Footprints Ahead: A Community Feature with the Octavia Project

The Octavia Project Summer Institute is a free program that uses speculative fiction as a lens through which to envision new futures and greater possibilities for our world. Bringing together young women, and trans, gender non-conforming, or non-binary youth ages 14–18, teens explore how the world around them is a series of choices that can…

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Ashia Islam and Naomi Rae

Ashia Islam is an aspiring artist with an adventurous mind that wanders in many corners of life. She is a graduating senior going to college in fall 2021. As a young woman with a great passion for writing poems and stories, she hopes to inspire others of her age to do the same and to enjoy life as it is while questioning its meaning at the same time. “The Light” and “Sea” are her first two poems to ever be published. The poems profess her true feelings as a young teenager living in this crazy little world.

Naomi Rae is a sixteen-year-old girl from NYC attending Energy Tech High School. Along with her passion for interior design and robotics, she loves reading and writing. Her favorite books are fantasy and mythological, hence why she absolutely adores Rick Riordan books. This is her first published piece and she is entirely grateful to the Octavia Project and F(r)iction for giving her the opportunity.

Tyler Champion

Tyler Champion is a freelance illustrator and designer. He grew up in Kentucky before moving to New Jersey to develop his passion at The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art. After graduating in 2010, he headed back south to Nashville, TN, where he currently resides with his girlfriend, Melissa, and his son, Jude. Tyler has produced work for magazines, comics, design companies, and children’s books, including work for Sony, F(r)iction, Capstone Publishing, and Tell-A-Graphics.


First Featured In: No. 18, spring 2021

The Legacy Issue

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