Girls Write Now Media
Anthologies
Each year, Girls Write Now publishes a print anthology showcasing the work of today’s next-generation voices. These books showcase stories that surprise us and stretch our understanding of the world and ourselves. Our anthologies have received praise from Gloria Steinem, Amanda Gorman, Roxane Gay, Meg Wolitzer, Emily St. John Mandel, Janet Mock, and countless others. Says People magazine, “It’s hard not to be inspired.”

Metamorphosis: Girls Write Now 2026 Anthology
To truly understand Girls Write Now, zoom out and observe a complex, multi-dimensional organism, constantly and consciously in the making. Its contours come into focus, and each word dissolves and evolves: Girls becomes a spectrum across gender, race, age, and poverty; Write spans genres, media, and disciplines; Now stretches across three decades and counting. Resolved into its component parts—G. W. N.—its very being refracts: a nonprofit, but also an incubator of art, a developer of professions, a community that heals. Made for writing and mentoring—and, in turn, for training, curating, and fortifying coalitions of artists, educators, and leaders. Rooted in New York City, branching outward: statewide, national, even global. Dubbed the Collaboratory: intimate, versatile, cutting-edge; designed to move with AI, a volatile marketplace, and our own psyches. For Girls Write Now, Metamorphosis is not only the title and theme of this anthology—it is a state of being.
Our Digital Story Collection
Our Digital Story Collection
Couple in Training
This piece was selected as an Honorable Mention in the First Chapters Contest, hosted in partnership with Penguin Random House and Electric Lit. Deja Evans and Vivian Wu are thrown into collaboration at summer camp after six months of no contact. Reluctantly, working together is the only option, even as the memories of their time together invade.
Silver Eyes
This piece was selected as an Honorable Mention in the First Chapters Contest, hosted in partnership with Penguin Random House and Electric Lit
Monumental
This piece was selected as an Honorable Mention in the First Chapters Contest, hosted in partnership with Penguin Random House and Electric Lit
Regnants
This piece was selected as an Honorable Mention in the First Chapters Contest, hosted in partnership with Penguin Random House and Electric Lit. For two years, every action Ariella had taken was infiltrated by her father's opinions. Until, she discovered secrets her government had hidden for decades. Was she just a pawn in a much more complicated game?
Rin, Haru, and Umi
This piece was selected as an Honorable Mention in the First Chapters Contest, hosted in partnership with Penguin Random House and Electric Lit. A boy who plays violin is nudged out of his shell.
Menagerie of Philosophy
This piece was selected as an Honorable Mention in the First Chapters Contest, hosted in partnership with Penguin Random House and Electric Lit.
Ear wax/worm
This piece was selected as an Honorable Mention in the First Chapters Contest, hosted in partnership with Penguin Random House and Electric Lit. This piece is intended to be the first chapter of a larger, semi autobiographical body of work that essentially criticizes the archetypes of men that have frustrated me throughout my life.
Passionless
This piece was selected as an Honorable Mention in the First Chapters Contest, hosted in partnership with Penguin Random House and Electric Lit. In the mechanized faction of Chronodale in the Velorath Coalition, humanoid dolls have been forbidden for their destructive power and lack of humanity. That’s the way it’s always been—or supposed to be, at least.
The Vile Crown
This piece was selected as an Honorable Mention in the First Chapters Contest, hosted in partnership with Penguin Random House and Electric Lit. Mave Chen finds herself in an impossible situation where she’s the only one who knows a secret the conquering Rynnians would kill for.
Remnants
This piece was selected as the winner in the First Chapters Contest, hosted in partnership with Penguin Random House and Electric Lit