2016 NatioNal Catalog - Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

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2016 National Catalog

Back Cover: Be Happy, Drawing & Illustration by Ji Eun Yang, Grade 12, Age 17, University Laboratory School, Honolulu, HI

Front Cover: Stand Strong, Photography by Eli Dreyfuss, Grade 12, Age 18, G-Star School of the Arts, Palm Springs, FL

The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

TABLE OF CONTENTS About Us

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Alumni Achievement Award

2

Notable Alumni

3

2016 Educator Awards

4

Affiliate Partners

6

Gold Medal Portfolio Awards

9

Sponsored Awards

34

Herblock Award for Editorial Cartoon

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RBC “Flaunt It” Award

38

Neiman Marcus Award for Jewelry

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Neiman Marcus Award for Fashion

41

Gedenk Award for Tolerance

42

Creativity & Citzenship Award

44

Best-in-Grade Awards

46

National Awards

59

2016 National Medalists

135

Sponsors and Support

142

Board of Directors

143

Affiliate Advisory Council

143

National Staff

143

National Student Poets Program

144

No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. © 2016 Alliance for Young Artists & Writers All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Many writing selections have been excerpted. Go to artandwriting.org/galleries to read all the works as they were submitted. Background Art: Addiction, Painting by Keiji Ishida, Grade 11, Age 16, Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, Los Angeles, CA

An Extraordinary Year Gregory R. Miller

Virginia McEnerney

The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards celebrate the visionary talents of creative students across America, providing them with opportunities for recognition, exhibition, publication, and scholarships. In 2016 we received nearly 320,000 submissions of original art and writing to the Awards—another record-breaking year—resulting in 85,000 awards at the regional level and 2,500 awards at the national level. Yet it is not by numbers alone that we measure success at the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. It is also through the individual stories that you share with us on a daily basis. From the teacher who recently wrote to say, “Thank you for making such a difference for my students. You have shaped their lives and the world they touch for the better,” to Robert Redford, who said, “I was 18 years old when I received my Scholastic Art Award for a sketch. The award affected me profoundly, and the recognition it provided at that time in my life was instrumental in my development as an artist.” Over the program’s history, so many remarkable minds have found encouragement through the Awards, such as other creative luminaries Andy Warhol, Sylvia Plath, Joyce Carol Oates, John Baldessari, Frances Farmer, Cy Twombly, Ken Burns, and Lena Dunham. It is with deep appreciation for the commitment of Affiliates, Alumni, jurors, educators, staff, and supporters that the Awards continue to succeed and support of the next generation of leaders in art, writing, design, science, government, teaching, and so many other fields. We dedicate this year’s National Catalog particularly to the educators within the Scholastic Awards family—those who have given their time and talent, inside the classroom and outside of it, to nurture, encourage, and uplift the creative spirit in their students. Thank you.

Gregory R. Miller Chairman of the Board Alliance for Young Artists & Writers

Virginia McEnerney Executive Director Alliance for Young Artists & Writers

Past Alumni Achievement Award Recipients

Notable Alumni This year’s recipients join a group of notable Scholastic Art & Writing Awards alumni— all of whom received the Awards’ special recognition as teenagers. Many Award recipients pursue degrees and careers that focus on their art and writing, but countless others become inventors, innovators, scientists, public servants, entrepreneurs, and creative leaders across new and changing fields.

2015 Donald Lipski 2014 Kay WalkingStick 2013 Zac Posen

Edward Sorel

John Baldessari 2010

Ken BURNS 2016 Alumni Achievement Award Recipient

Mel Bochner

The New York Times called Ken Burns “the most accomplished documentary

Carolyn Forché

filmmaker of his generation.” Known for his use of archival footage and

2009 Tom Otterness Thane Rosenbaum 2008 Philip Pearlstein Joyce Maynard

Richard Anuszkiewicz, Artist Art, 1947–48

Peter Steiner, Cartoonist Art, 1957

Kevin Bales, Activist Poetry, 1970

Bernard Malamud, Author Short Story, 1932

Sylvia Plath, Poet Art, 1947

Joyce Carol Oates, Author Short Story, 1956

Tom Otterness, Sculptor Drawing, 1970

Robert McCloskey, Author Art, 1932

Edward Sorel, Illustrator and Political Cartoonist Drawing, 1947

Luis Jiménez, Sculptor Art, 1957–58

David Salle, Painter Art, 1970

Mel Bochner, Artist Drawing, 1958

Ken Burns, Director Writing, 1971

Catherine Murphy, Painter Art, 1959

Michael Bierut, Graphic Designer Art, ca. 1974

Arnold Hurley, Painter Art, 1962–64

Rodney Alan Greenblat, Artist Art, 1977

John Lithgow, Actor Art, 1963

John Currin, Artist Photography, 1979

Stephen King, Author Writing, 1965

Audrey Niffenegger, Author and Illustrator Art, 1981

Jacob Landau, Painter Art, 1933–34

2012

2011

Frances Farmer, Actress Familiar Essay, 1931

photographs in documentaries, Burns has produced films such as The Civil War (1990), Baseball (1994), Jazz (2001), The National Parks (2009), Prohibition (2011), and Jackie Robinson (2016). Burns’s documentaries have been nominated for two Academy Awards and have won Emmy Awards, among many other honors. Burns received his Scholastic Art & Writing Awards Gold Key in 1971 for an autobiographical short story called “First Christmas in Ann Arbor.” Of his Scholastic Award, Burns has said that receiving it “was an important moment for me, one I’ve never forgotten.”

Harry Bertoia, Designer Ink Drawing, 1934, ’36 Ezra Jack Keats, Author Art, 1934 Hughie Lee-Smith, Artist Drawing, 1934 Truman Capote, Author Short Story, ca. 1936 Charles White, Artist Art, 1937 Maureen Daly McGivern, Author Photography, 1937–38

Idelle Weber, Artist Art, 1947 Cy Twombly, Artist Art, 1948 John Updike, Novelist & Poet Writing, 1948 Kay WalkingStick, Artist Drawing, 1948 John Baldessari, Artist Photography, 1949 Donald Barthleme, Author Short Story, 1949 James Hiram Malone, Artist Art, 1949

Richard Avedon, Photographer Poetry, 1941

Alan Arkin, Actor Ceramic Sculpture, 1951

Philip Pearlstein, Artist Oil Painting, 1941–42

Stan Brakhage, Filmmaker Art, 1951

Mozelle Thompson, Artist Painting, 1944

Red Grooms, Artist Art, 1952

Andy Warhol, Artist Art, ca. 1945

Robert Redford, Actor Art, 1954

Lennart Anderson, Painter Drawing, 1946

Peter S. Beagle, Author Writing, 1955

Robert Indiana, Artist Art, 1946

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2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

Donald Lipski, Sculptor Sculpting, 1965 Joyce Maynard, Author Short Story, 1966–71 Carolyn Forché, Poet Writing, 1967 Tom Lichtenheld, Author Art, 1967 Martin Friedman, Director Emeritus, Walker Art Center Oils, Sculpture, and Pencil Drawing, 1968 Gary Panter, Artist Art, 1968 Dan Fogelberg, Musician Art, 1969

Myla Goldberg, Author Poetry, 1989 Paul Chan, Artist Art, 1992 Ned Vizzini, Author Writing, 1996 Lucianne Walkowicz, Astrophysicist Painting, 1996 Zac Posen, Fashion Designer Textile Design and Personal Essay, 1998 Lena Dunham, Director Art, 1999 Michael Raisler, Producer Writing, 2003

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2016 educatOR awards (continued)

2016 Educator Awards The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers gives special thanks to the educators who provided support, guidance, and encouragement to the National Medalists in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards of 2016. Gold Medal Portfolio Khalid Ali George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology Towson, MD Cheri Anderson Roncalli High School Indianapolis, IN Samuel Brown Miami Country Day School Miami, FL Phyllis Carr Hamilton High School Chandler, AZ Kathy Crutcher Woodrow Wilson Senior High School Washington, D.C. Joe Cypressi George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology Towson, MD Steven Dante Holmdel High School Holmdel, NJ Jessica Daviso Andover High School Andover, MA Carlos Gallostra New World School of the Arts Miami, FL

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Jenny Gifford New World School of the Arts Miami, FL Melissa Glosmanova Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts West Palm Beach, FL Todd Hearon Phillips Exeter Academy Exeter, NH Kevin Johnson Etobicoke School of the Arts Toronto, Canada Paula Kraus Stivers School for the Arts Dayton, OH Marty Loftus Gibbs High School St. Petersburg, FL Nicholas Morgan Etobicoke School of the Arts Toronto, Canada Laura Naar Chelsea High School Chelsea, MI Georgina Rutherford Chelsea High School Chelsea, MI Susan Silva Oakton High School Vienna, VA

Daria Souvorova George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology Towson, MD Leah Stahl Stivers School for the Arts Dayton, OH Matthew Varey Etobicoke School of the Arts Toronto, Canada Lilly Windle Lincoln High School Portland, OR

Silver Medal Portfolio With Distinction Ellen Abramson Design & Architecture Senior High School Miami, FL

Alex Berg Hunter College High School New York, NY

Vivian Komando South Walton High School Santa Rosa Beach, FL

LuAnn Underwood Harborside Academy Kenosha, WI

Stacey Hallett Avon Lake High School Avon Lake, OH

Eric MacKnight Abiqua Academy Salem, OR

Tracy Bilynsky Oyster River High School Durham, NH

Allison Kornet Buckingham Browne & Nichols School Cambridge, MA

Lacey Van Reeth Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts West Palm Beach, FL

Francis Hammes Charleston County School of the Arts North Charleston, SC

Dominick Manco Homestead High School Fort Wayne, IN

Kwan Young Lee Gwinnett School of Math, Science and Technology Lawrenceville, GA

Matthew Varey Etobicoke School of the Arts Toronto, Canada

Beth Webb Hart Charleston County School of the Arts North Charleston, SC

Barbara Brown Lincoln High School Portland, OR Linda Burke Needham High School Needham, MA Dorene Fisher St. Anne’s-Belfield School Charlottesville, VA Elizabeth Garvey Shady Side Academy Senior School Pittsburgh, PA Melissa Glosmanova Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts West Palm Beach, FL Alice Hancock Canterbury High School Fort Wayne, IN

Julie Anderson Stivers School for the Arts Dayton, OH

Diane Heath Stoney Creek High School Rochester Hills, MI

Scott Armetta Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts West Palm Beach, FL

Damien Husen Elk River Senior High School Elk River, MN

Carlos Benedict Jamesville-DeWitt High School DeWitt, NY Andrew Bennett Wellesley High School Wellesley, MA

Jeremy McFarren Carroll High School Fort Wayne, IN Mary Jane Parker New Orleans Center for Creative Arts New Orleans, LA Tracy Regan Hudson High School Hudson, OH Caroline Rosenstone ACES Educational Center for the Arts New Haven, CT Deirdre Saunder Maret School Washington, D.C. Ann Schwab New Orleans Center for Creative Arts New Orleans, LA

Rebecca Ingerslev Westford Academy Westford, MA

Peter Stodolak Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts West Palm Beach, FL

Stacy Johnson Edmond North High School Edmond, OK

Carolyn Sutton The Park School of Baltimore Baltimore, MD

Lizabeth Whipps Stivers School for the Arts Dayton, OH

Best-in-Grade Medal Charlotte Agell Frank H. Harrison Middle School Yarmouth, ME Brian Bienek Home School Gaithersburg, MD Sarah Blackman Fine Arts Center Greenville, SC Sharee Chapman Grant High School Portland, OR Melanie Cohen NSU University School Ft. Lauderdale, FL Danielle DeTiberus Charleston County School of the Arts North Charleston, SC Alan Edwards Whitney M. Young Magnet High School Chicago, IL

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

Marea Haslett Milton High School Alpharetta, GA Todd Hearon Phillips Exeter Academy Exeter, NH Patricia Jenkins Skyline High School Ann Arbor, MI Kevin Johnson Etobicoke School of the Arts Toronto, Canada Aaron Kuehne Detroit Country Day Middle School Beverly Hills, MI

Jiro Masuda Detroit Country Day School: Upper School Beverly Hills, MI Joe Medina Harvard-Westlake School North Hollywood, CA Nicholas Morgan Etobicoke School of the Arts Toronto, Canada Maggie Perkins Springfield Ball Charter School Springfield, IL Yael Schick The Dalton School New York, NY Tiffany Wang Aragon High School San Mateo, CA

Peter LaBerge The Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program Greenville, SC Kyungah Lee Home School Holden, MA Melissa Leftwich Jay Robinson Middle School Charlotte, NC Ling Li Northview High School Duluth, GA

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2016 AFFILIATE PARTNERS (continued)

