My hands were trembling so hard I could barely click the send button. With that one tap of the mouse, my words, the proposal for the book I’d written, would be sent to literary agents, and hopefully one of them would see potential in it and want to represent me in the publishing world. I’d known the writing process was difficult, but to my fifteen-year-old mind the publishing process was even more terrifying. When I was nine I...

Eleven-year-old Ukrainian refugee Mariya huffed and shook her head at me. “I want to go home,” she said decidedly, her accent particularly thick. I ran a hand through my hair. “I want to go home,” are not words you want to hear from a camper, especially a camper you had been trying to coax out of her shell. Mariya was a good kid. She was spirited and couldn’t stop talking to me, but she was withdrawn with the other...