Looking for the perfect gift for the bookworm in your life? We have just the thing – in the run up to the holidays, we’ve put together a fantastic bundle for the YA lover in your life. Get the first three issues of Paper Lanterns in our stocking filler and save 10%! Packed to the brim with writing, interviews, art, photography, features and book reviews this is not to be missed.
Issue 3 Cover Reveal!
We are thrilled to finally share our cover reveal for Issue 3!
Artist: Rebecca Johnson
Designer: Eleanor Brayden
Halloween Poetry Competition Winners
We are delighted to announce the winners and runners up of our Halloween poetry competition! Thanks to everyone who entered. These poems faced some scary competition but in the end were the eeriest of them all. Sit down, relax, enjoy reading them and try to ignore the creaking of the door behind you…
Winners
Under 18: Falling For You by Rowan Beddows
Over 18: The Bone Man by Sarah Mills
Runners-Up
Under 18: Or Else by Anne Holloway
Over 18: The Púca by Eilish Fisher
Winners
Falling For You by Rowan Beddows
A mirage of leaves, all around,
Falling down, to the ground.
My dress swirls around, playing with the autumn wind,
Our picnic blanket, on the grass, rocks keeping it pinned.
We spin around, underneath the sun,
No one can disturb us here, hon.
In this collage of orange, yellow and red,
With birds soaring overhead.
Our song plays; We fell in love in October, it sings,
Blasting, blazing, we open up our wings.
Stay here,
My dear,
Underneath the autumn sky,
Listening to the birds fly by.
We huddle around the fire,
Our hearts swelling with desire.
Your hazel eyes shimmering with delight,
Always makes me smile bright.
And your lips curled in a smile,
Makes me lose my breath for a while.
Cocoa is passed between us,
“There will be no Halloween this year”, I hear you say, nevertheless,
We can still celebrate with sweets and costumes,
And songs and dancing all afternoon.
Afterall, Halloween is all about ridding evil spirits,
So don’t be sad my love, I’ll sing you the lyrics.
And maybe then you won’t be so down,
I never like to see you frown.
So I’ll visit you, I’ll dance with you, I’ll love you,
I’ll stick to you like gorilla glue,
This October.
And even when the masks hides your frown,
I’ll always know your furrowed crown.
I’ll come around,
Through the battleground,
To be with you,
On this beautiful October noon.
Rowan Beddows always dreamed of becoming a jellyfish timelord, traveling through space but decided writing would probably be easier to accomplish. In her spare time, she also likes to read, listen to music, and obsess over many things to the point her friends are getting quite sick of hearing about She-Ra, Jessie Paege, and Harry Potter. She lives in Tipperary with three crazy, spoiled kitties and three equally crazy siblings, her superhero mom, and her astronomical dad.
The Bone Man by Sarah Mills
All night long he is on the road,
Never looking back at his chattering load.
Sometimes you can hear the unnerving sound
Of his rickety ride hitting grids on the ground
And for a few moments he stops to stare,
Believing that some ribs lie there
But being mistaken carries on through the gloom
To crypt and grave, sepulchre and tomb.
His wrist is watchless for he is always at work
And no can see him through the mist and the murk.
Only the moonlight dares to fall on his teeth
As he floats over hill, highland and heath.
I look out of my window and wait patiently to see
Who drives this mobile ossuary
And I remember the words my mother used to tell me:
“Do not look for the bone man or he will look for thee.”
Sarah Mills is a 32-year-old aspiring poet and writer from Wiltshire with a bachelor’s degree from The Open University in German, History of Art & Classical Mythology. She writes poetry because it has the ability to express her deepest feelings and she wholeheartedly agrees with Victor Hugo’s statement that ‘words are the mysterious visitors of the soul’. She is thrilled to be one of the winners in this competition and hopes that you all enjoy reading her work as much as she enjoyed writing it.
Runners-Up
Or Else by Anne Holloway
Soldiers take to the streets.
‘No surrender, no retreat.’
Divide and conquer:
Pound on doors
In twos, or threes,
or sometimes fours.
‘Give us what we want,
(Or else)’,
They say.
‘Give us what we want, please,
(Or else)’
Their swords are drawn,
Faces masked,
Pistols pointed,
Broom handles clasped.
‘Give us what we want, please,
(Or else)’
Anna Holloway lives in Dublin with her Mum, Dad and younger sister. She likes art, reading, knitting and watching YouTube. She absolutely loathes decision making.
The Púca by Eilish Fisher
She steps through the treeline
over bracken and bramble,
burdock and cleavers.
He watches her bend her body
like a curled leaf,
green as honeyed sap rising.
