The Passed Note began because of a collection of short stories I found in my local bookstore titled Rags and Bones. Edited by Marissa Marr and Tim Pratt, the collection of reimagined fairy tales sparked a thought in my brain: why isn’t there more short fiction for a YA audience? Furthermore, why aren’t there more magazines for short YA fiction? Or YA poetry? Or YA art? And not short fiction, poetry, and art by young adults; there are so many magazines for that, including the zines of almost every high school across the country. I meant for young adults, created by those of us who have been there and know exactly how much a simple note passed under a desk can change your whole day.
The process of planning The Passed Note began last July. Of course, then, it wasn’t the collection of pages now glowing across your screen. I had yet to conceive of how much went into running a literary journal. I knew only that I wanted to produce a literary magazine for YA literature, one that young adults could call theirs.
YA is my passion. I know of no other genre that so thoroughly accepts all facets of genre: YA is fantasy and romance and thrillers and poetry and non-fiction rolled into one.
Note from Editor-in-Chief,
Stephanie R. Johnson
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