By Sally Murphy, Staff Reporter
The Augment Review, an up-and-coming literary magazine created by and made for young adults, aims to shine a light on younger voices . This literary magazine gives a platform to submit creative works and have them published for others to see. The Augment Review accepts all types of art, such as writing pieces and artwork, from all types of people, though priority is given to those between the ages of 13 and 25.
The Augment Review plans to release an issue solely to the web quarterly, with the first issue coming this March. Junior Sabrina Zhang founded the magazine this September to explore and experiment with her love of magazine layout and to showcase the underrepresented youth perspective.
“This is during a time where I felt the youth wasn’t really getting much respect around their thoughts, their creativity, and their expression,” Zhang said. “I wanted to give young people around the world a place to be able to express themselves and their thoughts.”
Zhang doesn’t run the magazine alone. Co-editor-in-chief Stella Lei is no stranger to the young adult writing community, as she has written and submitted her work multiple times to literary magazines. When she heard about Zhang’s plan, she jumped at the chance to be a part of the publication process.
“I was really excited to join Sabrina and make this [literary magazine] a thing because I have been in the teen writing community for a while now and have been submitting to literary magazines on my own,” Lei said. “When Sabrina started talking about doing this, I realized that I really wanted to be on the other side and help amplify other voices.”
The 14 staff members, including Zhang and Lei, also critique potential publications, deciding which submissions are and are not accepted on their website. They created a Critique Corner, where people can submit their work and get paired up with another artist who submitted to the Critique Corner and does similar work. Then the artists collaborate and give feedback to each other through a shared Google Drive folder.
Zhang feels passionately about the Critique Corner and the collaborative aspect of creating art.
“Something we really want to emphasize is the more collaborative parts of art and writing,” Zhang said. “I feel like a lot of times we tend to see art and writing as a very individual activity, but without collaboration, there is no growth.”
Currently, the Augment Review is paying for its website without any income. Submitting to the magazine is free, in contrast to most literary magazines, which charge for submissions. They have not decided on whether to charge for submissions in the future, however, if they were to charge, they would direct the money to a charitable cause.
“We were talking about making it required for them to donate to a credible organization or charity to support those causes,” Lei said. “As long as they attach a donation receipt with their submission, they can submit.”
Conestoga students, and any other young adults around the world, can share their work with other creative young people through the Augment Review.
“There are a lot of established literary magazines for adults that are really difficult for teenagers to get into,” Lei said. “We felt like teenagers have a really valuable perspective and voice, and a lot of teenagers are super talented. We wanted to help them promote their work and give them a platform.”
