2025-26 San Juan Literary Magazine: "What's Your Why?"
BV Newsroom
By Mark Yadchuk
Fair Oaks, CA - November 6, 2025
Calling all Bella Vista writers and artists! In the spring of 2026, the third edition of the San Juan Unified Literary magazine is set to come out, with the theme "What's Your Why?". This theme was chosen in order to give students an opportunity to write about what they're motivated by, who they are at their core, and what they want to accomplish.
In 2024, the San Juan Unified School District, with the help of teachers and student leaders, published its first edition of a district-wide magazine filled with student-written short stories, essays, novel excerpts, poems, songs, and even screenplays! The intent was to create a platform for students to get their writing published while also elevating student voice. The theme for the first edition was "Identity", exploring students' views of who they are and how they fit into the world.
In the spring of 2025, it expanded even further to include art pieces by students- paintings, comic strips, digital art, and more! The number of submissions from 2024 to 2025 nearly doubled. The theme for that edition was "We Are Dreamers", reflecting students' aspirations, imaginations, and perhaps literal dreams.
Now, it is the time of year once again to begin brainstorming ideas for this year's submissions- due January 16!
For anyone who is interested in getting their work published to a large, district-wide audience- this is your chance! Not only is it fun for your writing to be featured in an official publication, but doing something like this also looks great on college applications.
And if you're anything like me, you love writing- but you don't always have the motivation to do it. Take this as a reason to write something!
Most works will be accepted(as long as they are at least somewhat relevant to the theme and are your own authentic work). However, this theme may seem rather daunting. You might ask what exactly it is you're supposed to write about, but the theme is intentionally left ambiguous. It is the artist's responsibility to interpret the theme in whichever way they want to. Perhaps they may look at it as the goals they have set for themselves. Maybe they can write about how their "why" is to please their family members. Writers may relate it to their heritage. Maybe you can write about how you don't know what your why is.
This ambiguity has been a constant with the literary magazine in its three editions. The themes "Identity" and "We are Dreamers" weren't exactly clear-cut prompts, either. But it is up to the artist to decide how they want to portray the theme. If you are having trouble, you can also use the guiding questions that were put together by the Literary Magazine's Executive Board:
What makes you feel alive?
What shapes your decisions?
How does your environment influence you?
What motivates you?
Who/what inspires you?
What gets you out of bed in the morning?
So, if you're already an artist or writer and want to get your work out there, or you're someone who just wants to challenge themselves to write something, consider submitting to this year's San Juan Literary Magazine!
You can submit using the QR code below or by scanning the QR code in the flyer shown earlier in the article. Good luck!
Comments