DePaul's Blue Book: Best American High School Writing



DePaul’s Blue Book: Best American High School Writing is an annual anthology featuring outstanding English and Spanish writing from high school literary magazines, newspapers, and individual students. Digital and hard copies are free for all to enjoy!

Submission Deadline for the 2026 issue is October 31, 2025

DePaul's Blue Book: Best American High School Writing 2025 is now available online!

Blue Book Trailer

Samples from our 2025 issue

It’s November and They’re Banning Books

Who she is
almost doesn’t matter—only that she can’t be
herself—not on the cover, not

in front of this class. Dancing
on a milky toadstool, she’s got to go—
can’t reveal her identity

in Chapter Four, questions bubbling
like manilla clams in low tide,
revealed. Her eyes

hide the velvet cinnamon
of November’s cool kiss all autumn, moist
and littered, scattered across Chapter Seven

like a mural of dead leaves. In the real world
November’s more of a cornucopia, filled
with snickering smoke, seasoned

with those cinnamon eyes as PTA moms burn
what they’re afraid of—books
forbidden, sticky caramel chapters, sweetness

authentic, but charred. And grinded and
glazed and torn—their disgust
with the internet, the teeth of their pride

sharp as needles, pressing through the skin of
what children shouldn’t see, what children shouldn’t
be, swallowing her smoking cinnamon eyes whole.

There’s nothing sweet about that.

Nora Gupta (she/her) / Poetry
The Bronx High School of Science, NY

Submit high school literary magazines, newspapers, or individual work, in English or Spanish, to be considered for the next edition of the Blue Book!

Final Deadline: October 31, 2025



DePaul’s Blue Book: Best American High School Writing is now available!

DePaul’s Blue Book: Best American High School Writing is now available!

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