Vox ATL

VOX ATL is Atlanta’s home for uncensored teen publishing and self-expression.

A teen-driven, professional space and a learning environment for diverse teens in metro Atlanta.

Our roster of teen staff and contributors will annually include teens from all academic, geographic, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, life experience and socioeconomic backgrounds.

In 1993, VOX ATL’s founder, Rachel Alterman Wallack, along with 13 Atlanta-area teens and 10 adult volunteers created VOX ATL, a teen-driven newspaper that would serve as an uncensored voice for teens where they could talk about the issues they care about. VOX quickly grew into a holistic youth-development program, and for more than 32 years has provided free, teen-driven, quality afterschool programming with a focus on self-expression and leadership development. All of our program activities support teens in developing the 21st-century skills needed for healthy, productive futures.

In VOX ATL’s first print edition, the first VOX ATL teens wrote a letter addressed to the “General Public of Atlanta, Georgia.” This letter’s purpose was to introduce VOX ATL to their community, to clearly state their purpose and debunk the “fallacy” of the word teenager carrying a negative context in society. On the second page of that first issue, laid out behind this letter in purple lettering, sat dozens of words that the “creators of VOX ATL” wanted Atlanta to unlearn as negative synonyms for teen.