Launched in the spring of 2019, Young Adulting Review was founded in response to diminishing space for reviews in traditional media. Our mandate was to foster critical conversations about Canadian and Indigenous books for young readers: kids, tweens, and teens (and, of course, their crossover adult readership).
Over the past 6+ years, we’ve published nearly 400 reviews, 60 author interviews, and 90 industry newsletters. All of these were written by UBC Creative Writing students. Countless emerging writers who passed through Writing for Children and Young Adults classes wrote for and participated in our community of writers who loved books for kids and teens.
However, recent budget cutbacks have restricted the online magazine’s ability to continue operating. Without funding to pay a part-time editor and a part-time associate editor, as well as for incidentals to cover website updates, design, and hosting, it’s extremely difficult to develop new reviewers, track assignments, edit new writing, promote existing content, connect with publishers, write newsletters and conduct (or oversee) the writing of author interviews.
Our intention was always to grow the electronic magazine to include more than just critical conversations and author interviews. For instance, we’re interested in publishing short fiction and multimedia content. To do this, we need to be able to pay writers and other staff. Sadly, we have discovered that many avenues of arts funding are closed to us, due to the fact that our writers have been UBC students.
As a result, we have made the difficult decision to taking a publishing hiatus while we consider what Young Adulting will look like in the future and how we can pivot to become self-sustaining. If you are interested in being part of conversations about how Young Adulting might pivot and come back better than ever, please reach out to Emily Pohl-Weary at e.pohl-weary@ubc.ca