Affiliate Partners The Alliance’s reach stems from our work with 101 Affiliate Partner organizations that administer 117 art and/or writing regions across the country. They are responsible for bringing the Awards to local communities, educators, and students. In addition to presenting the Awards at the regional level, Affiliates work closely with local funders and universities to provide scholarship opportunities for top recipients. With our Affiliates, we awarded 85,000 works this year with regional Gold Keys, Silver Keys, and Honorable Mentions. It is because of our Affiliate Partners’ extraordinary dedication that the Scholastic Awards have been able to reach more participants and provide additional opportunities for creative teenagers across the country. NORTHEAST Connecticut Connecticut Art Region Connecticut Art Education Association University of Hartford’s Hartford Art School Delaware Delaware Art Region Arts Center / Gallery at Delaware State University Delaware Writing Region Diamond State Branch, National League of American Pen Women, Inc. Delaware Division of the Arts and National Endowment for the Arts District of Columbia D.C. Metro Writing Region Writopia Lab D.C. Maine Maine Art Region Maine College of Art Southern Maine Writing Region The Southern Maine Writing Project at the University of Southern Maine The Betterment Fund Massachusetts Massachusetts Art and Writing Region School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston / The Boston Globe New Hampshire New Hampshire Art Region The New Hampshire Art Educators’ Association New Hampshire Writing Region The National Writing Project in New Hampshire Plymouth State University New Jersey Northeast New Jersey Art Region Montclair Art Museum

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New York Central New York Art Region CNY Art Council, Inc. M&T Charitable Foundation Hudson Valley Art Region Hudson Valley Art Awards Sullivan, Dutchess, Orange and Ulster County BOCES; Enlarged City School District of Middletown; Orange County Arts Council; Rolling V Transportation Services Hudson-to-Housatonic Writing Region Writopia Lab Westchester & Fairfield New York City Art Region Alliance for Young Artists & Writers Parsons School of Design at The New School New York City Writing Region Alliance for Young Artists & Writers Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts Pennsylvania Berks, Carbon, Lehigh, and Northampton Art Region East Central PA Scholastic Art Awards Lancaster County Art Region Lancaster Museum of Art Lancaster County Writing Region Lancaster Public Library Northeastern Pennsylvania Art and Writing Region Marywood University Philadelphia Art Region Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership at The University of the Arts Philadelphia Writing Region Philadelphia Writing Project Pittsburgh Art Region North Allegheny School District & Community College of Allegheny County

Pittsburgh Writing Region Western PA Writing Project South Central Pennsylvania Art and Writing Region Commonwealth Connections Academy Southwestern Pennsylvania Art and Writing Region California University of Pennsylvania Rhode Island Rhode Island Art Region Rhode Island Art Education Association Salve Regina University Vermont Vermont Art and Writing Region Brattleboro Museum & Art Center

MIDWEST Illinois Chicago Writing Region Chicago Area Writing Project Mid-Central Illinois Art Region Regional Scholastic Awards Council of Mid-Central Illinois Springfield District 186; Springfield Art Association Suburban Chicago Art Region Downers Grove North and South High Schools Downers Grove Community High School District 99 Southern Illinois Art Region John R. and Eleanor R. Mitchell Foundation / Cedarhurst Center for the Arts Indiana Central/Southern Indiana Art and Writing Region Clowes Memorial Hall, Butler University and Hoosier Writing Project at IUPUI

Kansas Eastern Kansas Art Region The Wichita Center for the Arts Elizabeth B. Koch; K.T. Wiedemann Foundation, Inc. Western Kansas Art Region The Western Kansas Scholastic Art Awards Western Kansas Scholastic Art Association Michigan Michigan Thumb Art Region College for Creative Studies Macomb Community College Southeastern Michigan Art Region College for Creative Studies West Central Michigan Art and Writing Region Kendall College of Art and Design, Ferris State University Minnesota Minnesota Art Region Art Educators of Minnesota Regis Center for the Arts; Weisman Art Museum of the University of Minnesota Missouri Missouri Writing Region Greater Kansas City Writing Project Missouri Writing Projects Network; Missouri Association of Teachers of English Nebraska Nebraska Art Region Omaha Public Schools Art Department North Dakota North Dakota Art Region Plains Art Museum and the Red River Valley Writing Project at NDSU North Dakota Writing Region The Red River Valley Writing Project at NDSU and Plains Art Museum

Miami Valley Art Region K12 Gallery & TEJAS Northeast Central Ohio Art Region Kent State University at Stark Northeastern Ohio Art Region Youngstown State University and Akron Children’s Hospital Mahoning Valley Community Foundation of the Mahoning Valley, Trumball County ESC, and Boardman Rotary South Dakota South Dakota Art and Writing Region The University of South Dakota Wisconsin Southeast Wisconsin Scholastic Writing Region Southeast Wisconsin Scholastic Writing Region Carthage College, Harborside Academy, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Viehweg, University of Wisconsin­—Parkside Wisconsin Art Region The Milwaukee Art Museum The Greater Milwaukee Foundation Flesch Family Fund; The Heller Family in memory of their parents, James K. and Avis M. Heller; James and Carol Wiensch; Vanguard Computers, Inc.; and CompURent Wisconsin Writing Region Still Waters Collective The Camille A. Lonstorf Fund

SOUTHEAST Florida Broward Art Region Young at Art Museum

Ohio Central Ohio Art Region Columbus College of Art & Design

Hillsborough Art and Writing Region Hillsborough County Public Schools Suncoast Credit Union Foundation Tampa Bay Lightning, and Hillsborough Education Foundation

Cuyahoga County Art and Writing Region The Cleveland Institute of Art Cuyahoga Arts and Culture

Miami-Dade Art Region Miami-Dade County Public Schools Rubell Family Collection

Lorain County Art Region Lorain County Regional Scholastic Arts Committee Nordson Corporation Foundation; Lorain County Community College Foundation; The Stocker Center Foundation

Miami-Dade Writing Region Miami Writes The Miami-Dade County Fair & Exposition

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

Northeast Florida Art Region Northeast Florida Art Education Association Duval County School Board

Palm Beach Art Region Educational Gallery Group (Eg2) Mary D. Fisher; Marjorie Fisher; Palm Beach County School District; The Armory Art Center Pinnellas Art Region Pinellas County Art Region Raymond James; Suncoasters of St. Petersburg; Pinellas County Schools Sarasota Art Region Sarasota County Schools Sarasota County Board of Education Georgia Georgia Art and Writing Region Savannah College of Art and Design Kentucky Louisville Metropolitan Area Art Region Jefferson County Public Schools Fund for the Arts; Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft; Louisville Area Fiber and Textile Artists; Louisville Visual Art Association Northern Kentucky Writing Region Northern Kentucky Writing Region South Central Kentucky Art Region Southern Kentucky Performing Arts Center (SKyPAC) Mississippi Mississippi Art Region Mississippi Museum of Art Mississippi Writing Region The Eudora Welty Foundation C Spire Foundation North Carolina Eastern / Central North Carolina Art Region Barton College Mid-Carolina Art Region Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Visual Arts Education Department Mid-Carolina Writing Region Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Humanities Department Western North Carolina Art Region Asheville Art Museum Asheville Area Section of the American Institute of Architects Tennessee Middle Tennessee Art Region Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art The Tennessee Credit Union

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2016 AFFILIATE PARTNERS (continued)

Virginia Arlington County Art Region Arlington County Public Schools Fairfax County Art Region Fairfax County Public Schools Southwest Virginia Art Region The Fine Arts Center for the New River Valley The Pulaski County Patriot; Southwest Times

SOUTHWEST Arizona Arizona Art and Writing Region Young Authors of Arizona Louisiana North-Central Louisiana Writing Region Northwestern State University Writing Project Southeast Louisiana Writing Region Greater New Orleans Writing Project New Mexico New Mexico Art Region New Mexico Art Education Association Oklahoma Oklahoma Art Region Tulsa Community College Liberal Arts Department Tulsa Community College Foundation; Ziegler Art and Frame; Arts and Humanities Council of Tulsa Texas Harris County Art and Writing Region Harris County Department of Education Texas Art Supply San Antonio Art Region SAY Sí (San Antonio Youth Yes) Travis County Art Region St. Stephen’s School West Texas Art Region Wayland Baptist University and the Abraham Family Art Gallery

WEST

MULTI-STATE REGIONS

Alaska Alaska Art and Writing Region Young Emerging Artists, Inc.

Iowa Multi-State Art & Writing Region The Connie Belin & Jacqueline N. Blank International Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development, University of Iowa

Colorado Colorado Art Region Colorado Art Education Association Colorado Art Education Association; History Colorado Center; Denver Art Museum; SIE Film Center; The Rotary Club of Denver; Berger Collection Educational Trust; ExxonMobil Foundation; Rocky Mountain College of Art+Design Hawaii Hawaii Art Region Hawai’i State Department of Education Hawai’i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts Idaho Idaho Writing Region Boise State Writing Project Nevada Northern Nevada Art Region The Nevada Museum of Art Southern Nevada Art and Writing Region Springs Preserve Oregon Oregon Art Region - Central Oregon Area Oregon Art Education Association Little Bird Arts, Oregon College of Art and Craft, Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland Art Museum, Oregon Potters Association, Central Oregon Community College

Northeast Indiana and Northwest Ohio Art and Writing Region Fort Wayne Museum of Art Fort Wayne Art League; News Sentinel Northwest Indiana and Lower Southwest Michigan Art Region South Bend Museum of Art Southern Ohio, Northern Kentucky, and Southeastern Indiana Art Region Art Academy of Cincinnati Twin Tiers Art Region Arnot Art Museum Community Foundation of Elmira-Corning and the Finger Lakes; Chemung Canal Trust Company; New York State Council on the Arts; Chemung County; Town of Horseheads; Anderson Foundation; ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes; Tripp-Rose Endowment Fund

GOLD Medal PORTFOLIO AWARDS

2016 Gold Medal Portfolio Award Recipients Art Portfolios

Writing Portfolios

Graduating seniors are invited to reach for our top

Leonardo Bacan

Shayla Grace Cabalan

Miami, FL

Indianapolis, IN

Abraham Cone

Adam Gowan

Chelsea, MI

Toronto, Canada

scholarship for each student.

Razan Elbaba

Allison Jiang

Vienna, VA

Holmdel, NJ

Visit artandwriting.org/scholarshippartners for

Zachary Endicott

Sophia Mautz

a complete list of Scholarship Partners.

St. Petersburg, FL

Portland, OR

Visit artandwriting.org/galleries to search for

Sophie Hullinger

Ruohan Miao

recent Gold Medal Portfolio work.

West Palm Beach, FL

Chandler, AZ

Nyanna Johnson

Rachel Page

Dayton, OH

Washington, D.C.

Fiona Jungmann

Sydni Wells

Andover, MA

Miami, FL

Conor Twohy

Alex Zhang

Towson, MD

Exeter, NH

award: a Gold Medal Portfolio in art and writing. Eight artists and eight writers receive the highest honor from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Gold Medal Portfolios include a $10,000

Oregon Art Region - Portland Metro Area Oregon Art Education Association Little Bird Arts, Oregon College of Art and Craft, Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland Art Museum, Oregon Potters Association, Central Oregon Community College Oregon Art Region - Willamette Valley Art Region Oregon Art Education Association Benton County Museum Washington Snohomish County Art Region Schack Art Center Everett Cultural Arts Commission; Everett Area School District; Melby, Cameron & Anderson Washington State Art and Writing Region Cornish College of the Arts

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Mid-South Art Region Memphis Brooks Museum of Art The Brooks Museum League

Many writing selections have been excerpted. Go to artandwriting.org/galleries to read the works as they were submitted.

Leonardo Bacan Grade 12, Age 19, New World School of the Arts, Miami, FL. Carlos Gallostra and Jenny Gifford, Educators; Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Affiliate; The Maurice R. Robinson Fund Art Portfolio

Into my Space (facing page), My Into Space (below)

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2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

Gold Medal Portfolio Awards

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Shayla Grace Cabalan

Alex Zhang

Grade 12, Age 18, Roncalli High School, Indianapolis, IN. Cheri Anderson, Educator;

Grade 12, Age 17, Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH. Todd Hearon, Educator;

Hoosier Writing Project at IUPUI, Affiliate; Command Web Offset Writing Portfolio

NWPNH PSU, Affiliate; The New York Times Writing Portfolio

A Trip to Chinatown Poetry

If your tongue feels the dimple of this Chinatown wonton’s skin,

Skeletons of the City

Father Tea

Personal Essay & Memoir

Personal Essay & Memoir

. . . My older cousins had gathered up in the doll room (I called it this because its walls were lined with an eerie collection of porcelain dolls encased in glass; not a single bit of wall was untouched by a doll. It was my least favorite room in the house. I felt like all of the dolls would erupt from their glass cages at once and rupture me. I’d seen a movie like that, once), playing cards. Further out into the hallway, I saw that my mother and a few of the other adults had huddled up in the tiny square kitchen, talking in hushed tones, eating. The lights had gone off, and the rooms were illuminated by candles and the occasional flashlight. My grandmother remained in her rocking chair, only this time, she sat in front of a window, which sat atop the family restaurant, which looked out upon the flooded street. I drew up next to her. The sky had become lighter, but not in a good way; it was that ominous, golden-gray light that always came before and during terrible storms. I followed my grandmother’s gaze down toward a group of naked children, who played in the floodwaters. Squinting, I realized they were washing themselves; some had their mouths wide open, happy to take in the rainwater, happy to have more than less-than-a-bucket’s-worth. I felt my heart twist like a dirty dishrag. I thought of the dolls in the doll room, and how easily they could be washed away and broken. “The current will carry them away,” I said simply. My grandmother nodded solemnly. “Yes.” When she said nothing for a long while, I fidgeted.

