Voice: Student Writers
Xavier Pino [READING HIS PAPER]
…the growth of hip-hop music was in such a short period of time, and its tremendous impact upon today's society has caused a lot of uproar, some good and some not. Yet however you look at the industry of rap and hip-hop music as a whole, don't forget the tremendous impact that the industry has on the young people of minority or low-income environments.

Pino
And my teacher's kind of…she's fun, I mean…but she's so…so cosmic in her views and the way she approaches everything that it's kind of fun to write to her because you can kind of take an air-headed point of view at the same time and she really kind of likes it and she kind of appreciates the fact that there's other people as weird as her in the world. And so it's kind of fun to relate to her. And it's kind of fun, when I write papers to different teachers, to kind of not really talk to them, but voice it or write it in a way that they can really relate to and they can have fun with.

John Morgan Wilson
Voice is like a muscle and you have to work it, and the more you work it, which means the more you write, the stronger that muscle gets, the stronger your voice gets. The less you write, the longer it takes you to find your voice and then to develop your voice.

Ethlyn Manning [READING HER PAPER]
Ashley is a small town in Clarington, the most Southern parish in Jamaica, the West Indies. The major jobs were fishing and farming. Even though most of the coastal lands in Jamaica served as a tourist attraction, our little world somehow did not and remained unspoilt.

Wilson
It's something you've gotta do every day so it becomes as natural a process as possible. So when you sit down at that keyboard or that typewriter the connection between your head, your heart, and what's going to be…go down on the page…there's no longer a gap there. It's almost a…automatic when you sit down and write. And that's very connected to voice. Your voice hopefully by then is strong enough from having written enough, often enough, regularly enough, that it's a natural process to the page.

Corie Cushnie [READING HER PAPER]
Although I have many nicknames, I would never change my real name. I think that my name kind of hides me because it could also be a boy's name. I think that if someone were to look at my name, including all of my nicknames, they would get a sense of who I am. Nicknames are tools that let you see into what a person is all about. They tell a story about you without you even knowing it. Although like all stories, some of it isn't true, it's always fun to hear how you got them.

Wilson
And I think the way to find out what voice is, is to read different writers. Especially those you admire, and read them aloud and listen to the quality of the pros and the power and the momentum that drives the narrative forward. That's the voice.