He rolls his tongue to the sky,
sipping the spicy scent of skin,
as she pauses by a lone hawthorn.
She dips her hands to wetness
drinking in clear well water,
fights against the tearing gorse.
In shaggy purpose,
he shudders through mossed woods,
bows low by her side.
In faith she climbs
up and onto his muscled spine.
Eilish Fisher grew up on a farm in rural Vermont and moved to Ireland in 1998. After more than twenty years in Ireland, she considers herself both a Wicklow and Vermont writer. Her poetry has been published in Crannog Literary Magazine, Three Drops From a Cauldron, The Ogham Stone and Cailleach literary journals and in the anthology Writing Home; The ‘New Irish’ Poets, published by Dedalus Press. In summer, 2020 she won second place in the Ken Saro-Wiwa Poetry Competition and was also awarded a place on the Words Ireland Mentoring Programme for young adult and children’s literature. Her first children’s novel was short-listed for the Mslexia Children’s Novel Award in 2018. She received a master’s degree in early medieval Irish history and literature and a doctorate in medieval English literature from the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Eilish lives in Glenmalure, County Wicklow.
Issue 3 – Contributors Reveal!
We are so thrilled to share our contributors for Issue 3! We received a record number of submissions this issue and we can’t wait for you to enjoy the final pieces.
Reviewers
Under 18
Rebecca Downey
Esmée Kidd
Hanna-Rose Sullivan
Aoibhe Toft
Over 18
Camille Boelt Hindsgaul
Joanna Geoghegan
Paddy Lennon
Jessica Militante
Emma Muldoon Ryan
Lorna Mulvihill
Anne Murray
Niamh O’Donnell
Lorna O’Dea
Medb O’Gorman
Luke Power
Anet Rumberg
Aoife Sheehan
Courtney Smyth
Writers
Under 18
Megan Rutter
Molly McDonagh
Charlotte Edwards
Angel Ifyawuchi
Nadine Kelly Hughes
Paxton Calder
Maitreyi Parakh
S. Rupsha Mitra
Anna Holloway
Over 19
Oyanne Gahann
Laura Spierings
Kaden Elijah
Valerie Hunter
Sinéad Creedon
Mark Stewart
Artists
Under 18
Olivia Boylan
Béibhinn Collins
Rachel O’Brien
Over 19
Ana Slattery
Martins Deep
Rebecca Johnson
Features
Jennifer Gouck
Jenny Duffy
Interviews with
Deirdre Sullivan
Áine Ní Ghlinn
Paper Lanterns Halloween Poetry Competition
It’s the time of year for ghouls, goblins, ghosts
All of the creatures that you fear the most
To inspire you to make eery rhymes
About this most spooky and fun of times!
Paper Lanterns are delighted to announce our Halloween Poetry Competition! We want to read your poetry inspired by the most atmospheric time of year. The competition is open for teens (13-18 years) and adults (19+ years) and there will be a winner in each category!
Be in with a chance to win this spooktastic prize:
• The winning poems will be published on the Paper Lanterns website
• A book voucher
• A Halloween goody-bag
The rules are simple:
• Poems must be no longer than 40 lines
• Writing must be appropriate for a teenage audience
• The theme is Halloween – interpret that anyway you like!
How to submit:
• Pay a submission fee of €3.00 through our PayPal account at this link – paypal.me/PaperLanternsJournal
• Keep a note of your PayPal receipt number
• Submit through the form below
o Your poem must be saved as a word doc
o Do not have your name written on the word doc
o You will need to write your PayPal receipt number in this form as proof of your submission fee
You can submit as many times as you like, but you will need to pay the submission fee for each poem.
Deadline is October 25th – winners will be announced on Halloween!
Sponsored Submissions
If you are unable to afford the submission fee, please contact us about arranging a sponsored submission.
If you are interested in donating to the competition to sponsor the submission of a writer, please do get in touch (we will be forever grateful). Email: paperlanternsjournal@gmail.com (please don’t send your submission to us over email – fill in the form!)
That’s it! Time to get writing. We can’t wait to read your booooo-tiful poems!
8 Top Tips for Submitting a Feature
Got an idea for a feature article? Want to share your views on Teen & YA Literature? We’d love to hear from you – so get in touch!
We’ve put together some tips to help you put your feature together:
- Proposals are accepted! We would be delighted to work with you to make sure the finished piece is the best essay it can be, and to make sure it fits into the style of the journal
- If you do want to send a completed essay, great! Just remember we don’t accept academic essays
- The essays section basically means “non-fiction”. We just want to hear about your thoughts and observations without a fictional narrative (for that, check out our creative writing submissions!)