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“What will we do?” She smiled then, a slow upturn of the lips, and her gnarled fingers grasped my arm, and before I knew it, she was leading me downstairs, lightheartedly ignoring the protests that resounded from the adults in the kitchen. The wind was picking up. The palms of the palm trees beat against the roof even harder than before, and still, my grandmother led me out into the tunnel once again, flashlight in tow (when had she grabbed that?). The second my grandmother’s wrinkled, sandaled feet hit the mud, however, I jerked back into reality, and grabbed her as hard as I dared. “What are you doing?” I hissed. She had a twinkle in her eye, but said nothing and tugged me further along. I groaned as I felt my newly clean feet sloshing through the mud once again, and belatedly realized that my grandmother was leading me out of the tunnel, toward the gate, into the storm. I must have made a surprised and fearful yelp, because her grip on my wrist tightened, to the point where I did not know who was steadying whom. I could hear our family calling out to us from inside the tunnel, and the mouth of the tunnel came all too quickly. The rusty red gate was within my grasp, and I found myself reaching to tug it open alongside my grandmother, stepping out into the whiplash that was the wind and the rain, my bare feet slapping against the torrential waters. The children were still there, playing. The current was getting stronger.

Green I remember the sensation of coarse leaves splintering against my tongue. On my first trip to China at the age of six, we attend an all-family dinner; tea arrives with the meal in place of water. Thirsty, I tug my mother’s gray sweater and gesture to my throat. She reaches across the table and grasps the handle of the communal pot. I peer through the open lid, asking where the teabags are. She chuckles, lifts my porcelain cup, and fills it to the brim. The leaves float like miniature boats in a steaming pool of algae. Red By the time I am eight, I have developed an addiction for bing hong cha, which translates to “iced red tea.” It’s the Lipton of China, so drenched in sugar that my mouth floods with cavities by the time I am nine. On the way back from the dentist, my father yells at me in Chinese: “How are you this stupid? You only have one set of teeth.” The entire time, his tea-stained incisors—off-yellow— dip with each word.

it should be enough to recall the taste of grandmother’s palm against your cheek; its imprint marbled into your face’s memory. A steel countertop splattered with parsley. Dumplings slouching in scalding waters. When you are young, they smile up from the pot the way grandmother likes to open her chambered mouth and grin: all empty, all gum. Until the day you bring home angus beef bleeding in Saran and Styrofoam. This is not how we eat, she thrusts her wooden spoon against the packaging, forms a wound. The beef rots in the garbage while she ladles four weeping wonton into a white china bowl. Eat, she commands. So you do. Two weeks later, you return home with fries from the cafeteria at school. They are riveted like a dumpling’s skin, but golden yellow, crispy hardened unlike the celery that wilts in grandmother’s soup. She crushes them to dust between her palms, lets the ashes fall to the bottom of the trash. The pan on the stove lights a funeral pyre.

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

Gold Medal Portfolio Awards

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Abraham Cone Grade 12, Age 17, Chelsea High School, Chelsea, MI. Laura Naar and Georgina Rutherford, Educators; College for Creative Studies, Affiliate; Friends of the Alliance Art Portfolio

Help, (facing page), Pinned Part I, Bee, Decay (this page, clockwise from right)

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Razan Elbaba Grade 12, Age 17, Oakton High School, Vienna, VA. Susan Silva, Educator; Fairfax County Public Schools, Affiliate; Blick Art Materials & Utrecht Art Supply Art Portfolio

American Role Models (facing page), Real Eyes Realize Real Lies I (right), Girl Talk (below)

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2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

Gold Medal Portfolio Awards

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Zachary Endicott Grade 12, Age 18, Gibbs High School, St. Petersburg, FL. Marty Loftus, Educator; Pinellas County Schools, Affiliate; Alliance Board of Directors Art Portfolio

Sanctuary (facing page), Viaduct (this page)

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2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

Gold Medal Portfolio Awards

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Allison Jiang

Sophia Mautz,

Grade 12, Age 17, Holmdel High School, Holmdel, NJ. Steven Dante, Educator;

Grade 12, Age 17, Lincoln High School, Portland, OR. Lilly Windle, Educator;

Region-at-Large, Affiliate; Friends of the Alliance Writing Portfolio

Region-at-Large, Affiliate; Scholastic Inc. Writing Portfolio

for you. Olivia Moon. Poetry

Olivia Moon is the seagull in all the guided meditation audiotapes, sitting on the mast that flies away at the end; Olivia Moon is an olive-skinned almond-eyed hurricane in a world of crayon color labels like cerulean blue and goldenrod. People feel like they can ask her things like where do you get your confidence? to which she will toss her hair; Olivia Moon is physically unable to hear questions that are impossible to answer. Olivia Moon was sent here from the sky gods, born from a smoking crater. She thinks she is the one who will start the new world order when really her parents the sky gods were half-joking. Olivia Moon is always joking; people (the same people from before!) say that this will lead to problems. She is an orb of flickering blue light that sometimes goes out but only for a second; she wears lipstick that looks like magic in the mirror but is a little washed out on camera. Olivia Moon is the eye for imbalance, looking out through a sepia filter and tasting the world.

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Poetry

Our eyes rustle like jungle animals—the dancing orbs make such noise, clanging about the walls of the room like a Liberty Bell. I meet yours in the dark; everyone’s are dull and round and so I say: For you whose image is wrapped around me like blankets; for you who I find in my calloused fingerprints, and for you who sees the world through people-colored lenses: I want to scream to you this until I physically cannot, I want for the hallways of time to freeze for you and I to dance through them I want to hear a new language of us spring from this cold pit of my stomach where I keep all my words and hear it say: For you who I have waited nights (and years and lifetimes and pages for!), I want to pluck the stars from the sky and place them on your tongue. For you whose voice I hear in Bible verses and for you whose heart was made out of the same love as mine— For you who I see most clearly in this needle-fog of human and tree and God, Take me away from this headiness; I want to feel a new kind of dizzy— Together let’s invent a time when we wore our poems on our sleeves and used our mouths for speaking— invent a place where maybe we can be more than specks on a zoomed-out slide— Do you see this too? You pulse through me like a headache behind my left eye and feel so, so heavy.

Grave Dancing Poetry

does anyone ever know what anyone else does? those secret moments that make you lovable, i imagine you are filled with them, and i love you. as you dance through the wet grass, you wonder if the world dances with you, but you can never know that. the unanswerable is a dock you push away from, and your boat disappears into the ocean. all has slipped from you, and me, is slipping, and much of our performance is spent trying to get it back. remember that silk dress soiled with sweat, our hot desire pervading the kitchen, lipstick and mascara dripping down the white mat of my face and you touching me there, smearing it a little. your hair is impossibly knotted; my hands can’t work through it anymore. we ate canned peaches and the cupboards creaked, you showed me all your grandmother’s jams— peach-ginger, huckleberry, honey-cranberry-orange. i wanted to drown in my own saliva because in that moment my cup ran over into the low moon of abundance. it overflowed, and now is empty again.

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

what happens when the whole world becomes a graveyard? do the dead bodies crumble into one another, do the forgotten memories? in my time here i’ve gathered that none of us are really afraid of death except my mother because every time i get into the car, simply to go buy milk she is terrified that i won’t come back. i don’t know if i’ll ever love like that, if that’s love, and god, does it matter that we’re dancing now? who will see us but the oaks, watching, always, with their large black eyes? do they hold every memory in their rippling seams or do they, like us, stupidly forget everything and standing there, trying to remember, disappear? the ghosts of myself linger until they stop floating, wandering, light airy pulled apart and fall to their knees, powerless and reaching. a flash of light shoots upward, bleeding white. this dance ends in wavering gloss, we become food for flowers.

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Sophie Hullinger Grade 12, Age 18, Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts, West Palm Beach, FL. Melissa Glosmanova, Educator; Educational Gallery Group (Eg2), Affiliate; Alumni Council Art Portfolio

Individuality (facing page), Obsession (top), Idealism (bottom)

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Nyanna Johnson Grade 12, Age 17, Stivers School for the Arts, Dayton, OH. Paula Kraus and Leah Stahl, Educators; K12 Gallery & TEJAS, Affiliate; Lucy Evankow Photography Portfolio

Mirrored Self (facing page), Dancer 2 of 5 (top), The Knowing (bottom)

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Fiona Jungmann Grade 12, Age 18, Andover High School, Andover, MA. Jessica Daviso, Educator; School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Affiliate; Roome Fund Art Portfolio

Identity Thief Coat (facing page), Community (top, left and right), Quilted Bodice (bottom left), Structured Chiffon Bodice (bottom right)

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Rachel Page

Ruohan Miao Grade 12, Age 18, Hamilton High School, Chandler, AZ. Phyllis Carr, Educator;

Grade 12, Age 17, Woodrow Wilson Senior High School, Washington, D.C.

Young Authors of Arizona, Affiliate; The New York Times Writing Portfolio

Kathy Crutcher, Educator; Writopia Lab D.C., Affiliate; The Maurice R. Robinson Fund Writing Portfolio

Harvest Moon Poetry

I wonder if she sees me pausing behind her, inspecting her candelabrum hands as they swirl the paste, another finger

Convergence

shedding down the oven door for the journey home. Last October, and the storm,

Rats

Personal Essay & Memoir

my tongue a redwood wildfire streaming through the horizon of her face, as if

Short Story

My father tells me to look at equations and diagrams, that mathematics is truth and beauty lies in formulas. While he works toward his Ph.D., I follow him into his laboratory, childish eyes marveling at the expanse of sleek textbooks and inscrutable figures that envelop his computer screen. Everything is clear-cut and perfectly symmetrical but strangely distant as well. Even as a child, I can tell that this precision is wrong, inhuman. And yet, there is something so solid, so stable in all those numbers. My mother takes me to the library, where I start with Junie B. Jones and the Boxcar Children and eventually find myself lurking in front of the Young Adult section, gazing up wonderingly at Harry Potter. At night, she reads me poems and stories in Mandarin—half of which I can barely understand, but which I am able to appreciate if solely for the melodic twist and tilt of her words. While science is an unchanging mainstay, reading is a veritable forest with a thousand different paths. I fall in love with language easily, unimpededly—its unpredictability, the subtle nuances in each singular phrase. My elementary school teachers scrawl blooming “A’s” on the stories and essays that I turn in, gleaming red marks of encouragement. My ten-year-old ego swells with each additional 100. I begin to think of myself as a miniature Jane Austen or J. K. Rowling in the making.

she had not braved enough tempests in her life—because even children know that the sturdiest of foundations have a way of cracking. In Nanjing, she tells me of absolution, the shifting in her womb, autumn days when I pressed my ear into the withering ignition from within her belly. I picture my mother reliving the dankness of the hospital room, the red-rimmed doctors unrolling their words like cobweb, ready to snip off the spider-silk hope she held for the child in her arms—and I think of how my mother would not let me go, fearing that if my glutinous organs were released, they would never find her again. Next October, and my mother will pass out the plates, will calmly collect and discard the pity of women with lanky boys on either side, and when she offers me my cake, we will both imagine that the extra lotus paste she sprinkles in my yuebing is her way of showing light, from the same hand she clasped my cold fingers with as she wound up her spider thread.

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They did a study once a couple of years ago and found out that some fears can be inherited rather than learned. A guy I met during the war, Daryl Hampton, was one of the scientists who worked on it. He once showed me the lab coat that he had worn standing outside of the glass cages with the lab rats stumbling about inside high on acetophenone. His job was to push the little red button that shocked them every time the gas was released into the cage. It made them run in circles and scratch at the sides of the cage to get out, but they couldn’t because it was glass and they were lab rats. And the purpose of lab rats is to die for science. He told me that acetophenone smells like cherries. We were watching the chimpanzees groom each other in the chimp house when he said this. He had invited me to the zoo with his daughter, who he got the second Sunday of every month. His wife had divorced him after the experiment because, she told my then-girlfriend, something seemed off about him and he wouldn’t stop getting up in the middle of the night to sharpen his knives. He had become very interested in these knives, two spring steel beauties he’d bought off an old man in Kabul after the war. They were a part of an elaborate trap he had devised to catch the rats that lived in his kitchen walls. They had begun to keep him up at night with all of their scratching and skittering and squeaking to each other, and plus (he told me later, in the period before the divorce was made official when he had to sleep in my basement) he worried about the health hazard to his daughter. His living room floor was carpeted with pulleys and ropes and these little brown pellets that he said rats liked to eat. They were like chocolate to the lab rats, is what he said.

