Fresh Voices is an annual collection of student writing. It features dozens of essays across several different genres, all written by Cal Poly students who completed our two-course FYCP sequence in the previous academic year.

True to Cal Poly’s Learn by Doing philosophy, Fresh Voices is used as the primary textbook in our composition courses, so our student writers actively participate in creating their curriculum. Reading Fresh Voices helps students see how their peers imagine and respond to the same kinds of rhetorical situations they face in their own writing, and it helps them imagine that their writing could have a wider audience beyond the classroom.

Publication in Fresh Voices is competitive, with an average acceptance rate of around 20%. Our published authors receive one complimentary contributor copy and are eligible for the annual FYCP Writing Award, a $100 prize given to the best essay published that year.

You can read back issues of Fresh Voices on Cal Poly’s DigitalCommons.

Fresh Voices - Submit Your Work Here

• Are you proud of essays you wrote in ENGL 131, ENGL 132, ENGL 133, ENGL 134, ENGL 145 or ENGL 147?

• Do you have original artwork?

• Do you want thousands of students to see your work?

• Do you want to tell future employers that you are PUBLISHED?

What to Submit

• Any work you completed in ENGL 131, 132, 133, 134, 145 and/or 147 (profiles, analysis papers, persuasive arguments, visual essays, etc.).
• Original artwork that you created for a class or on your own. We publish images of photos, paintings, sculpture, and multi-media projects. 
• Submit as many essays as you like! We will not consider work that does not properly cite sources both in the text and on the "Works Cited" page.

How to Submit

1. Fill out the Permission to Publish Release form and attach to the form below. We must have your signature (typed is ok) on the form in order for your essay to be considered.
2. Use our online submission manager. You must be logged in with your Cal Poly e-mail address in order to fill out the form.
3. Submit a separate online form for each submission. 
4. Manuscripts must be Word documents. 

Deadline

Submissions are open from January 15 to December 31. All work submitted during the open submissions period will be considered for publication in our next Fall issue.

Please contact Dr. Jason Peters with questions regarding Fresh Voices.

Any technical inquiries, such as submission issues, please direct them to Gregg Parras or Lynda Mantle Debetaz in the English Department.

The Fresh Voices Committee looks forward to reviewing your work!