Something Called A Brick
Something Called A Brick was written by the students of 826LA’s 2025 Summer Writers Workshop
Foreword
By Dennis Lehane
One of the reasons I stopped teaching college courses in creative writing was because far too few students seemed acquainted with actual literature. Their writing was thinly disguised screenplay with little grasp of either nuance or significant detail.
The teens and pre-teens who wrote the stories in this volume do not have that problem. In fact, I would happily teach students with this level of talent, which far surpasses an unfortunate number of college students I’ve encountered. The stories found herein are all mysteries, they all have an expected turn, many have a larger twist, but none of those elements feel cheap or unearned.
What struck me most is how lived these stories feel, how connected the authors are to the worlds about which they write. The city of Teotihuacan, the Civil War South, a rainy crime scene, the imaginary and hilarious world of Dunderville—to name just four—come alive in the hands of these talented scribes. The reader is immediately placed in the world and in the story. Then that story unfurls organically. Naturally. The way story is meant to flow.
What one hopes when one opens any book is what one finds—in ample supply—here: vivid details, rich characterizations, dialogue that sounds authentic to the ear (and, on this particular note, I must commend every one of these authors for how adroitly they render dialogue), and a story that carries the reader along.
These stories will carry you along. And maybe, as they did for me, they’ll give you some hope. Because if very young writers are capable of writing this well in our post-literature, post-civility, post-culture age, the future is brighter than I thought.
And these kids—with their honest, hyper-talented approach to the written word—are lighting the way.