteers. Its programs, like at all the 826 chapters, are designed to be both challenging and enjoyable. Ultimately, the goal is to strengthen each student's power to express ideas effectively, creatively, confidently, and in his or her individual voice.
826Michigan
826michigan opened its doors on June 1, 2005, on South State Street in Ann Arbor. In October of 2007 the operation moved downtown, to a new and improved location on Liberty Street. This move enabled the opening of Liberty Street Robot Supply & Repair in May 2008. The shop carries everything the robot owner might need, from posi-tronic brains to grasping appendages to solar cells. 826michigan is the only 826 not named after a city because it serves students all over southeastern Michigan, hosting in-school residencies in Ypsilanti schools, and providing workshops for students in Detroit, and Lincoln and Willow Run school districts. The center also has a packed workshop schedule on site every semester, with offerings on making pop-up books, writing sonnets, creating screenplays, producing infomercials, and more.
826 Seattle
826 Seattle began offering after-school tutoring after school in October 2005, followed shortly by evening and weekend writing workshops and, in December 2005, the first field trip to 826 Seattle by a public school class (Ms. Dunker's fifth graders from Greenwood Elementary). The center is in Greenwood, one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the city. And, thankfully, enough space travelers stop by the Greenwood Space Travel Supply Company at 826 Seattle on their way back from the Space Needle. Revenue from the store, like from all 826 storefronts, helps to support the writing programs, along with the generous outpouring from community members.
826 Boston
826 Boston kicked off its programming in the spring of 2007 by inviting authors Junot Diaz, Steve Almond, Holly Black, and Kelly Link to lead writing workshops at the English High School. The visiting writers challenged students to modernize fairy tales, invent their ideal school, and tell their own stories. Afterward, a handful of dedicated volunteers followed up with weekly visits to help students develop their writing craft. These days, the center has thrown open its doors in Roxbury's Egleston Square—a culturally diverse community south of downtown that stretches into Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, and Dorchester. 826 Boston neighbors more than twenty Boston schools, a dance studio, and the Boston Neighborhood Network (a public-access television station).
826DC
826 National's newest chapter, 826DC, opened its doors to the city's Columbia Heights neighborhood in September 2010. Like all the 826s, 826DC provides after-school tutoring, field trips, after-school workshops, in-school tutoring, help for English language learners, and assistance with the publication of student work. It also offers free admission to the Museum of Unnatural History, the center's unique storefront. 826DC volunteers recently helped the students of two nearby high schools publish Get Used to the Seats: A Survival Guide for Freshmen, a book of advice for incoming high schoolers. 826DC's students have also already read poetry for President and First Lady Obama, participating in the 20II White House Poetry Student Workshop.
Scholar Match
ScholarMatch, a project of 826 National, is a nonprofit website launched in April 2010 committed to helping students pursue a college education, no matter what their financial status. At the website ScholarMatch.org, students create online profiles that reflect their commitment to their academic future. Potential donors learn about the students in their community through these profiles. Donations to students are then made and the funds are allocated toward a students scholarship goal. Donor-student relationships grow out of the process, and the student heads to college with the support and motivation to succeed.
Along with the website, ScholarMatch is also a college resource center. Modeled after the 826 National network, it emphasizes one-on-one attention with students. At its office space at 849 Valencia Street in San Francisco's Mission District, it holds workshops and offers drop-in guidance to families and students on their paths to higher education. Whether it's understanding the language of financial aid or personal essay assistance, ScholarMatch provides students with the space and the people to help.
Learn more at: www.scholarmatch.org