Entertainment

Avenues available for students publishing own work

Nathan Bass, Entertainment Editor

October 12, 2026

When recent Brophy graduate Charles Smalley ’26 first started writing in sixth grade, he started off with an unpublished short story that barely reached over a thousand words. By the time he graduated in May of 2026, he had written over half a million.

However, unlike many writers at Brophy, he avoided school publications and instead chose a different approach.

For writers who wish to publish outside of Brophy, there are many options and avenues. Mr. Scott Middlemist is head of the annual RED magazine, a collection of poetry and written fiction from Honors English I students. The point behind the magazine, according to Mr. Middlemist, is to show freshmen the editing process.

On the topic of publishing outside of Brophy, he said, “I think one of the highest-profile places is on the Kindle platform on Amazon. That’s a great place to self-publish, and that gets branched out to other platforms like the iBook on Apple and others that offer free publication.”

Charles followed a similar path. Throughout his time at Brophy, he worked freelance, publishing some original novelettes and poems to literary magazines. “I will always attempt to publish my own original ideas, or anything that isn’t from my freelance job,” he said.

He managed to earn some money from this as well, taking writing commissions and earning around $2,000 a year from creative work and freelance projects alone. However, this didn’t mean as much to him. “I will always publish in free-entry magazines, but I am not deterred by paid-entry, either. When it comes to publishing, I am not looking for money,” Charles said. “I work freelance, but I’m less serious about making money as I once was a few years ago.”

Mr. Middlemist encourages self-publication; it’s why he started the RED magazine in the first place. “For me, especially with the new ChatGPT and the whole AI thing, to get kids interested in writing where the value of their creativity is still important as opposed to a machine writing it for them, that’s the main idea.”

About the Contributor

Nathan Bass, Entertainment Editor

Whether through journalism, poetry, or music, Nathan Bass ’27 uses the arts to express himself. Bass found his love for poetry freshman year, but rekindled it later on as an upperclassman. “I had written a couple of poems, completely forgotten about them and then came back to them later and realized, “Wait, I kind of like doing this,” said Bass. He then experimented with all different types of poetry to find his style, including ghazal and historical perspectives. Bass said, “Writing from those different perspectives helps me refine my own perspective and put it onto paper.” “Overall, poetry is just one of the ways I express myself. Being able to take whatever is in my head and put it onto paper is something I really enjoy,” said Bass. With his love of writing, it was “obvious” for him to join the Brophy Roundup. As a junior, he was asked to be the Entertainment Editor, and he had a great vision for it. “My position as entertainment editor has definitely been focused around music, although there are a lot of other things I cover too,” said Bass. Along with a strong role in the Roundup, he takes on Head Editor of the Wrangler — Brophy’s satire newspaper. “What really got me into the Wrangler was the culture,” said Bass. “There are things about that club that set it apart. You can make fun of almost anything at Brophy, and somebody else will probably agree with you enough that you can turn it into an article … It doesn’t even necessarily matter if everybody else thinks it’s funny, because we think it’s funny.” A highlight of his tenure at Brophy has been the FAE. “Junior year, I put together a band with a couple of my friends. We played some songs at FAE, and we’re doing the same thing again this year,” said Bass. Now, senior year, he is lined up for around seven different performances. “My voice is probably going to be dead by the end of the night, but it’s worth it. I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” said Bass. Reflecting on his time at Brophy, he wishes that he’d been more open initially as a freshman. “I’d tell myself to soften up to the world and soak it all in instead of pushing everything away. Don’t be so hostile to everything around you because there’s a lot you can learn without having to be overly tough about everything. You can be vulnerable. You don’t have to close yourself off from what you’re meant to be doing here,” said Bass. However, despite starting off closed, he learned how to open himself up. A message he would want to leave for others is: “Brophy’s whole thing is going from boyhood to manhood, but Brophy isn’t magic. It’s not going to work unless you want it to.” Through the arts, Bass has learned to express himself and become more open. Whether through writing or music, he has found ways to share his perspective with others.