No One Can See the Hidden Ocean I've Created

Acknowledgments In our Young Writers Publish program, 826NYC works with classes of students and teachers on creative writing projects around and beyond New York City.

Eighth grade students from the Academy for Young Writers explored poems about self and identity this year to produce the beautifully original and detailed poetry in this book. No One Can See the Hidden Ocean I’ve Created is a compilation of the original work of these students.

A huge thank you to our 826NYC teaching artist, Willie Filkowski, for creating a virtual classroom where students could revisit and reimagine their work, and write about themselves as writers. Your support, encouragement, and consistency helped our young authors tap into their imaginations and memories to produce such moving work, and your care in this process was invaluable.

We are particularly grateful to Henya La Noue and Deborah Barton for their support of this project. Thank you for diving head first into this publication, bringing with you months of incredible lesson planning, close readings, and innovative writing classes. Your hard work and steadfast dedication to your students and their creative vision allows them to flourish as young writers and thinkers.

At 826NYC we depend on the dedicated volunteer editing and design cohort that make our publications a reality. Thank you to Joe Iovino and Anthony Iovino for designing such a beautiful book for our students.

To copy editors and proofreaders Melissa Feinman, Jen Ha, Michelle Haska, Amy Linstrom, Christine Marella, 102