Surviving COVID-19 & Other Tales is the culmination of OWL’s survival expedition in the 2021–22 school year. Students spent the fall reading stories of people who survived difficult experiences, from extreme cases like Juliane Koepcke, who survived a plane breaking up over the Peruvian jungle, to more common struggles like poverty, depression, and single parenthood. Along the way, they studied how writers mix narrative and exposition to make a story compelling.

Students also joined survival book clubs, reading titles such as Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Kao Kalia Yang’s The Latehomecomer, and Art Spiegelman’s Maus, and looked at how Andy Weir made The Martian so convincing. In January, they began writing their own survival narratives about themselves, family members, people they knew, or people from history. Not surprisingly, many chose to write about living through the COVID-19 pandemic.

The stories are organized into six sections: Surviving COVID, Leaving Home, Flashpoints in History, Mental Health, Misadventure, and Academic Struggle. Mi Paw, Orathai, Lucy, and Sofia spent interim week editing the stories and laying out the journal, complete with graphics and pull quotes.

Read the full journal below. You can also read the 2024 Survival Guide and the 2026 Survival Journal.