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

But anyways, we were at the zoo. The female chimpanzee was running her thick fingers through the male chimpanzee’s hair, and I was thinking about why she would do this if she knew it was just going to fill back up with fleas anyways. I asked Daryl, and he said that she probably liked the taste of fleas, which I hadn’t thought of before. Then he told me the thing about the acetophenone. What they found out from the rats, he said, was that animals are so stupid you can make them scared of anything. Their grandchildren still shuddered at the smell of cherries. His daughter was getting bored at that point, and she started tugging the corner of his jacket, whining at us to move on. Her fingers were small and pale and not at all like chimpanzee fingers. Your fingers never looked like that. Okay, said Daryl, okay, and we left the chimp house.

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Conor Twohy, Towson, MD Grade 12, Age 18, George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology. Khalid Ali, Joe Cypressi, and Daria Souvorova, Educators; Region-at-Large, Affiliate; Friends of the Alliance Art Portfolio

Skyscraper (facing page), Runaway

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

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Sydni Wells, Miami, FL

Adam Gowan, Toronto, Canada

Grade 12, Age 17, Miami Country Day School, Miami, FL. Samuel Brown, Educator;

Grade 12, Age 17, Etobicoke School of the Arts, Toronto, Canada. Nicholas Morgan,

Miami Writes, Affiliate; Alumni Council Writing Portfolio

Glenn Novak, and Matthew Varey, Educators; Region-at-Large, Affiliate; Alliance Board of Directors Writing Portfoiio

1 New Message

Siri, Define Millennials

Edge: Life at Work

Poetry

Humor

Personal Essay & Memoir

I will not be your 3:37 AM call, because she did not answer after seventeen rings.

The word is teenager. The word is youth. The word is the first generation of kids who don’t know what lasting marriage looks like, the first generation with a technological footprint, the first generation to be both the most hopeless and hopeful. We are the words. The word is the boy who goes home with eye sockets like blueberries the size of grapefruits, because he has known these kids since elementary school, but in ninth grade “gay” is the only thing people remember about him now. The word is the “All Lives Matter” counterarguments, because somehow they are absent in oppression but always present for inclusion. They are the boys who are dying to be considered a “nigga” but cannot bring themselves to identify as an ally; the word is Kendall Jenner’s innovational cornrows but Nicki Minaj’s “ghetto” braids. The word is every “bitch” out there, who is sweating through her clothes in 90 degree weather because she was too tired getting told that men “wanted her ass” to put on some shorts today. The word is virgin, the girl who is spat at for innocence but pined over in locker rooms. The word is slut, the girl who has too many guy friends who she spends Friday nights with, playing Monopoly; the girl who is proud of her body and eager to share it; the girl who is locked up in her room because of high heels and nightclubs. We are electric, paradoxical, complex people. Exotic flavors with acidic aftertastes. Yet we are reduced to urbandictionary.com definitions: We are absent of meaning but brimming with life. And still, we are words.

Sylvia Plath’s poem “Edge” is a philosophical and imagistic exploration of suicide. It is perhaps the calmest and most peaceful of her poems—and was written shortly before she took her life in 1963. Plath opens the poem with the line “The woman is perfected.” She then goes on to reveal that this “perfection” has been achieved through death. As one reads the poem, one is confronted with an image of a classical Greek sculpture of a Goddess, with a child at each breast. Then it becomes more organic, and she becomes a wilting flower, and her children return to her decaying body. Finally, we see her corpse from the distant perspective of the moon. Plath’s description of her death as “the illusion of a Greek necessity” implies that the necessity of her final act is merely an illusion. Greek tragic figures like Antigone and Ajax also committed suicide, but Plath clearly considers her motivations to be quite separate from those of these figures. Her actions are not dictated by fate or some universal law but rather her personal will to death, “Thanatos,” which pervades every aspect of her life. Her tragic flaw, if we can speak of her life in such terms, is something like self-loathing. Plath points out that “the moon has nothing to be sad about,” suggesting that her death has no significance in the cosmic scale. Why, then, should she remain alive, if her life is only misery? In the poem, Plath portrays herself as the mythological figure of the Mother Goddess. In Joseph Campbell’s analysis, the Mother Goddess represents eternity,

do not leave your ghosts in my voicemail; it is nearly April and there are flowers sprouting in the graves you left behind. I’ve stopped leaving my door unlocked— the keys have been changed, there are no shoes by the door, the doormat is gone, there are no welcomes to be had. my doorbell chimes church bells, but I don’t have the energy to kneel anymore, because I’ve spent too many sleepless nights crawling through the halls looking for misplaced memories. two months ago I taped the button over because the occasional toll left tremors in my chest, and the shock of a different sermon stung bloody in the back of my throat; my teeth have been chattering in my sleep for days since. the dog used to howl every night at footsteps that were never there, but now she knows the car outside will never be yours, so she waits for me in bed. I always come.

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whereas the male God is engaged in the field of time. The Goddess has a triple role—to give life, act as a muse, and to take it all away in death. Plath has given birth to her children, acted as her own muse, and now she is perfected in death, as she takes her children back inside her like the petals of a flower. She leaves behind only the images that she has inspired and created. She herself is an aesthetic object, and in her suicide she is completed as a work of art. One might speculate, with good reason, that the act of Plath’s suicide contributed significantly to the recognition she has received as a poet. Would we be studying her work in school had she not taken her life? This raises the question of how the artist’s life affects the audience’s perception of their work, and whether or not it should. This is a complex issue, especially when it comes to artists like Plath, who explore their lives openly and directly through art. “Her blacks crackle and drag.” The closing statement of the poem, in its obscurity, is perhaps its most fascinating element. It is a simple but ambiguous statement, which employs synesthesia in its description of the sound produced by a color. These words can be interpreted any number of ways—perhaps the dragging of funeral robes, or curtains closing, or the shadow of the moon—but what it evokes most powerfully is a feeling. We all carry this blackness within us, and it “crackles and drags” as it slowly consumes us. This is the last line of her last poem, and the conclusion of the artwork that was her life.

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2016 SPONSORED AWARDS Dedicated and generous sponsors of the Scholastic Awards make it possible for us to provide additional recognition and scholarships for select students who receive Silver and Gold Medals. We were pleased to add four brand-new sponsoredaward opportunities for students this year— The Herblock Award for Editorial Cartoon, The RBC “Flaunt It” Award, the Neiman Marcus Award for Fashion, and the Neiman Marcus Award for Jewelry— and to continue our ongoing partnerships with Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Gedenk Movement, and the National Constitution Center.

The Herblock Award for Editorial Cartoon, sponsored

The Gedenk Award for Tolerance, sponsored by the

by The Herb Block Foundation, celebrates the legacy

Gedenk Movement, recognizes works of art or writing

of four-time Pulitzer Prize–winning political cartoonist

that reflect upon the lessons learned from the Holocaust

Herb Block. This Award provides $1,000 scholarships to

and other genocides. This Award provides $1,000

three students.

scholarships to six students.

2016 Herblock Award for Editorial Cartoon Recipients:

2016 Gedenk Award for Tolerance Award Recipients:

Kaitlyn Quach, Ryan Sunada-Wong, Sherrill Zheng

Maribel Alverson, Erin Cho, Jasmine Cui, Aidan Foster, Daniel Wu, Lauren Wyman

The RBC “Flaunt It” Award, sponsored by RBC Capital Markets, encourages teens who possess any type of

The Creativity & Citizenship Award, in partnership with

difference, whether blatant or invisible, to explore the

the National Constitution Center, encourages students

theme “The things that make me different, make me,

to express their views on specific topics. This year

me.” This Award provides $1,000 scholarships to two

the theme was Race in America. This Award provides

students.

$1,000 scholarships to three students.

2016 RBC “Flaunt It” Award Recipients:

2016 Creativity & Citizenship Award Recipients:

Sydney Maddox, Peyton Vasquez

Sierra Callwood, Leah Penn, Vasantha Sambamurti

The Neiman Marcus Award for Fashion, sponsored by Neiman Marcus, provides a scholarship of $1,000 to a student for outstanding work in the Fashion category. 2016 Neiman Marcus Award for Fashion Award Recipient: Olivia Reavey

The Best-in-Grade Award, sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies, provides an additional opportunity for students to have their work recognized amongst their peers. This Award provides $500 scholarships to twenty-four students. See page 46 for a listing of the 2016 Best-in-Grade Award Recipients.

The Neiman Marcus Award for Jewelry, sponsored by Neiman Marcus, provides a scholarship of $1,000 to a student for outstanding work in the Jewelry category. 2016 Neiman Marcus Award for Jewelry Award Recipient: Zachary Gudziak

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

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2016 Herblock Award for Editorial Cartoon

Ryan Sunada-Wong, Another Day at the Office (above),

Kaitlyn Quach, Say Cheese! (below), Editorial Cartoon. Grade

Editorial Cartoon. Grade 10, Age 15, Millburn High School, Millburn,

10, Age 15, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, New York, NY.

NJ. Kathleen Harte Gilsenan, Educator; Montclair Art Museum,

Carlos Nunez, Educator; NYC Scholastic Art & Writing Awards,

Affiliate; Gold Medal, The Herblock Foundation Award

Affiliate; Gold Medal, The Herblock Foundation Award

Sherrill Zheng, Random Objects That Visualize the Chinese American Experience, Editorial Cartoon. Grade 12, Age 17, Perpich Center for Arts Education, Roseville, MN. Sandra Woodhull, Educator; Art Educators of Minnesota, Affiliate; Gold Medal, The Herblock Foundation Award

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2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

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2016 RBC “Flaunt It” Award

PEYTON VASQUEZ, Grade 8, Age 13, Bonnette Junior High School, Deer Park, TX. Veronica Serna, Educator; Harris County Department of Education, Affiliate; Gold Medal, The RBC “Flaunt It” Award

The Floppy Arm Personal Essay & Memoir

Well, if cancer wasn’t bad enough, now my arm won’t work. I just learned how to walk down stairs again, which was really hard when my feet would barely come off the floor before they dropped again. Neuropathy is the fancy word the oncologist called my diagnosis when I couldn’t run, descend stairs and ramps, tie my shoes, pick up coins, and even button my pants. I’m trying to play this game with some friends where we have to do these tricks where I need both arms to work. It doesn’t matter how hard I try, my arm just will not work. FLOP! It falls on the table instead of holding the straw. Flop. Flop. Flop. We lose. The people we are playing with are a part of my club. It’s a club no one wants to belong to because it is only for kids with cancer. I joined this club when I was diagnosed with stage IIB, intermediate risk, parameningial, embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma. Rhabdo for short. We meet like this so that we all feel normal. Some of the kids don’t have eyes. Some are bald. Some don’t have legs. One of us is in a wheelchair. I have to wear tinted protective lenses at all times. That’s right. I wear sunglasses at night. All the parents of cancer patients are worriers. I know I have to hide this arm thing because pretty soon all the moms will come to my rescue and annoy me by being overbearingly caring. Most kids probably want their parents to care about them when they are sick, but I have had my fair share. When I go to school Monday, I really think that I fooled everyone. But I have this teacher, the kind who notices my arm right away and starts asking questions and doesn’t hesitate to call my mom and I find out that I have a doctor’s appointment. Dr. Segura is the doctor who took care of me before

Sydney Maddox, Number Won, Film & Animation. Grade 12, Age17, Barnstable High School, Hyannis, MA. Adam Farrell, Educator; The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Affiliate; Gold Medal, The RBC “Flaunt It” Award

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cancer. He only knows me as Peyton and treats me like a regular kid. I’ve only seen him once since my cancer treatment was over because I was sick. The kind of sick that regular kids get. It felt good to be regular sick. Weird. Dr. Segura comes in and does a bunch of testing. He pushes my legs and makes me point my toes. Then, he makes me shrug my shoulders. The right shoulder moves, but the left does not. No matter how hard I try, it just won’t move. It twitches. Just twitches. The next day after school, I’m at the shoe store and smile at my mom after I find a pair of shoes that I really like. She freaks out and starts telling me to smile with both sides of my face. I smile as big as I can. She grabs her phone from her purse and dials the cancer center and starts wildly talking and crying and shouting at me to smile and telling me that if I’m kidding I’d better knock it off. When we get to the hospital, the doctor thinks I’ve had a stroke, because when I smile, only one side of my face moves. Great. Just great. More things that don’t work. The doctors check out my brain. It was still there and functioning, so I had to have a total body neurological MRI. The doctors couldn’t find a cause for all my symptoms. In their infinite wisdom, they diagnose me with depression. The doctors explain that it’s normal for kids with cancer to get depressed and have psychosomatic symptoms. It was a hard time for me and my family. In therapy, I had to do all kinds of things like climb stairs, pick up coins, write with my left hand, and touch my fingers to my thumb, which frustrated me because these things were easy before cancer. All this happened until we went to a soccer game. My family sat in a suite with a short divider wall that I kept jumping over. My good arm would swing when I ran to leap over that hurdle, but my left arm would just flop next to my ribs. I was having a blast. Until I fell. Suddenly, my arm worked. Both my arms stretched out in front of me to break my fall. It was like a miracle. My mom looked at me and said, “Well, if I would have known that’s all it took, I would have shoved you down a long time ago.” The doctors couldn’t figure out what caused the nerves not to function. I think it was because I needed to learn that when I fall, better things wait for me when I get back up.

