John Kennedy Toole is one of my favorite writers, but he's not someone who means a lot to the kids I teach. This is all about having other voices.

We had just gotten the money together to reprint them.

The writers wanted to address the perception that our neighborhoods are only about violence and drugs,

Our city and our world is so much more complicated. All of the writers in our series chose to address the negative parts of their lives, but they also wanted to show that you have people struggling to make beauty.

It's getting better every day.

Every time it seemed like we were coming back or could come back, they got a blocked shot or we took a bad shot or turned the ball over.