Meet Our Grantee-Partner: Shout Mouse Press

Mission: Shout Mouse Press supports the creation and publication of diverse books by young people for young people. Our books and programs activate youth power, advance social justice, and expand representation in youth literature.

In 2013, Kyare was a Washington, DC, high school student serving as a literacy tutor for young readers. He found that the children’s books used for instruction rarely reflected the lived experiences of the young people he tutored, and therefore, rarely captured their attention. Kyare knew that he and his fellow teen tutors could write better books themselves. The head of the literacy program Kyare tutored with reached out to his friend Kathy Crutcher, a teaching artist and social justice advocate, to ask if she could help make Kyare’s vision possible.

The following year, Shout Mouse Press (SMP) was established as a nonprofit writing and publishing program to coach young people from marginalized communities as they write their own stories for professional publication and broad distribution. Kyare was one of the authors of SMP’s first books in a series of children’s books published that year. Over the past ten years, SMP has published 59 titles representing the work of more than 500 youth authors, with 135,000 SMP books in circulation around the world. SMP has earned 21 book industry honors, including the 2024 Library of Congress Literacy Award, and has been recognized by the Independent Book Publishers Association's new Innovative Voices Program for elevating the voices of writers who otherwise may not be heard.

SMP serves young people 12 and older in Washington, DC, who face exclusion and inequities due to race, ethnicity, religion, incarceration, LGBTQIA+ identity, immigration status, income, and the intersection of these identities. SMP believes outlets for artistic expression, including poetry, provide a platform for marginalized youth to confront challenges, tell their own stories, and act as leaders and agents of change. In turn, publishing their books engages readers of all backgrounds, providing authentic stories that foster community, expand empathy, represent new possibilities, and educate a more just and inclusive next generation.

SMP has four primary, interconnected programs:

• Writing Workshops & Coaching serves as the first step for SMP participants. SMP staff and coaches support youth as they write mission-driven books representing their unique perspectives and experiences in a variety of genres.
• SMP’s publishing program promotes and sells the youth authors’ books with the goal of diversifying bookshelves in schools, libraries, stores, and homes across the country. SMP partners with First Book, PEN/Faulkner, An Open Book Foundation, and other literary organizations to distribute SMP-published books to schools serving low-income students, non-English speakers, and incarcerated youth.
• Author Talks is a post-publication leadership development opportunity for SMP authors in which they receive public speaking training and paid opportunities to speak in schools, universities, and literary spaces about community issues on which they are experts but rarely consulted. 
• Author Pathways is another post-publication leadership development program with the goal of ensuring SMP authors can continue their success after publication. They receive college and scholarship essay support, paid internships, scholarship funds, and other professional development opportunities. 

Receiving a spring 2024 Poetry Programs, Partnerships, and Innovation grant from the Poetry Foundation enabled SMP to create a Queer Youth Voices anthology, a response to book bans nationwide targeting LGBTQIA+ literature. The grant has also served to encourage other funders to support SMP’s work.

Connect with Shout Mouse Press:

• Website
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter