While participatory action research's (PAR) democratic and social justice principles promote team member involvement across the research, collaborative team writing for publication is not standard practice. Peer-reviewed publications are predominately written by academic team member(s), and may include varied but often limited, co-authorship from youth, teachers and/or community team members. Drawing from narrative approaches, this paper narrates a youth-adult PAR team's movement from a sense of distance and distaste towards academic writing to experiencing writing for publication as a process of transformative team engagement. In doing so, this account offers a story of possibility and agency for teams considering this facet of democratic youth-adult PAR team work.