It felt good to be regular sick. Weird. 2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

Sponsored Awards

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Neiman Marcus Award for Jewelry

Zachary Gudziak, Human Trap, Jewelry. Grade 12, Age 18, Detroit Country Day School: Upper School, Beverly Hills, MI. Jiro Masuda, Educator; College for Creative Studies, Affiliate; Gold Medal, Best-in-Grade Award, Neiman Marcus Award for Jewelry

Olivia Reavey, Birch Tree Coat (facing page), Fashion. Grade 12, Age 17, Hingham High School, Hingham, MA. Ryan Eschauzier, Educator; School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Affiliate; Gold Medal, Neiman Marcus Award for Fashion

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Neiman Marcus Award for Fashion

2016 Gedenk Award for Tolerance

Erin Cho, African Child, Disease and War (detail) (facing page),

DANIEL WU, Grade 10, Age 15, Timber Creek High School,

Editorial Cartoon. Grade 10, Age 16, Kent School, Kent, CT.

Orlando, FL. Catherine Melton, Educator; Region-at-Large,

Lisa Brody, Educator, Connecticut Art Education Association,

Affiliate; Gold Medal, Gedenk Award

Affiliate, Gold Medal, Gedenk Award

Grade 10, Age 15, McCallum High School, Austin, TX. William

Fear Itself

Cauthern, Educator, St. Stephen’s Episcopal School, Affiliate,

Critical Essay

Maribel Alverson, A Few Screws Loose (below), Sculpture.

Gold Medal, Gedenk Award

What is fear? We cannot look to a simplistic, “common sense” definition. Fear is best comprehended as a subconscious avoidance of perceived threats, a state of being in which threats are dismissed in varying ways, positive and negative. At its root, fear is anchored in an ancient biological response. Johnson, a reporter with Discover, explains, “[Fear causes us] to display defensive behavior in response to threatening stimuli . . . fear turns out to be one of the most essential techniques that natural selection stumbled across to increase the survival odds of organisms in an unpredictable environment . . . For people who have undergone serious trauma . . . memories of fear can sometimes play a dominant role in shaping personality.” The sum of our everyday interactions, our personalities, are constructed within an environment of our fears, and therefore our fears underlie each tenet of our modern societies. Fear is thus a facet of a huntergatherer existence—a nod to the primal past of our species, from times where every shadow hid wolves, where every unknown was a danger. However, humanity is no longer facing hungry wolves or angry bears; the world around us is safer relative to our hunter-gatherer past. Our greatest resource competitors? Ourselves. Food has transformed into jobs, wealth, and success, while bears and wolves have transformed into Others. The fear that once unified humanity against perilous nature has transformed into a wedge. As Lars Svendsen, professor of philosophy puts it: “A paradoxical trait of the culture of fear is that it emerges at a time when, by all accounts, we are living more securely than ever before in human history.”

At its root, fear is anchored in an ancient biological response. 42

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2016 Creativity & Citizenship Award

Glass Falls Short Story

VASANTHA SAMBAMURTI, Grade 12, Age 17, Charleston County School of the Arts, North Charleston, SC. Danielle DeTiberus, Educator; Region-at-Large, Affiliate; Gold Medal, Creativity & Citizenship Award

Krishna New families needed homes. That’s why the mechanical din of hammers, saws, and adjusted ladders had sundered the tranquil murmurings of the wind shaking the trees, and the birds saluting the sun. But it would all be over soon—that’s what her mother said. Krishna had woken up at 4:30 in the morning, and she resented having done so. Today was her class field trip, and she really didn’t want to go. But she was twelve, and that was the age when you weren’t supposed to worry about anything. You weren’t supposed to worry about how to talk to other kids, or how to hold your sandwich when everyone watched you eat it. So she returned the permission slip. She sat in the dry bathtub and eyed the silver faucet across from her. It should’ve been instinctual to turn the faucet on, to soak in clean water and flush the grime down

the drain. But, this time, she felt all the dirt wouldn’t go. And she didn’t feel like getting up. Abha had left her tweezers at the very edge of her dresser; an instance as good as a gift. Krishna held the appliance in her right hand, pinching it like a pair of chopsticks. She had rolled up her baggy pants to the knee, and started to uproot the dense black hair of her legs. She was unraveling a cloak. It stung when she plucked, but she knew it was supposed to. “Beauty is pain.” “No gain without pain.” Everyone said it. In thirty minutes, she had cleared only a penny-sized patch of hair at the base of her knee. This should’ve felt like progress. She sank her head into her knees. Ma never shaved in India. But they were in Asheville now.

But she was twelve, and that was the age when you weren’t supposed to worry about anything. Leah Penn, Divergence, Drawing & Illustration. Grade 12, Age 17, Rufus King International School, Milwaukee, WI. Dean Graf, Educator; Milwaukee Art Museum, Affiliate; Creativity & Citizenship Award

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2016 Best-in-grade Award RecipientS

Grade 7 Grade 7 Caroline Blumer Caroline Blumer Scott Hanna Scott Hanna Reagan Murphy Reagan Murphy Juliana Yu Juliana Yu

Grade 10 Grade 10 Maddy Daum Maddy Daum Aidan Forster Aidan Forster Ava Young Ava Young Lily Zhou Lily Zhou

Grade 8 Grade 8 Sadie Cowles Sadie Cowles

Grade Grade 11 11 Sierra Callwood Sierra Callwood

Mercedes Langdon Langdon Mercedes

James Tortorelli James Tortorelli

Erin Hong Hong Erin Elizabeth Johns Johns Elizabeth

Maya Eashwaran Maya Eashwaran Jihye Nam Jihye Nam

Grade 9 Grade 9 Emma Lickey Lickey Emma

Grade 12 Zachary Gudziak Gudziak Zachary

Lindsey Williams Williams Lindsey Karly Wolfcale Wolfcale Karly

Carol Nguyen Carol Nguyen Audrey Spensley Spensley Audrey

Alyssa Zhang Zhang Alyssa

Alex Zhang Alex Zhang

Sierra Callwood, The Ties That Bind: An Attempt to Figure It Out (facing page), Mixed Media. Grade 11, Age 17, NSU University School, Ft. Lauderdale, FL. Melanie Cohen, Educator; Young at Art Museum, Affiliate; Gold Medal, American Visions Medal, Best-in-Grade Award, Creativity & Citizenship Award Alyssa Zhang, Thinking (top left), Mixed Media. Grade 9, Age 15, Northview High School, Duluth, GA. Ling Li, Educator; Savannah College of Art and Design, Affiliate; Gold Medal, Best-in-Grade Award Scott Hanna, Creepy Crawler (top right), Ceramics & Glass. Grade 7, Age 12, Detroit Country Day Middle School, Beverly Hills, MI. Aaron Kuehne, Educator; College for Creative Studies, Affiliate; Gold Medal, Best-in-Grade Award Reagan Murphy, Meter Running (bottom), Mixed Media. Grade 7, Age 13, Jay Robinson Middle School, Charlotte, NC. Melissa Leftwich, Educator; Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools— Visual Arts Education Department, Affiliate; Gold Medal, Best-in-Grade Award

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James Tortorelli, Hidden in the Pews Zine (top), Design.

Karly Wolfcale, A Dream (facing page), Photography.

Grade 11, Age 17, Home School, Gaithersburg, MD.

Grade 9, Age 14, Homestead High School, Fort Wayne, IN.

Brian Bienek, Educator; Region-at-Large, Affiliate; Gold Medal,

Dominick Manco, Educator; Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Affiliate;

Best-in-Grade Award

Gold Medal, Best-in-Grade Award

Maddy Daum, The Tourist (bottom), Photography, Grade 10, Age 15, Harvard-Westlake School, North Hollywood, CA. Joe Medina, Educator; Region-at-Large, Affiliate; Gold Medal, Best-in-Grade Award

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Mercedes Langdon, Graduation Day (facing page),

Erin Hong, Big Smile, Drawing & Illustration. Grade 8, Age 13,

Photography. Grade 8, Age 14, Springfield Ball Charter School,

Home School , Holden, MA. Kyungah Lee, Educator; School of

Springfield, IL. Maggie Perkins, Educator; Mid-Central Illinois

the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Affiliate; Gold Medal,

Region, Affiliate; Gold Medal, Best-in-Grade Award

Best-in-Grade Award

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

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51

SADIE COWLES, Grade 8 , Age 13, Frank H. Harrison Middle School, Yarmouth, ME. Charlotte Agell, Educator; Southern Maine Writing Project, Affiliate; Gold Medal, Best-in-Grade Award

One in Eight Million Personal Essay & Memoir

Throughout this whole trip, we had been stared at unabashedly like we were exotic animals in town for the day. I did not like all of the attention and felt a bit uncomfortable. If I had stayed in this village, I probably would have known all of these people. In a village this small, I guessed that everyone knew each other. At another stop we put a poster up and then got back in the car to wait for Mr. Shen to return. We sat in the van and watched people come over in groups and look at the poster. They started gesturing toward the van, so Yaoyao rolled down the windows. They peered in and looked at the strange American family, my mom and sister with their blonde hair, my tall father with his head almost touching the roof of the car, and then Zhi and I, the Chinese adoptees with the foreign American family. As we continued down the dirt roads like a mini-parade of people to the four different entrances to the town, we saw shops that were overflowing with plastic chairs, hats, brooms, plastic bins, fans, baskets and all sorts of odds and ends. There were stands with watermelons and baskets of shan zhù, a dark-purple and messy fruit we had come to love. The most common sight was umbrellas, everyone had one covering them and their produce. Most Chinese try to avoid the sun, as their idea of beauty is to have very fair skin. As we walked around China, everywhere you looked, people were carrying parasols. It was hard to picture myself living in such a small village. Looking down the main street at the aging apartment buildings and the fairly unoccupied market, there didn’t seem to be much happening. I would most likely have been uneducated, and when I got older I would work in a factory in a nearby city. I would also have spoken Chinese, not English. At the time I was adopted, the Chinese government’s policy allowed each family to have only one child, but if both parents were only children, they could have two children. This rule is more heavily enforced in the city than in the countryside, so I most likely would have had multiple brothers and sisters. My family would likely be poor, I would not have much, and certainly would never have gotten the chance to go to

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America. Similarly, I would not have any of the opportunities that I have now. This is supposed to make me feel lucky, but to be honest, I would not have known what I was missing. Is it all about having the most opportunities? Just because I lived in a different place does not mean that I wouldn’t be as content and loved by my family and friends in China as I am now in America. I would be a similar person, but I believe the setting you grow up in and who you are surrounded by does have a big impact on the person you become. We continued putting up posters. Each poster had two baby pictures of me, and last year’s school picture. We included information about where I was left, when I was born, and an agreement to keep all information confidential. After each poster went up, people assembled and started reading them. We guessed that by the end of the day, almost everyone in that village had seen the posters. The odds were looking good for finding my birth parents, but I was trying to keep from being too optimistic so that I wouldn’t be let down. We were not sure how long the posters would last before wear and tear and wind and rain tore them down. Who knew if we would even get a call or if someone would step forward? We would just have to wait and see. Six months later, after several calls and one DNA test, it was determined that my birth parents had not been found. I remember telling someone that if the DNA test wasn’t positive, that it would be devastating, but it wasn’t. I was disappointed and upset that the situation had not turned out the way I wanted it to. I was also slightly relieved, because the potential father had been very sick. Meeting him might have been difficult because most people in China do not have access to affordable health care. He also might have had a genetic disease that could have been passed on to me. We had known the whole time that the odds of finding birth parents were very slim in such a big country. I’m guessing that all of the people in my village and surrounding villages have seen my posters or heard about them by now. Hopefully someone will still step forward. Maybe they are worried that they will get in trouble for abandoning a child or for having more children than was allowed at the time. It’s also possible they moved, or maybe they even died. Regardless, I was able to hear two families’ stories, so I have a much clearer picture of what my story might have been. Even if nothing more happens, I have had a glimpse of how my life might have turned out had I grown up in a small village on the other side of the world, in China.

JIHYE NAM, Grade 11, Age N/A, Skyline High School, Ann Arbor, MI. Patricia Jenkins, Educator; Belin-Blank Center, Affiliate; Gold Medal, Best-in-Grade Award

Pink Balloons Personal Essay & Memoir

Hello, you’ve never met me. But my name betrays me. It tells you everything you need to know, so take your pick: the 7-11 or the laundromat. Medical school or an engineering degree. My name is a bar code that bears my product description. My GPA, my monosyllabic last name, and my stickstraight dark hair. It’s a Choose Your Own Adventure of predetermined narratives. You’re right. But hello, you’ve never met me. The teacher is at a loss with the wailing little boy who doesn’t look or talk like the rest of the toddlers. She calls the big kids’ teacher to find his sister. I walk to my brother silently, wrap my arms around him, and reassure him in a language only we understand. I tell him it’s okay. I know it’s not okay. It’s story time. The only word I know is jeans, but she’s not saying jeans. So I look out the window because, no matter which side of the globe I’m on, the blue sky is a constant. My mom wants to plan a birthday party for me. She’s nervous and excited because she wants to do this right. She calls a party store to order balloons, but a frown creases her face as she flicks madly through a dictionary. When she finally lowers the phone, she asks me what a zip code is. Just like that, she’s crying, and I’m hugging her. I’m old enough to know that it’s not about the dictionary or the balloons. They tell me that I’m what’s called an alien. They tell me to say the Pledge of Allegiance. I’m not sure about America. I’m not sure about God. They don’t tell us that we’re allowed to be “not sure.” There are words I want to know about, odd ones like “salmon” and “Wednesday,” that don’t play by the same rules. The kids laugh, but they’re happy to sound out the odd syllables for me.