- What we are looking for from teen writers: anything that interests you! This journal is for and by you. Talk about your love for arts, sports, change you want to see, your experiences. If you feel passionate enough to write about it, we want to read it!
- What we want from adult writers: anything that would be an interest to a teen audience. It can be observations on trends in YA lit, an exploration of new art/sports/science/etc for teens, highlighting a platform that is of interest to young folks – ANYTHING for a TEEN AUDIENCE
- Familiarise yourself with what we’ve already published to get an idea of what we like. For teens, essays on their love for ballet, learning to read Jane Austen, the role of nostalgia. For adults, the representation of mental health in YA lit, career paths for book lovers, etc
- When writing a proposal to submit to us, it should be approx 500 words (but that’s a very loose guideline). In the proposal, highlight what you want to do, how you will do it, and what support you’d need from Paper Lanterns to make it work (access to resources, contacts, etc)
- If in doubt, ask! Email us at paperlanternsjournal@gmail.com with any questions.
Happy writing – we can’t wait to read your ideas!
For submissions guidelines, click here
Paper Lanterns Writing Workshop at Dublin Book Festival
We are so thrilled to be doing a live online writing workshop with Dublin Book Festival this November!
Are you a teenager who loves to write creatively? Or maybe you are a pro at writing your English essays? Or perhaps you are a massive bookworm and love to spend all day reading? Then this workshop is for you! Paper Lanterns is the new literary journal that discusses all things teen and YA literature. Meet the founders, Grace Kelley, Ruth Ennis, and Amy O’Sullivan, who will teach you all you need to know about submitting to literary journals. Learn how to write the best poem, short story, or flash fiction piece that you can. Find out how to create an essay proposal on a topic you are passionate about. Discover how to make an informative and honest book review. At the end of the workshop, you’ll get the chance to showcase some of your creative writing, proposals, or book reviews to the group!
Register for the writing workshop and find out more about Dublin Book Festival here!
Calling all teachers! Get your students involved in Paper Lanterns
Calling all teachers!
Do you have readers, writers and artists in your class that you think would be interested in being involved with Paper Lanterns? We are putting together a newsletter for teachers and other youth workers to help their students get involved.
Sign up to our teacher newsletter for more info – https://forms.gle/
Submissions close for Issue 3 on September 13th. We’ve put together a poster that you can print out an stick on your classroom wall, in your library – wherever students will see it! Download here – Paper Lanterns Schools Issue 3
Issue 2 Launch and Issue 3 Submissions Open!
This evening, we are delighted to launch the second issue of Paper Lanterns!
We are delighted to have readings from several contributors from issue two, including Agata Tryhubczak, Caoimhe Weakliam, Bea Rae, Lauren Simone Blanchard, Lucy Hood, Evangeline Henry, Sadbh Kellett, Molly McDonagh, Daniel Fergus Tamulonis, Darcey Dugan, Niamh O’Donnell, and Jennifer Gouck.
You can buy both copies of issue one and issue two on our website: https://paperlanternslit.com/shop/
You can also get it in a number of bookshops:
- Tertulia Bookshop: https://tertuliabookshop.com/
- Woodbine Bookshop: https://www.woodbinebooks.ie/
- Halfway Up the Stairs: https://halfwayupthestairs.ie/
- Dubray Books: https://www.dubraybooks.ie/
If you are interested in donating (thank you!), you can do so here: https://bit.ly/3fPowiY Or if you are interested in becoming a patron (super thank you!), you can contact us here: paperlanternsjournal@gmail.com
We are delighted to announce we are now open to submissions for issue three! More information on how to send your work to us can be found on our website: https://paperlanternslit.com/submissi…
Midnight’s Twins
Midnight’s Twins
Holly Race
Hot Key Books, June 2020
Paperback, 419 pages, €8.99
ISBN 9781471409165
Londoner Fern King and her twin brother Ollie have just discovered Annwn, a dream world where dreams and nightmares come to life. Annwn is a mirror of Fern’s real world in London. They soon discover that Annwn is full of dangers and the nightmares are growing stronger.
Midnight’s Twins is a debut novel and the first in a trilogy. With strong characters and amazing world building I was hooked from the beginning and can’t wait for the next in the series! The detail of the world building is impeccable. I was fully immersed and invested throughout. The relationship between twins, Ollie and Fern, is fraught with tension and I found myself going back and forth between who I supported. Between tense battles, friendships are being built and so there is a hint of coming of age about this story.
Overall, this was a fantastic YA fantasy with diverse and interesting characters. We meet fae, angels and other mythical creatures – and the fantastic world building deserves a second mention!
Lisa Whelan