This note was written by AJ Lamas-Nemec, a mentee and member of the Print Committee: Intersectional Voices in Editorial, to introduce the 2025 Girls Write Now Anthology.

Hope Lives in Our Words
so now we sit
at the end of the world
searching for revival,
unknowing that the key
lies right in our chest.

how it rises when a child choir sings.
how it haunts when a widow weeps.
how it rests, ever beating, searching
for more love,
learning, how to dispel hate,
realizing, that hope is just
the space between us.
we must reach out
graze its infinity
and know that
the creation of this good world
is only because
of our intertwined hands
holding us together
thin cords of hope
glistening in connection.

I sit alone in front of a screen; before me, lives fall at my feet. In one image, a mother cries out for me to save her child from war. In another, I see a father asking for help to feed his family. In a third scene, I watch people marching in the street, hoping for a better future. All of this life washes over me, tidal waves of existential realities. How am I to help, just one person in the face of the impossibilities of this world? How can someone so meek live up to the ideals of not just hoping, but fighting for a better life? How does one actualize it?
The catalyst is quite simple: you must connect with others. Whether through school, work, or programs like Girls Write Now, you have to find a way to meet other people. Though they may not see the world exactly like you, though they may not be the same age or of the same culture or walk of life, you must learn that to connect yourself to others is to save yourself from despair. For if you believe that even one person cares about you, that even one person will fight for you, and you will fight for that one person in return, then you can wake each morning. You can raise your tired body from your bed, shake off the melancholy of our destroyed world, and move forward.
Girls Write Now has allowed me to see that I am not alone. Though the world seems to be fading before my eyes, I have found others who feel the hurt, who feel the pain, but who continue. They continue to write, continue to live, continue to hope. The anthology you hold—Hope Lives In Our Words— is a testament to and product of that rich, inspiring, and creative community. To have found people willing to support others, willing to care for others, to love others as if they were their family, has made me see that resistance does not always mean being the loudest voice in the room. Resistance can also emerge from radical love, care, and acceptance. To fight the fear, the hate, and the hopelessness, we must be willing to love, protect, and accept the people around us—they are our lifeline. We must recognize each human life as invaluable, as interwoven and intricately important to every other human’s life. We must connect ourselves to each other so tightly that it feels impossible for us to live in this world without each other, because it is.
Girls Write Now has given me the space to process the cruelty of the world and it has also connected me to people who help make this burden lighter: a fellow mentee who texts you after a Zoom meeting to tell you they liked the poem you read. A facilitator of an event telling a group of mentees that yes, this world is scary, yes this is hard, but we will move forward together. A mentor telling you that the world is not ending, not so long as you find people to hold on to, to hope with and for. Girls Write Now is a place where it seems, even if only for a moment, that we are safe, we are supported, we are valuable.
So, I raise my eyes again to my screen. Lives again fall before me, but I do not look away. With all this love surrounding me, all this kindness I will not shake off, I am prepared to face the world. Together, we will stare down the gaping mouth of this beastly world, and though we don’t know what comes next, we know we are not alone when surrounded by others. For, when we are surrounded by others, we are filled with unceasing hope for what might come to be. All the possibilities of a new world rise to the surface when you realize you are not the only one wishing for a new world. By reading the stories in this book, you will see others searching for the connection you long for. You are not alone.

Get Your Copy of the 2025 Anthology