When my teacher asks if anyone in the class has read Harry Potter, I’m the only one who raises my hand. The kid in the back says it’s because I’m Asian. Just like that, I go from outsider to outlier. I try out names like Kylie and Sophie, names for girls with blonde hair and blue eyes, and it feels like I’m playing dress up. My mom reminds me that my grandfather picked out my name because it means wisdom. I tell her that I don’t want the name she gave me. But her face shows that she knows what I’m really asking for. I don’t want the skin she gave me. My winning word for the school spelling bee is labyrinth. A month later, my dentist asks me if I need a translator. I don’t even consider being offended. We have a genealogy project at school, and I’m the only one in my class who doesn’t know her grandparents’ names. No, Ms. Bauer, I’m not adopted. So, I call my grandparents with a set of interview questions, trying desperately to recall a language that I’ve spent my entire life hiding like a dirty secret. We follow the template with relative ease, and it starts to feel like a chore. Then, my grandmother asks how I’m doing. The words I once wielded with ease are now lost to me, and the clipboard in my hand is no help. I don’t start crying until I remember my mom with the dictionary and the pink balloons. Except it’s not a birthday party and a zip code. It’s my grandparents, and I don’t know how to tell them I love them. I don’t know how to apologize for abandoning the name they gave me. Asian-American starts to mean something, and then I start to mean something. I still fumble on the “salmons” and “Wednesdays” in the language I’m rediscovering. I still get angry. I still feel alien, and I still feel whitewash. Sometimes, both at the same time. Hello, I am wisdom. I am learning not to betray my name. Hello, I am pink balloons and blue skies. I am jeans and genes. And I am overflowing with apologies that I still don’t know how to make. Hello, you’ve never met me. Hello, I’ve never let you.

Hello, I am wisdom. I am learning not to betray my name. 2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

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53

AUDREY SPENSLEY, Grade 12, Age 17, Avon Lake High School,

LINDSEY WILLIAMS, Grade 9, Age 13, Abiqua Academy,

Avon Lake, OH. Stacey Hallett, Educator; Belin-Blank Center,

Salem, OR. Eric MacKnight, Educator; Region-at-Large, Affiliate;

Affiliate; Gold Medal, Best-in-Grade Award

Gold Medal, Best-in-Grade Award

Georgia on My Mind; American Dérive

Letters From a Girl Short Story

Poetry

Georgia on My Mind Just an old, sweet song— Later we’ll wonder how we hadn’t noticed the hills blooming open, goldenrod scarring the scrub grass, gorgeous & hungry. This was the summer my father bought guppies by the pound, sheared the coats off his sheep, knuckles memorizing the difference between hot flesh & warm air. The babies cried, soft nervous sounds soaked up by dirt, as if the whole world could feed on their blistered feet. My father slept on the kitchen floor with a baseball bat, listening to Ray Charles claw his way through AM radio waves, dawn dripping like honey over his thick breath, his scabbed knuckles. We craved the acidic rain of haunted promise lands, the only city we’d ever known a hollow circus three hundred miles away. No peace I find, Ray said, and we clutched at his words like jeweled peaches, ripening. We traced the promise over & over into the soft meat of our small palms— The road leads back to you. American Dérive We are hurtling down the highway like a fist toward flesh. Tennessee peels itself to a bruised core, tires clawing grooves in its tender skin. Each hotel is a lesson in light: we unplug our electric lamps and the seashell moon burns through the window slats. I pry apart free breakfast in the lobby. Coffee and pink packets of aspartame. That’ll kill you, you say, canary-colored egg dangling from your fork’s prongs. I think about my uncle, wet mesh of tubes dripping from his skin, his breath an uncharted coast, a storm of rocks he capsized in over and over. Even bleach

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tastes like sugar if you drink long enough, I don’t answer. We flick coins out the window to watch them bite pavement and it reminds me of the dogfights two years ago, the spray of roses we’d heaped on slumped spines. Now we flip through towns like television channels. Children flock behind chain link, scream with their hands. Men smoke on porches, embers losing light at their feet. No buyers. The signs spring from grass like milkweed in bloom. We leave early to beat the traffic, rushing to a city we’ve never seen. Still the road ribbons into a sunrise of taillights: a thousand red lips, all blazing and brutal, all pointing the same direction.

Many writing selections have been excerpted. Go to artandwriting.org/galleries to read the works as they were submitted.

To the President of France Nov. 14— Dear Mr. President, My grandmother loves to travel. You might not consider that important, but it matters, because this year, she went to Paris. She sent us a picture of herself on November 12, and we haven’t heard from her since. She usually sends pictures every day, so you can see that this is very concerning to my mother and me. Would you please see that Dr. Linda Gates, Ph.D., is sent to the return address on this envelope? My mother tells me that presidents are the most responsible people in the world, so I expect that you will be on top of this assignment. I would not be so audacious as to ask a favor without compensation. So you will find enclosed all five dollars of my allowance money. Upon the safe return of my grandmother, you will receive another five. I assume this will be sufficient salary. Thank you for your help, sir. —Nadine Rosamund Nov. 20— Dear Mr. President, It has been a considerable amount of time since my last letter, and although I acknowledge that your job is very difficult, I also am not habitually patient. My grandmother has still not appeared, nor has she sent word of her wellbeing, which leads me to worry for her safety, although not too much, because my mother has assured me that you are excellent at what you do. Her words are strong, and sometimes angry, so I do not fret for my grandmother’s well-being for long. On related news, my classmate Julia informed me that her mother was in Paris on November 13 as well. She asked me to ask you, if you wouldn’t mind, to also search for Mrs. Margaret Ames. I have enclosed the address to which you should send her, upon discovery. Julia already spent her allowance, but says that she will earn money as quickly as possible to pay this debt. Thank you, sir. —Nadine Rosamund

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

Nov. 26— Dear Mr. President, Even though you are a very slow worker, I am praying for you. Mother says that you are under a lot of stress, which I understand. Also note that my mother wears a perpetual frown now, and her smiles, which are beautiful, do not surface even when I play with her. Our Thanksgiving was so quiet that I could hear the hum of our generator, muffling the scrape of silverware. There was no laughing, no warmth. I left immediately afterward and went to my bedroom to write this letter. Do not assume that I am ungrateful for your efforts, Mr. President. The TV features your attempts at progress quite frequently. But you should also not mistake my gratitude for complacency; know that I wait each day by the door, waiting for my grandmother’s return. I have enclosed a photograph of us together. Perhaps this will help you find her. Thank you, sir. —Nadine Rosamund Dec. 5— Dear Mr. President, It occurs to me, in passing, that you have not written me back. Have you been getting my letters? Perhaps the postal service in your country is slower than in mine. I will not disparage your nation, though. It is going through a lot right now. The news says that you have many angry people at your doorstep, perpetually. I can’t imagine; our front door is always silent, the curtains always drawn. Maybe my parents believe that light will hurt my eyes—yes, that must be it; our eyes are too tender for daylight’s touch. It also occurs to me that I have been insensitive. I haven’t asked you how you’ve been holding up. Are you all right? Are your meals good? Do you sleep well? I imagine your bed to be a magnificent thing, made of feathers and thick blankets and devoid of the rattle of the heater that makes it difficult for me to sleep. I imagine you laying in your feather bed, sleeping with both eyes open. I imagine you reading this. Perhaps it will make you smile. It is an important thing to smile, every so often, when we are surrounded by this distant and constant sadness. Thank you. —Nadine Rosamund

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JULIANA YU, Grade 7, Age 13, The Dalton School, New York, NY. Yael Schick, Educator; NYC Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, Affiliate; Gold Medal, Best-in-Grade Award

Death Follows Short Story

There were three children’s wards in St. Joseph’s Memorial Hospital, each with a large, faded painting of a president on its doors. There was Lincoln, for the little kids and the ones who were just staying overnight; Adams, for the kids who didn’t sleep in the hospital but were there pretty much every hour of the day; and Harrison, named after William Henry Harrison and the place for those of us who don’t have rich parents who are willing to pay for a more private place to die. (In case you didn’t know, our namesake Bill died 32 days after his inauguration. Inspiring stuff.) Technically, I was supposed to have been moved out of the children’s wards when I turned twelve, but no one really knows how much longer I’m going to stick around. It’s kind of a waste to move me when I could die on you at any second. Plus, I know the kids here, and most of them aren’t too bad. Our hanging out was mostly a fog of sleeping and pain medication, to be honest. Most of the patients in the ward were about nine or ten; their parents sat by them all day in those creaky plastic chairs. My mom went through that phase too, in the earlier years. I would wake up to ice cream and pudding every day from the cafeteria. She rented an apartment nearby so she can visit when she has time, but to make sure all the medical bills are paid, she works overtime at a Walmart, where they pay her about three dollars an hour. Whenever I get to see her, she always seems to have a new crease in her forehead or a line under her eyes. There was only one patient in Harrison who was my age, and that was Miguel. I knew barely anything about

him—just that he had been stuck here for longer than I had, rarely spoke to any of us, and had just gotten the worst news. I was there when they told him, late one evening when most people were sleeping. I was fiddling with the settings of my back brace, trying to find the position where the metal wasn’t digging into my skull, when the door creaked and Miguel’s aunt walked in. She visited him every so often, drawing the curtain around his bed with a grimace and a spritz of hand sanitizer. Miguel just barely tolerated her­—not that he had much choice. But this was no routine visit. She didn’t bring hand sanitizer, and Miguel’s eyes were wide with fear as she approached. I watched as she carefully placed a gentle palm on his head and ran her fingers through his hair. Her words were gentle and slow, but Miguel flinched with each syllable. “The administration has approved my request for your intubation. Your operation will be in a week and I’ll be there for you.” He gasped in a shuddering breath, coughing out a slur of protest. “I’m your guardian, Miguel, and this is the right choice. I won’t have any of this nonsense, you hear me?” She lifted her hand from his head as he glared at her, balling his hands into fists and whispering angry words in Spanish. “You know I don’t understand what you’re saying. Say it in English or not at all.” She turned toward the door and began to walk away. Miguel called out a rasping translation, and she spun around once more. “Watch your tongue, young man!” When she was gone, Miguel began to sob. Real sobs. Wracking cries of pain as he clutched his cannula and tried to wrench it from his neck, digging his fingernails into the cold plastic. I didn’t blame him. Intubation was basically a death sentence—you were going to die soon anyway, so why spend the last few months of your life with a pipe shoved down your throat, unable to talk or even move? His howling was gut-wrenching but, having found the leastpainful position possible, I fell asleep quickly.

Her words were gentle and slow, but Miguel flinched with each syllable. 56 artandwriting.org

LILY ZHOU, Grade 10, Age 15, Aragon High School, San Mateo, CA. Tiffany Wang, Educator; Region-at-Large, Affiliate; Gold Medal, Best-in-Grade Award

Beijing, Beijing Short Story

1. From my grandparents’ apartment, the city is a distant hum. Like a TV muffled in woolen blankets. Makes it easier to sleep at night, when the white noise of the cicadas bleeds into the plaster walls. The first day, I slept until noon—jet lag and all. My sister sat by and read a novel while she waited for me to wake up Later, I asked what the book was about, and she said forbidden love. Typical. My sister has only two criteria for a good novel: romance and a happy ending. You’d be surprised at how few satisfy both. So, on the first day, I slept while my sister read about forbidden love. When I wake up, she is at the dinner table, a mug of milk at her side. Our grandparents are still asleep. Siesta. It is a Chinese thing, or at least an Asian thing. They sleep quietly for old people. Don’t snore or anything, almost as if they were dead. “Milk’s on the counter,” my sister says without looking up. Her hands settle on the table awkwardly; she doesn’t know what to do with them with her book gone. I rip open the packet. “It’s powder.” The substance is like chalk, staining my fingertips white. “Mix it with water and heat it in the microwave for one minute. Like hot chocolate.” She begins to drum her fingers on the tabletop. Nervous habit brought on by years of piano lessons. “Funny way of keeping milk.” “Uh-huh.” “Imagine the kids here thinking their whole life that milk comes from a powder. Isn’t that crazy?” She shrugs. “It’s China.” “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” I microwave a mug of milk and take the seat next to her, swirling the powder-water mixture with a stray chopstick. The powder has vanished, dissolved like sugar in coffee. No longer chalky. I take an experimental sip. “How is it?” my sister asks, watching. “Not bad. Almost tastes like real milk, you know?” A peal of surprised laughter escapes her. She quiets down before she wakes our grandparents. Wiping her

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

mouth with the back of her hand, she says, “Idiot. It is real milk.” I grin against the mug. And that’s how they find us later: side by side at the dinner table, twin mugs with milk swirling at the bottom. Me with a half-empty mug at my lips. Her with her naked piano hands sprawled on the table surface. Almost like New York City. Almost like home. 2. The restaurant radiates superiority. Superior air-conditioning. Superior marble tables with sleek black chairs. Superior tall glasses of frothy watermelon juice, water droplets leaving slippage on the rim. I sip from it. Yes, even the watermelon juice here is superior. My cousin has reserved an entire room. The table is packed with distant cousins and aunts and uncles, sipping tea and making small talk. No one really knows anyone else—earlier, they went around introducing themselves. They tried to talk to my sister and me too, but drifted away when it became clear that we couldn’t exactly speak their language. It’s expected. In a room full of strangers, we are still the outsiders. My cousin, I’ve heard tons about. Peking University graduate. Wife of a respected salesman. Has a steady job at a marketing company. A picture-perfect life. The subject of envy, no doubt. She’s all right, though. Not nearly as pretentious or obnoxious as my mother made her out to be. When my sister and I arrived, the first thing she did was grasp our hands and beam, saying, “You must be Xiaobai and Xiaoyu. I’ve been wanting to meet you two for so long.” She introduced herself as Qiu, but encouraged us to call her Autumn. My sister and I take seats next to each other. Drink a few cups of tea and wait for the food to arrive. I’m the quiet one for most of lunch. Beside me, Qiu converses in stilted, broken English with my sister. A bit painful, but sweet all in all. It’s nice that she’s making an effort to get to know us, that she’s reaching out, even after all these years. As we leave, Qiu slips eight hundred yuan into my coat pocket. When I reach for the money, she pulls my hand away. “A gift,” she says firmly, as if that explains everything. As if we weren’t just strangers who happen to share a bit of common blood. As if we were family. She smiles and disappears into the crowd.

