About Us

Uptown Ink is a digital magazine that celebrates the best of creativity and storytelling from our Uptown Stories writers by giving them a platform to write what’s next and share it with the world.

At the end of every semester, Uptown Stories collects students’ work to be published in a printed anthology. For many of our students, this is a transformative experience: being a published author in a real book, for sale at Word Up Community Bookshop and on Amazon. Typically, each anthology contains over 500 pages of short stories, poems, essays, screenplays, manifestos, songs, and other free forms of youth expression so you can imagine the huge undertaking it is to bring these beautiful books to life!

To fulfill our goal of giving even more young writers the thrill of having their stories published as well as feature their work more frequently throughout the year, Uptown Stories decided to launch a digital publication showcasing uptown stories by uptown kids. And so Uptown Ink was born!

Here, you’ll discover new fiction, poetry, essays, comics, photography, news articles, and other forms of expression from our writers – on a weekly basis. Together, we can continue empowering our young writers to let their voices be heard loud and clear and share the brilliant stories only they can tell.

Want to submit your work? See our submission guidelines.

Dorkys Ramos – Editor-in-Chief

Dorkys Ramos is editor-in-chief for Uptown Ink and deputy director for Uptown Stories. She is a bilingual writer, editor, artist, and teacher born-and-raised in Washington Heights/Inwood. Her work has appeared in a variety of digital and print publications, including Travel + Leisure, BET.com, Time Out New York Kids, Parents Latina, the Syracuse Post-Standard, and the Manhattan Times, among others. She currently teaches writing and art to elementary, middle school, and high school students in Washington Heights and Inwood and is part of the steering committee for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators’ metro chapter. She’s a graduate of Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications where she studied Magazine, Newspaper, and Online Journalism and is also the founder and illustrator of stationery company Porcupine Hugs. (she/her/hers)