When We Were Countries: Poems and Stories by Outstanding High School Writers - Softcover

When We Were Countries is a collection of extraordinary poems and stories by 73 of the nation's most outstanding high school age writers. All the work first appeared in the special high school section of Hanging Loose magazine, the standard for cutting-edge work by teenage writers since 1968, offering young writers the opportunity to have their work published alongside that of professionals in one of the country's oldest and most distinguished literary journals. The poetry and fiction in this volume, as in  the previous three, has been selected by Hanging Loose editors Mark Pawlak, Dick Lourie, and Robert Hershon. And When We Were Countries incorporates a new feature not included in the previous collections. Four accomplished poet/teachers share their perspectives on how they have nurtured teen writers: Marty Skoble teaches at Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn; Kathleen Aguero is a professor at Pine Manor College near Boston and instructs teenagers every summer at the New York State Young Writers Institute; Kip Zegers teaches at New York City's Hunter College High School; and Joanna Fuhrman instructs students at Rutgers University in New Jersey. She is also an alumna of the magazine: Her own early poems first appeared in the  Hanging Loose high school section 20 years ago, and she has gone on to publish four volumes of poetry, the most recent of which won the prestigious 2009 Kinereth Gensler Award.