Street Snippets: 2020-2021

Streets Snippets started in 2016 as a project for my son's 8th grade English class in New York City. The original concept was to give the kids a snippet of conversation heard on the streets of the city, and have each student write an original story based upon that snippet. After my son graduated from middle school, the platform wasn't used for several years.

It seemed logical to reopen the platform as an extension of the online curriculum development being created as an educational alternative during the COVID pandemic in 2020. When I first approached John Bapst High School in Bangor, Maine about using the Street Snippets platform for their 2020-2021 creative writing class, little did I know the diversity of ideas and formats that would come from this talented group of high schooler's. The first indication was when a request came through to submit a poem instead of a story. Sure, I thought, that would be fun. That was soon followed by requests for publishing songs, cartoon strips and images. The formats went far beyond the basic short story.

What you will find in this book are the stories and projects created by the authors at John Bapst. We have kept the stories as written, laying them out as closely as possible to the format created by the authors. The stories in the book are arranged by snippet, with each story beginning with the snippet for that month. As you read through each chapter, you will find a diverse set of ideas, each original, each personal, that takes the snippet as its opening line and then has the story run its course.

Each of the stories can be found in its original form on the Street Snippets site. If you like a particular story, you can leave a comment for the author when you visit the site.

As the publisher of Street Snippets, I couldn't be prouder of the authors from John Bapst. I look forward to working with next year's students as we continue to encourage and promote the work of the next generation of authors.