kids write

Interview with Lacey Louwagie
Editor, New Moon MAGAZINE

We are grateful this month, to have an opportunity to speak with Lacey Louwagie, an assistant editor at NEW MOON. NEW MOON gives young girls a voice to discuss things of importance to them. It's nice to see a girl's magazine devoted to something beyond boys and clothes (not that we dislike boys or clothes :-) NEW MOON also has girls on their editorial board that help with decisions about content and their input is taken very seriously. So, let's hear more about this fascinating magazine.

KMW: What's the average percentage of your magazine that is actually written by young women? Does that hold pretty steady? Has it grown over time?
LL: 80% of the magazine is written by girls. This figure has held steady since the magazine’s inception because it’s a high priority of the editorial staff* to keep this a girl-written publication. All our departments that depend upon letters from readers are girl-written, as well as all of our features. By limiting the departments that accept adult submissions, we keep the ratio of girl-written work very high—and girl-written work ALWAYS takes precedent over adult-written work of a similar nature.

* please note that when I say ‘editorial staff’, I am referring to both the girl and adult editors unless otherwise noted—we work as a team and make decisions together.

KMW: Where did you find your Girls Editorial Board?
LL: Gruver’s 11-year-old daughters and their friends. Now that the magazine has grown, new editorial board members find us. Every spring, we send announcements to newspapers, schools, YWCAs, Girl Scout Councils, and other places where we think we might find interested girls. Interested girls fill out applications telling us about themselves. The current Girls Editorial Board reads through all the applications and picks between 6 and 12 girls to interview, depending on how many openings we have available. We make our final selections based on those interviews and usually invite 2-6 new girls to join each year.

There’s a lot of interest in the Girls Editorial Board and we wish that we could bring every interested girl on—each girl brings a valuable perspective to the board. Because we’ve seen such high interest, we’re developing other ways for girls to be involved in NEW MOON, such as through the Girls Advisory Board, who work with our store manager designing products for the NEW MOON Store, and the Computer Advisory Board, who meet about once a month in online chatrooms with an adult editor to brainstorm and give feedback on the magazine. And of course, girls are ALWAYS welcome to send feedback and ideas to us via e-mail or snail mail. We read all our mail.

KMW: I know NEW MOON serves girls from 8 to 14, but do you notice most of your submissions cluster around the higher end of the age group? Are there any patterns you see in submissions and age?
LL: We hear the most consistently from girls within the upper middle of the age range—10, 11, 12, and 13. When I say “hear from,” I’m referring to letters and comments we get. Many of our longer writing submissions do come from girls from the upper end of the age spectrum, especially between the ages of 12 and 14. We take the age of writers into consideration when we read submissions and strive to have a variety of ages represented. We’d love to print more work from younger girls (ages 8 – 11).

KMW: I've noticed NEW MOON is much more interested in metaphysical subjects (one sample issue I have includes a fun how-to on reading tea leaves for example and a small sidebar on Karma) than many magazines for young people. Do you have a kind of "line" you wouldn't cross for that kind of content?
LL: That’s a good question. NEW MOON as a publication has taken, and will continue to take, a lot of risks that other kids’ magazines won’t. The girls that we work with and the girls who write to us really shape the content of the magazine. They know what girls are interested in and what girls are ready to hear more than we (adult editors) could predict on our own. All our story ideas are voted on by girls, and when we come across something that might be controversial, we do discuss it with the girls until we’re all comfortable standing behind our decision. When it comes to editorial content, the girls are usually much braver and more willing to take risks than adults—so the fact that NEW MOON is girl-driven and also takes more risks than other publications is no coincidence.

The article you’re referring to was in the issue “Jokes and Magic,” which leant itself to more metaphysical subjects by nature. Some people have seen NEW MOON as too “new age-y” or “witchy”, so I see what you’re getting at. What makes NEW MOON different is its commitment to honoring all girls’ voices, even the ones that we don’t hear as often in the mainstream—religious, economic, or ethnic minorities, for example. We’ll print an article written by a girl who practices Wicca because her experience of girlhood is just as valid as that of a girl who practices Christianity or Judaism. I guess our only consistent “line” that we measure topics against is respect. “Does this article deal with this topic in a way that’s respectful both to girls who feel this way and those who don’t feel this way”? We want to celebrate girls’ diversity of interests and of experiences, and that often means going beyond what you’d see typically printed in a kids’ magazine. We also want to foster a community of acceptance. I’m proud of that, and our girls editorial board is proud of that, and we’ll continue to make editorial decisions thoughtfully and respectfully—but as of now, we don’t have a line as in, “We definitely wouldn’t print something about such and such a subject,” because if that subject is relevant to girls, we probably would print it.

