TEEN AUTHORS
By JOSHUA M. BERNSTEIN
New York Daily News
December 18th, 2006

With winter's Arctic winds blowing, foot traffic to Chelsea's W. 29th St. fur district buzzes into stores for fuzzy mink stoles and fabulous fox coats. But luxurious jackets aren't the area's most vital resource.

Ride one of the ancient building's rickety elevators to the second floor, and when the doors ding open you'll find Youth Communication, a nonprofit dedicated to turning teens into authors.

"It's so important to give young people a voice that otherwise wouldn't be heard," says Youth Communication founder Keith Hefner, 52, a married, Montclair, N.J., father of three.

To accomplish that, Hefner, a button-down-wearer with side-parted gray hair who stays trim by bike riding, has created a mini teen-publishing empire.

He oversees the every-six-weeks New Youth Connections (NYC) newspaper, the bimonthly Represent, a magazine for kids in foster care, as well as a bookshelf-straining catalog of teen-penned tomes.

"Our only agenda is to help teenagers tell their stories," Hefner says.

Every year, about 100 young writers park themselves at the dozens of computers filling Youth Communication's loft-like workspace, where old issues serve as wallpaper. The high schoolers clack away on personal stories about boiling-point issues like pregnancy, police harassment and money struggles. Patient editors then help fine-tune their articles, which often mean altering the way they think.

"Many stories start out driven by revenge," says Hefner, who exudes an easygoing, boyish charm. "'So and so did such and such, and now I'm gonna massacre them.'" Instead, writers are taught to reflect on anger, turning victim stories into "tales of surviving - and that's empowering."

He opens December's NYC and points out an article titled "Fighting to Stop Fighting." In it, a young girl transforms from a hot-tempered brawler into hard-fought pacifist.

"In writing this article, she had a realization that fighting wasn't the answer," he says, tapping a finger on the newsprint. "We help our writers' ideas crystallize, and allow them to tap into their intrinsic motivation."

Hefner has long been motivated by free speech. As a high school junior in Michigan, his school censored a student-newspaper article about racism. When the paper was eventually distributed, it led to school reform. At a young age, he "learned that youth voices could be powerful."

This knowledge helped Hefner run youth activist magazine FPS, as well as launch Youth Liberation, a children's rights organization, in Ann Arbor, Mich. Still, his pulse quickened when he heard about New Expression, a Chicago publication written for and by teenagers - the first of its kind. "It authentically expressed their life," Hefner says, "and helped teens be seen in a new, nonstereotyped light."

After moving to New York City in 1979, Hefner was approached by the coordinator of an upper West Side youth program for disadvantaged kids. ("This was not today's glitzy upper West Side," Hefner says.) The man, an ex-FPS subscriber, asked him to helm a teen-written newspaper, much like Chicago's.

"Little did he know, but he couldn't have asked a better man," Hefner says, laughing.

NYC launched in January 1981, with distribution at city schools. It was well-received, creating a flood of aspiring NYC authors. Great news, yes, but taking the students' ideas to polished final products was as labor-intensive then as it is today.

Scribes need five to 15 revisions to complete a story. It's a months-long process riddled with frustrations. "Teens, much like all writers, think, 'These are my words! How are they not perfect?'" Hefner says.

Instead of butting heads, Hefner and the editors "invoke the reader: We tell them, 'If the reader can't understand the story, then the story isn't doing its job.'" The students dutifully follow advice, discovering that "when they carry a project through to completion, it makes them feel good," Hefner says, adding with a chuckle, "And seeing their name in print doesn't hurt, either."

Yet Hefner realized certain stories weren't being printed. In the '80s, "no teens were writing about foster care. That struck a chord. If being a foster child was so stigmatizing, we needed to give these kids an outlet."

Hefner visited foster-care centers to find writers. "There I was, this middle-aged white guy, giving this sermon," Hefner recalls. "The kids were mostly like, 'Yeah, yeah, when's this over?' But a few teens - and we only needed 10, out of more than 50,000 in foster care - perked up. In their eyes I saw they were so intrigued they could have a voice."

In 1993, he launched Foster Care Youth United (later renamed Represent). Who was he to know that, six years later, it would impact legislation? A few years later, Hefner recalls, First Lady Hillary Clinton was in California exploring foster-care issues.

During a meeting, an activist told Clinton that reading "The Heart Knows Something Different," Youth Communication's first Represent anthology, was integral. He gave her his copy. As legend has it, she read it cover to cover on her return Washington flight. Two years later, her husband signed the Foster Care Independence Act. At the bill signing, Mrs. Clinton recounted the importance of the narratives. "The teens' stories had an impact. It's a long thread, but it leads back to us," Hefner says proudly.

He is equally proud of his long and storied alumni list. "All these books are written by alumni," he says, gesturing to a row of novels lining the top shelf of his bookcase. From noted Haitian author Edwidge Danticat to high school principals to New School professors, this nonprofit is a launching pad to success.

"More than aiding my writing, Youth Communication helped me grow as a person," says Dana Vincent, a lawyer in her early 30s who wrote for NYC from 1988 until 1990. "Keith and the editors care about you and have created an after-school community in every sense."

Hefner shrugs off such accolades, though he's had his fair share. In 1989, he won a prestigious MacArthur fellowship, aka the "genius grant." But his most important accomplishment is, after 26 years running Youth Communication, Hefner remains motivated to make a difference.

"It still excites me to find ways kids can help each other," he says, his eyes lingering on his former students' book covers, "and help adults understand what it's like to be a teen."

To learn more about Youth Communication, please visit youthcomm.org.