About a year ago Out Youth established its very own in-house publishing program at our youth drop-in center called Out Youth Press. Using available resources available -- paper, markers and our youth’s ideas – we have created a number of wonderful small books and magazines.

Some of our recent projects have included:

A zine (a short magazine) about HIV stigma;
“Identity Comics” (i.e. comic strips about different aspects of a person’s identities); and “A Beginner’s Guide to _______,” which is our latest project. It’s a series of small books about topics our youth know a lot about like gender identity, sexual identity, and self-care.

These books will be featured alongside other resources offered in the drop-in center for anyone to read. This fall we will be anthologizing some of the projects our youth have created. This anthology will feature poetry, photography, illustration, essays, collage, and even some recipes.

This project encourages and nurtures the creativity and insightfulness inherent to our youth. We hope to continue to use this program in order raise the voices of LGBTQ+ youth, emphasize the importance of telling your own story and empower our youth to believe in the strength of their own ideas.