Though many high schools publish a student newspaper, a yearbook, and a magazine, few offer what Townsend Harris High School offers through The Starling Press: a chance to work with a student-run publishing house that seeks to turn young writers into published authors. Our publishing house is run by a team of student editors that can edit a manuscript, format it for print publication, format it for digital publication, and publish it directly to Kindle and Amazon.

We agree that the students of New York City should see their stories represented on the printed page in literature classrooms. However, we also believe that they should have the right to tell those stories themselves. Moreover, New York City students also deserve to be represented throughout the publication process: in leadership positions, in business meetings, when designing the artwork that adorns and embellishes their stories. The Starling Press aims to empower students to learn what it takes to write and publish book-length pieces and to identify, partner with, and give a platform to diverse student authors from across the city.

The Starling Press publishes novels, collections of short stories and poems, nonfiction texts, comic books, graphic novels, children’s books, and more.

Our hope is that you find your own experiences reflected in the voices collected in our published works, discover a window into a life you haven’t lived and ultimately learn something new from reading the work of our authors.