KMW: Can you describe some times that submissions from young women have surprised you?
LL: I’m not sure if surprised is the word I would use so much as amazed. I’m continually amazed by both the uniqueness and universality of girls’ experiences reflected in their writing. I’m amazed at their honesty with themselves and with us. My second day at NEW MOON, I read a submission from a girl who wrote about leaving a home school environment to attend public school—she had trouble fitting in in public school and depicted her struggles with bullying and aloneness with painful insight and clarity. We didn’t print that particular submission, but I’ve never forgotten it.

Girls are willing to be honest when writing to us in a way they might not be with parents or with friends. We hear about their struggles with fitting in, their first sexual feelings and/or experiences, depression, eating disorders, and anxieties, but we also hear about how much their friends mean to them or the first time a crush liked them back. We hear about them organizing letter-writing campaigns or protests. I’m amazed by their bravery to stand up for themselves and what they believe in during a time when self-consciousness is at its peak. I’m amazed by the richness of girls’ experiences and their ability to capture it in writing. I’m honored when girls share with us. That’s why we seek out girls’ submissions over adults’—because they’re right in the thick of it and know exactly what they’re talking about. They’re the experts on what it means to be a girl, and their expertise amazes me.

KMW: How has the Internet and the explosion of access to it by young people changed the kinds of submissions you get to NEW MOON?
LL: In the 2 years I’ve been with NEW MOON, the internet and girls’ access to it has been a given, so I don’t really have a basis of comparison. However, I do know that the internet gives us a wonderful tool for building a community of girls, to take girls’ experience beyond the magazine. It gives us a place to refer girls when a two page article doesn’t cover everything a girl needs to know about getting her period or growing apart from a friend. I think the internet and the magazine work very well together to foster a girls’ community. The internet makes it much easier for the staff to find writers and to communicate with them quickly once an article has been chosen for inclusion. But as far as the initial submissions go, we still get about an equal amount of submissions coming in the ‘old fashioned way’ (snail mail) as we do online. I think there’s something timeless about actually sitting down and writing a letter on stationary that the internet hasn’t replaced for this age group—and that’s perfectly fine with me.

KMW: What do you look for in fiction from young readers? What areas do you most like to see content for? I know every magazine gets an abundance in some areas and far less in others -- what spots tend to be less flooded with submissions for NEW MOON?
LL: Our fiction requirements are actually pretty slim—we want fiction to be between 900 and 1200 words and to have a strong, realistic girl protagonist. We don’t want “preach and teach” pieces, but rather pieces where girls learn by doing something themselves, by being agents of their own story. It can be set in any time era and any situation as long as those requirements are met.

We’re never at a loss for poetry, “Dear Luna” letters, or “Ask a Girl” letters. The department I’d like to see more for is “Howling at the Moon”, where girls write to us about the good things that are happening in their lives. This department gets the least submissions, even though we know there are good things happening for girls. I think they’re just too busy being happy about them to write to us! We’re always on the lookout for “Global Village” articles, which are a challenge because they must be written by girls who are a native of a country outside of North America and who are currently living in that country. I’d also like to see more “Science Side Effects” submissions in general and more “Herstory” and “Women’s Work” submissions from girls—we get a lot of those from adults. Everything else (fiction, features, “Body Language,” “Girls on the Go,” “Girls Act Out,” “Draw Luna,” “Luna’s Art Gallery,” and “How Aggravating!”) generate a pretty consistent flow of submissions, but there’s always room for more in those areas, too.

KMW: Can you expound a bit on some of the upcoming themes. Exactly what
content might a girl send in for "Tales and Tails" -- stories about animals? How about "The Back of Your Head?" You definitely have some creative themes upcoming.
LL: That’s a question we get a lot, to elaborate on themes. We deliberately don’t give theme descriptions on the website or in the magazine because we don’t have the “right” answers. We want girls to take a theme and allow it to speak to them, to mean what they think it means. That gives us a lot of different ways to look at a topic when submissions do come in.

With that said, the editorial staff does have certain ideas for shaping the theme when we choose them, but those ideas serve more as a springboard so that we know the theme is doable rather than a hard and fast definition. We envisioned “Tales and Tails” as being an issue that could focus on stories (personal stories, legends, etc.) as well as animals. “The Back of Your Head (and Other Things You Don’t Notice)” is precisely that—an issue about those things in our lives that often go unnoticed, whether it’s the lunch lady in the cafeteria or the war that’s happening on the other side of the world. I’m excited about this theme because I think it’ll lead to a lot of discovery of just how much we don’t notice—and I’m excited to hear what our girl readers and submitters are bringing to our attention that we didn’t notice.

This page last updated on 01 January 2005