At the end of the school year, The Starling Press, Townsend Harris High School’s student-led publishing house, published Drowning in Eyes, a children’s book by rising sophomores Melissa Tai and Eva Ye. The publication of this book comes alongside a push by The Starling Press to expand its operation for publishing books by  student authors.

Drowning In Eyes is a story about a pufferfish named Pete who has trouble fitting in while living “in a vast ocean.” According to the book blurb shared on Amazon, “we all need a friend that can guide us out of deep trenches, but who will be there to fish Pete out?” The book originally came about as a project in art teacher Melissa Nakos’s class. Each year, Ms. Nakos encourages student artists and writers to create picture books as part of the Ezra Jack Keats Bookmaking Competition.

“Along with our book, The Starling Press was also working to help other students publish their children’s books as well. It was clear that they knew what they were doing. The process was straightforward, and the team members were also incredibly supportive,” Melissa said, “If I were to publish another new book, I would continue going through Starling Press because I was not only able to receive help to get my book published but also participate during the process. The publication process was fairly simple and enjoyable with a great formatting team.”

On The Starling Press’s Instagram page, Eva said, “I’m beyond excited to share Drowning with Eyes with you through the Starling Press. …I am also so grateful to have worked with Melissa to bring this story to life, and we hope it inspires you.”

Members of The Starling Press spoke to The Classic about their publishing process and their larger goals of getting more authors like Melissa and Eva to be able to share their work. 

Meeting every Wednesday, The Starling Press is an outlet for students who want to publish extended writing pieces, ranging from novels to collections of poems. It also allows students to dive into the publishing process. The students who worked on Drowning with Eyes had to learn how to digitize the children’s book manuscript and convert it to Amazon’s Kindle software.

Rising junior and new Starling Editor-in-Chief, Michelle Shi, said the team is working on expansion. “We used to have around 200 followers on Instagram, and now we’ve reached 418 today. Another thing is that we have so many projects underway.” 

The Press’s new advisor, English teacher Kevin McDonaugh, discussed his plans for Starling’s future. 

“I want to mimic what happens in the outer world, the professional world of publishing, as I want more students to have book readings like in the library after school. […] I really like to simulate the experience of not just us publishing work, but for authors to have their work published, to then see what that is all like.” As the new advisor, Mr. McDonaugh has been actively recruiting students.

Sydney Liu, one of the several student editors of The Starling Press, said, “When I first joined, especially over the summer, we focused more on free writing, editing, and sharing our work. We do still have the collections that we work on throughout the year, but we’re focused on editing and publishing these pieces. We’re also working on new projects this year, like the children’s books, so there’s heavy emphasis on production.”