If you’re a student at McCallum, when you hear the name of junior Athena Wintle, you may think of her auburn ringlets, creative fashion sense or spot on the varsity soccer roster. What you may not know about her is her involvement in the Austin Public Library’s Teen Fellowship Program. After learning of the internship through her mother this past summer, Wintle applied to become a part of the program. By the end of the long, rigorous application process, she was one of 10 applicants invited to join the program.

Austin Public Library’s Teen Fellowship Program is an extremely selective, paid internship program with the City of Austin. High school students are selected to work on and create community programs, initiate positive change in their communities and become involved in advocacy work related to education and libraries as a whole. This year, 200 applicants began the application process and eventually only 10 were selected to join the program. All applicants submitted multiple essays and writing samples. The top 50 were then selected for a group-based in-person interview. From there, 20 people were selected and interviewed one-on-one. After the individual interview, 10 people were selected as the final fellows. After going through all of the applicants, the fellowship only accepts 5% of them.

The program attracted Wintle due to its community involvement opportunities. Wintle was particularly drawn to bringing kids and teens back to the library and the communities.

“It was really cool that I would get to help out my community and work to bring people back to the library,” Wintle said. “The main focus is we really want to bring kids back to libraries. We have a really, really nice teen room in the library. It’s a space for you to hang out with your friends, work and talk. We’re trying to encourage kids to utilize that and read more books.”

Wintle’s childhood was full of the magical, book-filled corners that make up Austin’s libraries. The Austin Public Library’s Teen Fellowship Program director and teen librarian Kathleen Houlihan is working to integrate many different opportunities into the fellowship to expand that same library magic to others. From career exploration to in-depth community involvement, Houlihan is working to grow the program into a revitalization powerhouse. 

“I have been working with other librarians at APL and community partners for several years to bring a robust internship-style program to the library, where teens get to explore what librarians really do and get to leverage the library for their community action projects,” Houlihan said. “It’s really important to me that teens are paid for their knowledge and expertise, and they are experts in their lived experience as teens. Creating a paid fellowship where they get to advocate for teen services improvement and expansion at the library, and also help create programs that connect, inform, and inspire teens in the community is my goal.”

When searching for suitable candidates to offer a spot in the program, Houlihan looked for teens who had strong group-work skills, communication and creativity. During the interview process, Wintle stood out to Houlihan because she held many of these characteristics.

“Athena stood out to us because she worked well with her group, showed supportive teamwork, creativity, and encouragement of others,” Houlihan said. “We do try to get a variety of perspectives on board. This year we happened to select teens from all different schools all around the city, which wasn’t a goal or in our selection criteria, but I think has made the program stronger.”

Involving such a wide variety of voices, backgrounds and experiences that come with this year’s teen library fellows allows for the students to create their own unique and creative projects. Before they decided on their creative pursuits, though, the fellows have been able to learn about how city employees plan how to best serve their communities. Fellows did a design-thinking workshop with the city’s community centered technology team and have workshops coming up with Zell Miller III, the Poet Laureate for Austin, and a listening session with the library director.

After learning from professionals in the creative and humanities fields, the teen fellows explored ways to approach and develop their creative projects for the year. Those projects include a wide array of opportunities for teens to share their voices with the larger Austin community, from a teen-centered magazine that mixes op-eds, articles and creative works of all types. Fellows also are developing a teen podcast and radio show to be on air in the spring with KOOP radio. They’re also developing a series of creative and life-skills workshops focusing on writing, micro filmmaking, college prep and how to care for and repair your sports equipment. Finally, they are also developing a series of open mics or showcases, where teens can sign up to share any type of presentation they want. 

Wintle decided to focus on developing the teen-centered magazine. Over the span of the fellowship, Wintle and others will work on releasing three different issues of the magazine, each centered around a different theme with exclusively teen-submitted works. The first will be released on December 15 and is centered around censorship. The second and third issues are focused around self identity and growth. Anyone can submit their work to the fellows for consideration to be published.

While developing the themes of the magazine, Wintle was able to use her communication skills and connections through friends to expand the different types of submissions they receive. 

“I’m really good with working with people, so right now, while we’re working on the magazine I get to do a lot of outreach in emailing,” Wintle said. “I’ve been getting to work with my close friend, Isa Truan, which has been really, really fun. Right now we’re working on a lot of planning, so we are getting a lot of emails for marketing and outreach, and then we’re getting student submissions as well. If you want to submit a piece to our magazine please do. It can be anything from art and song to poetry and literature.”

As Wintle began to work on the upcoming issues and magazine as a whole, she got to become friends and colleagues with Vedanti Patil, a junior at Westwood High School. Patil is the news editor at her school’s paper, The Horizon, involved in STEM clubs, participates in taekwondo and volunteers. Patil and Wintle, who both have many different extracurricular ventures, have been able to utilize their creativity during the development of the magazine. 

“I think I have a lot of humanities interests,” Patil said. “I adore fashion, and I’m an avid journalist and have been ever since fifth grade when I founded my elementary school’s print newspaper. I also dabble in digital art and I creatively write often. Self-expression is a huge core value of mine, and as a fellow, I use my interpersonal skills and my knowledge of diversity and inclusion values to direct everything I do and work on. My values have helped with our work on the magazine, and I’m good with graphic design so that’s a plus.”

Patil is looking forward to working with Wintle to create a long lasting piece of creative expression. 

“I hope to create something for Austin youth that will be preserved for posterity,” Patil said. “I think this fellowship has a wide enough audience that we can impact current and future youth in Austin. Art is beautiful, and so many of our fellowship projects from the magazine, workshops and open mics are based on artistic endeavors. I’m super super excited to release the first edition of our magazine in December with Athena.”

Along with pushing the creative abilities of Austin teens, Wintle hopes to gain experience, as a fellow and in creating the magazine, in multiple different fields that can translate into different ventures in the future.

“I hope to gain a lot of professional experience,” Wintle said. “We’re working on multiple projects right now, and they’re all pretty different. I hope to probably learn a few skills, maybe some graphic design. Overall, though, I’m excited to become more involved with the community.”

Wintle and Patil are fellows for this year’s Teen Library Fellowship, but according to Houlihan, the program is always looking for a wide range of interested voices and backgrounds for next year’s fellows.

“I am always looking for folks who maybe haven’t had as many opportunities to lead in the past, as well as doubling down on that leadership training that concentrates those experiences in the hands of a few students, who often are already doing well,” Houlihan said. “I’d love to see more students apply who haven’t had so many leadership opportunities.” 

As Wintle experiences the leadership opportunities, creative endeavors and creation of lifelong connections that future fellows will gain, she likes to think back on what she’s working to expand and advance; the library. 

“I wouldn’t be where I am without going to the library, so I want to take a hold of any opportunity to expand the influence of it,” Wintle said. “The fellowship is a beautiful opportunity to give back to what I came from.”