A Deer in Headlights
A Deer in Headlights: Poetry and Prose of Response was written by the students of the Paramount Pictures Writers Workshop in 2025-2026.
Introduction
Do you remember what it felt like to stand on the edge of your youth, the shadow of adulthood looming over you? Can you imagine what that would feel like in this current historical moment?
It can feel like being a deer in headlights, like everything is rushing toward you headlong and so fast that the only thing you can do in the moment is react. It can feel like being in a car crash, day-after-day.
For those of us who have been there—and survived—the stories in this anthology offer a glance in the rearview, at the roads taken and those left behind. For those who haven’t yet, these stories read as a roadmap marked out by those just embarking on the trip themselves.
A Deer in Headlights teems with both nostalgia and anticipation, beautifully capturing the raw emotion of standing at a fork in the road of life, trying to figure out the best way forward. As the characters in these stories—sometimes stand-ins for the student authors themselves—navigate choices as monumental as toppling a kingdom and as mundane as picking out a new couch, it can feel like life is a constant war against forces out of their control.
Some fight against these forces. There are stories of war, stories of rebellion against the way things are or resistance to change, but there are also stories of endurance and the struggle to hold on those things and people that mean the most.
Some flee. There are road trips of self discovery, and attempts to escape responsibility. There are retreats to places of comfort, and desires to leave behind things that no longer serve a purpose, and relationships that hurt more than heal.
Some freeze. There are stories of being caught in moments of violence, of staring down the barrel of a crisis. But there are also stories about the longing to capture something beautiful forever, to stay just a little white longer in to a moment that is quickly fading away.
Ultimately, these stories remind us that we are more than our reactions. That we do not need to be only the deer. We can also be the driver. Our lives are as much about the choices we make as they are about the things that happen to us. These stories ask: With headlights on, what will you make of your life? A wreck, or something more?