During quarantine, Rebecca Bloch, communications major at El Camino College, created her own digital magazine to help and encourage young, passionate artists to find their voice through writing and to build their writing experience.

The 19-year-old founder and Editor-in-Chief of Unpublished Magazine also created it as a way to give young people a chance to add more to their portfolios and gain references.

“I wanted to create a space where either young artists or college students, who are interested in writing, can kind of use this as something to put on their resume and just give them a platform to be heard,” Bloch said.

As new writers, high schoolers working for Unpublished have a chance to find their voice through writing and can use the magazine to give themselves a head start in their writing careers.

Rachel Kloepfer, a high school student from Seattle, feels that she can call herself a writer now that she works for a magazine. Ever since she was a kid she would write “tortured poems and half-finished novels” for anyone to read and now through Unpublished, Kloepfer can publish those poems and novels for the world to see.

College students working for Unpublished use their experience and knowledge to provide the magazine with brand new ideas and to fuel their passions in the subjects they write about.

Maia Villalba is a writer for the love and relationship category of the magazine and is majoring in psychology at New York University (NYU) with a minor in child and adolescent mental health studies.

Villalba’s inspiration to write about love and relationships for the magazine came from her newfound interest in the topic after taking a class at NYU called Love Actually that focused on the history and evolution of love.

“That class really prompted a strong interest in [asking] what is the meaning of love? Why do we have love? And how does that fit into the narrative in which we call life?” Villalba said.

The editors and writers of the magazine are people from all around the world who found Unpublished through Instagram and TikTok posts when the team was promoting open applications for the magazine.

According to publication editor Lauryn Alejo, it was “a collective idea” from her and the rest of the executive team to try and give the magazine a following on social media.

When accepting new applicants, they look for new writers that have two things in mind: passion and a reason for wanting to work with them. Bloch and Kiara Lewis, managing editor and personal essay editor, are in charge of the application process.

“As for not accepting people, the main reason we wouldn’t accept someone is if it seems like they are not passionate about it or if they don’t have a lot of really good ideas to bring to the table,” Lewis said.

Through Unpublished Magazine, the writers are able share their insights on various topics such as film, music, love and relationships, astrology and spirituality and more.

“It’s normal teenagers, like myself, writing passionately about topics that resonate with them and being able to share that unapologetically,” Villalba said.

Updates as of Oct. 11 at 5:45 p.m.:

Headline changed from “Unpublished” to ‘Unpublished’ and typo removed.