I feel like I’m on my way to being a banned author

For my creative writing final, we had to pick a topic and use it in a short story and three poems. My topic was time. I wrote my short story (Five Fifty-Five if you wanted to check it out) and I was kinda happy with it, it wasn’t my best but it wasn’t my worst. For ten points for the final, we had to submit our short story and two poems to the local community colleges literary magazine.

Today I was going by my creative writing teacher’s classroom and she asked me to come inside. She started off by telling me that my story had been pulled from the magazine. I’m just thinking, dang was it that bad? Then she told me that my story wasn’t the only thing pulled from the magazine, a girl in my class had written a poem about John Wayne Casey and it had been taken out. So my story and her poem won’t be considered for the magazine and our grades won’t be affected by it. The reason the pieces were taken out of the magazine were because the content was considered disturbing. I just laughed when my teacher told me this.

Yes, my story is about a girl who was kidnapped and she’s still in the basement during the story. I made sure to make the story appropriate, though, because one-it was a school assignment and even though my teacher is really cool and lenient about what we wrote, even she has limitations about what we can write about and two-I don’t feel comfortable writing about anything that would happen to a girl who was being kidnapped. I tried to be as vague as possible while still making a good story. But apparently I’m a disturbed child who was kidnapped and has to write about it and the other girl is going to end up being a serial killer.

I was just really surprised that this happened. Sure, basically all of my things are dark, depressing little things but no one’s been worried about me. The people from the literary magazine actually had my principal read the pulled works and she had to read them a few times to see what was so wrong with them.

After I finished laughing about the whole thing I asked my teacher if this meant I would have to be sent to the guidance counselor or something. She said that I shouldn’t be and she’s not worried about me, I don’t need to be strapped down to a bed because I’m a danger to myself and others yet.

I’m proud of myself. Banned authors are some of the best out there. This feels like I’m on my way there.

Has this happened to anyone because of a poem or story they’ve written or a picture they’ve drawn?