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Aidan Forster, Grade 10, Age 15, Fine Arts Center, Greenville, SC. Sarah Blackman, Educator; Region-at-Large,

National Awards

Affiliate; Gold Medal and Best-in-Grade Award

Exemplary students receive Gold, Silver, and American Visions and Voices Medals in

When Told Not to Chronicle Eroticism —After Mary Szybist

28 categories of art and writing. Students receive a Silver Medal with Distinction Portfolio Award for an art or writing portfolio presenting exceptional work at the Silver Medal level. These students receive a $1,000 scholarship.

Poetry

Art Categories: Architecture, Ceramics & Glass, Comic Art, Design, Digital Art, Drawing

If I were a classical nude, the distance between my nipples would be

Gilgamesh taught bodies to fear themselves. His own body: a ziggurat, a spirit trap.

the same as from my nipples to my belly button, the same distance

From animal spirits the gods made a man, Enkidu. Enkidu drank the milk-rivers

from there to the split head of the pelvis. The body: quiet bone construct can be charted in the faults of its architecture. * When the eggs of a Japanese carp are endangered, the male will suck them into his mouth and hold them. His mouth, master imitator of womb, makes teeth from them. He spits them out like they are dead, finds a new mate. To begin in the middle he spits them out like they are dead. * Once, my mother and father slicked their bodies together, tried to see

of the beasts, ate the greenness of the earth. A temple prostitute offered her body to him in supplication. He entered her, did not exit for seven days. Afterwards, he was so split

& Illustration, Fashion, Film & Animation, Future New, Jewelry, Mixed Media, Painting, Photography, Printmaking, Sculpture, Video Games, Art Portfolio Writing Categories: Critical Essay, Dramatic Script, Flash Fiction, Humor, Journalism, Novel Writing, Personal Essay & Memoir, Poetry, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Short Story, Writing Portfolio For a full listing of National Medalists, see pages 135–141 or visit artandwriting.org. 2016 Silver Medal with

Wyatt Galinski

Ye Lynn Oh

Distinction Portfolio

Elk River, MN

Lawrenceville, GA

Tamra Gould

Andrew Padilla

Edmond, OK

West Palm Beach, FL

Cameron Kelley

Cearah Peck

Kenosha, WI

Cambridge, MA

Alex Kon

Zachary Rapaport

Hudson, OH

West Palm Beach, FL

Jennifer Lee

Shaun Rogers

New York, NY

Toronto, Canada

Maya Lew

Zack Rusnak

New Haven, CT

Santa Rosa Beach, FL

Alexa Marcasciano

Colin Stanley

Wellesley, MA

Rochester Hills, MI

Taylor Mauldin

Caroline Tsai

New Orleans, LA

Fort Wayne, IN

Ruby Miller

Rona Wang

Baltimore, MD

Portland, OR

Abbie Minard

Kayli Wren

Pittsburgh, PA

Charlottesville, VA

from beasts that he could do nothing but become a ziggurat too.

Award Recipents

*

Needham, MA

I cannot chart the moment when I left boyhood. My bones

Ali Bartlett

Juan Cardona Miami, FL Neville Caulfield

had not finished growing, only stuck their pale heads into the light of my flesh and opened their mouths.

Durham, NH Haley Cheek Wellesley, MA Catherine Chen West Palm Beach, FL John Davis

how far inside of each other they could get. Maybe my father put

DeWitt, NY

his fingers inside my mother’s mouth. They attempted to create one body

Emily Elam

from two. My father: root/glacier/bone. My mother: earth/ocean/socket.

Matthew Fuchs

*

Dayton, OH

Washington, D.C.

Many writing selections have been excerpted. Go to artandwriting.org/galleries to read the works as

Savannah Furniss Fort Wayne, IN

Westford, MA

they were submitted.

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Jessica Zhang

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

Sponsored Awards

59

Aishazhan Abuova, Visions (facing page), Photography.

Alicia Amberson, Underwater, Painting. Grade 12, Age 18,

Grade 9, Age 14, Professional Children’s School, New York, NY.

Saint Mary’s Hall, San Antonio, TX. Logan Blanco, Educator;

Caroline Holder, Educator; NYC Scholastic Art & Writing Awards,

SAY Sí, Affiliate; Gold Medal

Affiliate; Gold Medal

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artandwriting.org

Josie Burton, Falling (above), Digital Art. Grade 12, Age 17,

Suzanne Brown, And Life Goes On (facing page), Painting.

Bishop Luers High School, Fort Wayne, IN. Kristen Billingsley,

Grade 10, Age 15, Pine View School, Osprey, FL. Retsy Lauer,

Educator; Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Affiliate; Gold Medal

Educator; Pine View School, Affiliate; American Visions Medal

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artandwriting.org

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

National Awards

63

Marion Avila, The Man in the Mirror (above), Drawing &

Brian Britt, Night Spins (facing page, top), Photography.

Illustration. Grade 12, Age 17, Fayetteville-Manlius High School,

Grade 11, Age 17, West High School, Anchorage, AK.

Manlius, NY. Kathryn Gabriel, Educator; Central New York Art

Mark Stewart, Educator; Young Emerging Artists, Inc., Affiliate;

Council, Inc., Affiliate; Gold Medal

Silver Medal Caroline Chidester, Tracks (facing page, bottom), Photography, Grade 11, Age 17, Upper Arlington High School, Upper Arlington, OH. Scott Wittenburg, Educator; Columbus College of Art & Design, Affiliate; American Visions Medal

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artandwriting.org

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

National Awards

65

Olivia Cambern, Ana Sofia Carvalho, and Gabrielle

Ali Bartlett, Luminescence (facing page), Painting. Grade 12,

Marie Darr, Sam’s Parade for Imaginary Friends (above),

Age 17, Needham High School, Needham, MA. Linda Burke,

Film & Animation. Grade 12, Age 17, Lambert High School,

Educator; School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Affiliate;

Suwanee, GA. David Smith, Educator; Savannah College of Art

Silver Medal with Distinction

and Design, Affiliate; Silver Medal

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artandwriting.org

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

National Awards

67

David Cardoza, Inside America’s Factory Farms (above),

Neville Caulfield, When the Stars Fall Like Rain (below),

Printmaking, Grade 11, Age 17, Denver School of the Arts, Denver,

Photography. Grade 12, Age 17, Oyster River High School, Durham,

CO. Deb Rosenbaum, Educator; Colorado Art Education

NH. Tracy Bilynsky, Educator; The New Hampshire Art Educators’

Association, Affiliate; Gold Medal

Association, Affiliate; Silver Medal with Distinction

Alexandra Calvey, Laundry Day (left), Jewelry, Grade 12, Age 17, Abington Heights High School, Clarks Summit, PA. Abigail Fenton, Educator; Marywood University, Affiliate; Gold Medal Hannah Chen, Woman (left, bottom), Painting, Grade 9 , Age 14, Hume Fogg High Academic Magnet, Nashville, TN. Shayna Snider, Educator; Cheekwood, Affiliate; Gold Medal

Andrea Conley, Fish Out of Water (above), Drawing & Illustration, Grade 7, Age 12, Pin Oak Middle School, Bellaire, TX. Lindsey Slavin, Educator; Harris County Department of Education, Affiliate; Gold Medal

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artandwriting.org

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

National Awards

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Catherine Chen, Jackie’s Journey (above), Art Portfolio.

Sophie Choi, Treasured Memories (facing page, top), Painting,

Grade 12, Age 17, Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts,

Grade 8, Age 13, Duluth Middle School, Duluth, GA. Yoonhee Chung,

West Palm Beach, FL. Melissa Glosmanova, Lacey Van Reeth, and

Educator; Savannah College of Art and Design, Affiliate; Gold Medal

Scott Armetta, Educators; Educational Gallery Group (Eg2), Affiliate; Silver Medal with Distinction

Makenzi Carlgren, Rosie and Ruth (facing page, bottom), Painting. Grade 12, Age 18, Salina High Central, Salina, KS. Larry Cullins, Educator; The Wichita Center for the Arts, Affiliate; Gold Medal

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Emily Betts, Bathing Beauties (facing page, top), Photography.

Matthew Cranford, Ghoul in the Crowd (above),

Grade 12, Age 18, Holy Innocents Episcopal School, Atlanta, GA.

Mixed Media, Grade 12, Age 17, Atlantic Coast High School,

Alice Thompson, Educator; Savannah College of Art and Design,

Jacksonville, FL. Thom Buttner, Educator; Duval Art Teachers

Affiliate; Gold Medal

Association, Affiliate; Gold Medal

Samantha Dewey, Figure From Memory (facing page, bottom), Sculpture, Grade 12, Age 17, The Baldwin School, Bryn Mawr, PA. Janice Wilke, Educator; Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership, Affiliate; American Visions Medal

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Sydney Evans, I Hate Thanksgiving (top), Drawing & Illustration, Grade 11, Age 16, South County High, Lorton, VA. Justyne Fischer, Educator; Fairfax County Public Schools, Affiliate; Gold Medal Laura Geven, Voluptuous Vase (bottom), Ceramics & Glass. Grade 12, Age 17, Syracuse High School, Syracuse, KS. Jiyong Park, Educator; Western Kansas Scholastic Art Awards, Affiliate; Gold Medal

Devon Felt, The Bathroom, Drawing & Illustration, Grade 11, Age 16, Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts, West Palm Beach, FL. Scott Armetta, Educator; Educational Gallery Group (Eg2), Affiliate; Gold Medal

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Emily Elam, Eyeglass, Printmaking, Grade 12, Age 18,

Tamra Gould, PANDA (facing page), Photography. Grade 12,

Stivers School for the Arts, Dayton, OH. Julie Anderson and

Age 18, Edmond North High School, Edmond, OK. Stacy Johnson,

Lizabeth Whipps, Educators; K12 Gallery & TEJAS, Affiliate;

Educator; Tulsa Community College, Affiliate; Silver Medal

Silver Medal with Distinction

with Distinction

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Jared Freeman, A Living Definition (top left), Mixed Media, Grade 10, Age 15, Detroit Country Day School: Upper School, Beverly Hills, MI. Susan Lucas, Educator; College for Creative Studies, Affiliate; Gold Medal Diego Herrera, the niqab hides nothing // glasses change the world (bottom left), Painting. Grade 12, Age 17, Bosque School, Albuquerque, NM. Sasha Custer, Educator; NMAEA, Affiliate; Gold Medal Juan Cardona, Fence Variation: Monolithic Fence (top right) and Fence Variation: Sitting (bottom right), Sculpture. Grade 12, Age 18, Design & Architecture Senior High School, Miami, FL. Ellen Abramson and Tracy Regan, Educators; Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Affiliate; Silver Medal with Distinction Eva Harn, Staircases, Printmaking. Grade 11, Age 16, Lakeridge High School, Lake Oswego, OR. Shannon McBride, Educator; The Oregon Art Education Association, Affiliate; Gold Medal

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Sophie Levy, The Court (facing page, top), Painting, Grade 10, Age 15, Harvard-Westlake School, North Hollywood, CA. Claire Cochran, Educator; Region-at-Large, Affiliate; Gold Medal Braden Hollis, Adolescence (facing page, bottom), Painting, Grade 12, Age 17, Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, Los Angeles, CA. Malaika Latty, Educator; Region-at-Large, Affiliate; Gold Medal Joo Sang Lee, Blossoming Face Expressions, Printmaking. Grade 12, Age 18, WOW Art studio, Old Tappan, NJ. Taehyun Kang, Educator; Montclair Art Museum, Affiliate; Gold Medal

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Caitlin Haislip, The Beauty in the Reflection, Drawing &

Natalie Mallinoff, Shelter for Snakes, Painting,

Illustration. Grade 10, Age 16, Copley High School, Copley, OH.

