For the past three years, English and Creative Writing teacher Nicole Lombardi has extended the opportunity to be published in the DePaul Blue Book, a national magazine showcasing high school students’ writing submissions, to her students. The book accepts poetry, creative writing, and most recently, personal essays. This was how featured writer Lillian Antczak ‘24 secured her spot for the 2023 anthology.

“Last year in AP Language and Composition we were writing personal memoirs, and could choose the topic we wrote about,” Antczak said. “[Lombardi] said you could submit it for the DePaul Blue Book, so I worked on it and submitted it, and got in. I was proud.” 

Along with Antczak, Lucy Dillanbeck ‘24, Djordje Negovanovic ‘24, and Loveleen Sasan ‘24 submitted their various prose and were named as finalists. Rather than having their writing published, finalists are named in the table of contents as an honorable mention for their work.

“The students of DePaul who are in the creative writing masters program are in charge of choosing the art and the writing,” Lombardi said. “It’s very similar to LT’s Menagerie, but on the national level.” 

In the past three years of submitting, nine of her students have been published or named finalists, she said. With the additional acceptance of personal essays this year, more opportunities for students’ work to be featured outside of LT were opened up. 

“I hate being the sole audience for student’s essays,” Lombardi said. “You’re trying to just impress me, and then I’m just going to grade it and give it back. I’ve always wanted to give them something else to work towards: To have a different audience and feel like they’re wanting to get it just right for someone other than just me. This is the perfect opportunity for that.” 

The process of submitting doesn’t stop at the end of the school year, Lombardi said. Her students work diligently over summer to revise and edit their pieces before the final due date around November of the following school year. 

“Teaching voice in writing is very difficult,” she said. “You can show students what it is and play with it in real time, but it’s difficult to really teach. All four of [this year’s featured students] had very strong voices in their pieces, and I saw how far they could go.”

Towards the beginning of the year, to demonstrate writing principles, she invited Negovanovic to share his piece with her creative writing students as a way to expand comfortability sharing their work, she said. In turn, more students may become more comfortable sharing their work with more peers or publications. 

“Writing is only half of the journey,” she said. “Sharing it is a whole other thing. That’s why learning how to trust yourself when you send your work out is so important to being a lifelong writer.” 

The 2023 DePaul Blue Book will be available for free online viewing around early May 2024, while a hard copy anthology is available for order in June 2024. To learn more, visit https://blogs.depaul.edu/bluebook/.