Once upon a time, book publishers used only one storyline to market their products. Then they embraced the idea of youth ambassadors, and the rest is…To find a good book, all Newfoundland and Labrador’s Molly Powers had to do was look in her own, figurative, backyard. But it’s something she didn’t think of doing until recently.

“I didn’t prefer to read Atlantic Canadian because no one was really talking about it,” said 15-year-old Molly Powers, a youth ambassador for Digitally Lit: Atlantic Canadian Youth Read. She said she would mostly look to Chapters for the newest best-sellers and only would browse locally owned Breakwater Books’ store when she was in St. John’s.

“No one told me, ‘well, you should read this instead of this, but once I started working with Digitally Lit, I (started) preferring Atlantic Canadian books over mainstream ones.”

Launched in 2019, Digitally Lit is a youth-led community engagement initiative that aims to increase awareness of regional books in the 13 to 25 age demographic. The program has partnered with 20 youth ambassadors from around the region. Ambassadors are given a list of new and older releases and they choose which ones they’d like to read, both from their home province and others. They then take to their own social media and other platforms, like podcasting and YouTube, to discuss and promote the titles.

 

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