Grade 11, Age 16, George Washington Carver Center for Arts

Antoine Pastor, Educator; Kent State University at Stark, Affiliate;

and Technology, Towson, MD. Theresa Shovlin, Educator;

Gold Medal

Region-at-Large, Affiliate; Gold Medal Hyo Jae Lee, Patty Rice Field, Mixed Media, Grade 12, Age 17, Monte Vista Christian School, Watsonville, CA. Gee Won Youn, Educator; Region-at-Large, Affiliate; Gold Medal Mallory Lundquist, Skinny Dipping, Drawing & Illustration, Grade 12, Age 17, Gibbs High School, St. Petersburg, FL. Marty Loftus, Educator; Pinellas County Schools, Affiliate; Gold Medal

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Ruby Miller, ByProduct (above), Digital Art. Grade 12, Age

Margaret May, New Shoes, Old Dog (facing page, top), Paint-

17, The Park School of Baltimore, Baltimore, MD. Carolyn Sutton,

ing, Grade 12, Age 17, North Pole High School, North Pole, AK.

Educator; Region-at-Large, Affiliate; Silver Medal with Distinction

Laurel Herbeck, Educator; Young Emerging Artists, Inc., Affiliate; Gold Medal Bryan Marchena, What Am I Doing (facing page, bottom), Photography. Grade 12, Age 17, Hume Fogg High Academic Magnet, Nashville, TN. Shayna Snider, Educator; Cheekwood, Affiliate; Gold Medal

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Laiza Martinez, The Flip (top), Photography. Grade 10, Age 15, Junior High School 52 Inwood, New York, NY. Tiffany Hagler-Geard, Educator; NYC Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, Affiliate; Silver Medal Grace Meinzer, Soldier Boy (facing page), Painting , Grade 8, Age 13, Girls’ School of Austin, Austin, TX. Nancy Hoover, Educator; St. Stephen’s Episcopal School, Affiliate; Gold Medal Rena Petrucelli, Self Portrait Drawing (bottom), Drawing & Illustration, Grade 9, Age 15, Archbishop Hoban High School, Akron, OH. Micah Kraus, Educator; Kent State University at Stark, Affiliate; Gold Medal

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Ameya Okamoto, Black Lives, Digital Art. Grade 10, Age 15,

Jessica Martinez, A Quarter for Three, Painting. Grade 12,

Catlin Gabel School, Portland, OR. Chris Mateer, Educator;

Age 18, New World School of the Arts, Miami, FL. Aramis O’Reilly,

The Oregon Art Education Association, Affiliate; Gold Medal

Educator; Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Affiliate; Gold Medal

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Calla Schubert, Winter Home, Drawing & Illustration. Grade 10, Age 15, Oakwood School, Morgan Hill, CA. Jude Saleet, Educator; Region-at-Large, Affiliate; Gold Medal Hennessy Sebastian, Vertebrae, Ceramics & Glass. Grade 12, Age 17, Thomas R. Proctor High School, Utica , NY. Albert Shaw, Educator; Central New York Art Council, Inc., Affiliate; Gold Medal

Ava Xu, Boxer, Painting. Grade 11, Age 16, Cold Spring Harbor High School, Huntington, New York. Wook Choi and Sophie Page, Educators; NYC Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, Affiliate;

Ye Lynn Oh, See-Through, Painting. Grade 12, Age 17, Gwinnett School of Math, Science and Technology, Lawrenceville, GA.

Gold Medal

Kwan Young Lee, Educator; Savannah College of Art and Design , Affiliate; Silver Medal with Distinction

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Mia Stanton, Lungs, Printmaking. Grade 9, Age 15, Pittsburgh

Charlie Steier, Brother’s Portrait, Drawing & Illustration.

CAPA 6–12, A Creative and Performing Arts Magnet, Pittsburgh,

Grade 9, Age 15, Creighton Preparatory School, Omaha, NE.

PA. Heather White, Educator; Pittsburgh Arts Region, Affiliate;

Sarah Godfrey, Educator; Omaha Public Schools Art Department,

Gold Medal

Affiliate; Gold Medal Joseph Mead, Banana Boy: The Rise of Doctor Popsicle, Video Games. Grade 12, Age 17, St. Joseph High School, St. Joseph, MI. Matthew Culver, Educator; The South Bend Museum of Art, Affiliate; Silver Medal

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Tavii Toronitz, China Sea (top), Ceramics & Glass. Grade 12,

Breanna Sullivan, Urban Fungi (bottom), Drawing &

Age 17, Stelly’s Secondary School, Central Saanich, Canada.

Illustration. Grade 10, Age 15, Grand Forks Central High School,

Stephen Strutynski, Educator; Region-at-Large, Affiliate;

Grand Forks, ND. Nancy Greenwood, Educator; Plains Art Museum,

Gold Medal

Affiliate; American Visions Medal

Brooklynn Thompson, Osiris Against Helios, Painting. Grade 12, Age 17, Bethel Tate High School, Bethel, OH. Tiffanee Witt, Educator; Art Academy of Cincinnati, Affiliate; Gold Medal

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Rosalea Williams, Ironing, Painting. Grade 11, Age 17,

Emma E. Wellington, When Paths Cross, Photography.

Pittsburgh CAPA 6-12 A Creative and Performing Arts Magnet,

Grade 11, Age 16, New Hampton School, New Hampton, NH.

Pittsburgh, PA. Alberto Almarza, Educator; Pittsburgh Arts Region,

Richard Dulac, Educator; The New Hampshire Art Educators’

Affiliate; Gold Medal

Association, Affiliate; Gold Medal

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Womanhood, Cornrows

The Albatross

Poetry

Poetry

Aleah Adams, Grade 12, Age 17, School of the Arts, Rochester,

Rebecca Alifimoff, Grade 12, Age 17, Canterbury High School,

NY. Ashley Perez, Educator; Region-at-Large, Affiliate; Gold Medal

Fort Wayne, IN. Alice Hancock, Educator; Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Affiliate; Gold Medal

Womanhood The string in between Hangs limp from my open legs. All of the world tugs.

Hannah Westbrook, Tub, Photography. Grade 12, Age 18, Carlisle Area School District, Carlisle, PA. Jessie Fry, Educator; Commonwealth Connections Academy, Affiliate; Gold Medal

Cornrows Our slick braids join our scalps, Lining our heads like streets do a city. They pull at our edges, Stringing out our roots. They tug at our Ebonics, Releasing our “y’alls” and “ain’ts” Displaying our West Indian Haitian African tongues. They yank at our jazz, at our hip-hop. The syncopation seeping from seams our braids once tried to sew up. Iggy Miley Robin Marshall Kylie, The fair-skinned hands puppeting our industry, ripping our rhymes to shreds. You want our sound? You want our slang? You want our stiff-napped locks? Then step your two pale legs into our past, rooted on 3/5ths and segregation, past built upon whips, Shackled history that’s been nothing but inferior to the lighter. You want our fuller lips? You want our soul? You want our thicker curves? Before trying to be a face for our music, A face for our art, Grease the tips of your fingers, Oil your kinky scalps And patch up your own cornrows.

Knee high, I wanted to be a pirate. I wanted adventure, a tune rusted with years always on my sea-breath lips. A helm filling my hands with splinters. Gold weighing the hull, Midas’s palace looted. The edge of the bay curved away like a question mark, beckoning to the rocks. Small worlds live there, only alive at the mercy of the tides. How to live with such long hiatuses between affection? I begged an answer, fingers and knees slipping on the salt rocks. The sea anemones waved. The fish chased their tails in circles. There is something of the ocean in my hands: They crave a wreckage. I took to the water waiting for its wrath. Hoping it would pull me down. Atmosphere upon atmosphere weighing my chest. But the sea knows its own blood. One storm cannot kiss another. Only swallow it whole.

Many writing selections have been excerpted. Go to artandwriting.org/galleries to read the works as they were submitted.

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Keeping Pace Personal Essay & Memoir

Alexandra Augur, Grade 8, Age 13, Frank H. Harrison Middle School, Yarmouth, ME. Ira Warshaw, Educator; Southern Maine Writing Project, Affiliate; Gold Medal

I bend down, and gripping the laces of my shoes tightly with my cold hands, tie them into a tight knot. When I look up, I see my dad staring at the trail map. His brown hair is barely visible through the glare of the afternoon sun, but I know it’s him because of the way he stands. He turns around and grins at me. “Ready?” he asks. “Yeah,” I reply. I feel a rush of warmth shoot through my frigid legs as we begin to run. I quickly find a pace that is fast but not too fast. My lungs breathe in the stiff, dry air. We turn a corner into a long field of grass that leads to an opening in the woods. There is a slight downhill, and I let myself relax, my legs shoot out from under me and wind whisks by my ears. “This,” I think to myself, “is what it must feel like to fly.” I hear footsteps to my right and look around to see my dad. He is moving very fast, almost sprinting down the hill, so that I have to run faster to keep up with him. He looks at me and smiles. “Not bad for an old man, huh?” I have been running with my dad ever since I was a little girl. I still have faint memories of going to the track on long summer days. I would run with him for as long as I could keep up and then wait at the starting line and hand him the water bottle every time he came around. Whether he needed a drink of water or not, he would always take the water bottle. As I’ve gotten older, we’ve gradually become the same speed, allowing us to go on long runs together. I know that there is more importance and meaning to these runs than actually running, but still I have a worried feeling that I will embarrass myself by being too tired to keep up. We enter the woods and the temperature drops because of the absent sun. The cold air tickles my nose, making my eyes water. An eerie silence fills the atmo-

sphere, as if we’ve been cut off from the rest of the world. Not even 10 minutes into the run, we come to a big hill. I feel a burn in my legs as we go up. It starts as a little prick, then grows until my whole quad aches and begs for me to stop. “Pump your arms straight forward, Alex. You’re wasting your energy,” says my dad. I look down at my arms and see them swinging lazily side to side. I focus on moving them straight back and forth as I run up the hill. This motion drives me forward, and I can feel myself running faster. “Great job,” he says, and I can’t help but feel proud. We continue running as the minutes tick by. Side-byside, so that not one of us is in front or the other behind. We pace off each other and encourage each other as we begin to tire. My legs have turned to lead and ache with every stride. My lungs strain for more oxygen, and mucus fills my nose and my throat, giving my mouth a sour taste. I feel utterly exhausted and on the verge of giving up, but the connection I feel between us keeps me going. The gravel path gradually becomes matted grass, and before long we are out of the woods. As the overhung branches give way, a beautiful sky comes into view. Orange, pink, and purple are swirled around the edges like watercolors, and a full moon sits in the center glowing a pale yellow. Towering power lines stand above us, silhouetted against sky. I look up to see a flock of geese migrating south, their calls the only sounds this peaceful evening. Ahead of us lies a long belt of low-cut shrubs and grass, the final stretch. “Dad,” I say, gasping for breath. “Thank you for running with me.” “Alex, it has been my pleasure,” he says. “When I’m eighty years old, and you have to push me around in a wheelchair, I’ll look back on this with a smile on my face.” For a brief moment, he puts his hand on my shoulder, a quick gesture but to me it means the world. I feel a rush of happiness flow through me. It overcomes the exhaustion, the pain, and the weakness I was feeling moments before. I am hit with a new strength that fills every bone and muscle in my body. I always loved my dad, but that evening, beneath the watercolor sky, by the light of the pale yellow moon, on our run together, I realized just how much he meant to me.

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2045 Science Fiction & Fantasy

Psalm Babiera, Grade 7, Age 12, Jardine Middle School, Topeka, KS. Sara Schafer, Educator; Midwest Writing Region-atLarge, Belin-Blank Center, Affiliate; Gold Medal

K8 groaned. “Why do we have to learn about this? Boy bands don’t even exist anymore!” Her teacher rolled his eyes. “The reason we learn about our popular cultural history is because we do not want it to repeat itself. We are starting with boy bands this semester because of the famous—” He pointed at the holoscreen in the front of the room. “One Direction Massacre of 2018.” The class gave a collective groan. “That, and The Discovery of ’31,” her teacher continued. K8LuvsU04 glanced at her friend across the room, BlanketOfD@rkne$$. They both rolled their eyes at each other. “Which was when the government found that boy bands used a special sound wave programming that sent their listeners into trances, and if listened to on a regular basis, strange screaming fits. Such programming even caused these so called ‘fans’—which were really slaves to surprisingly advanced sound wave technology at the time—to commit suicide, such as when member Zayn Malik left the boy band One Direction in 2015.” He showed another collection of 2-D pictures, this time of a group of boys in skinny jeans in weird poses. “LOOK AT THEIR HAIR!” someone yelled. “THEY’RE NOT EVEN CUTE!” the girl behind K8 screamed. The class burst into a fit of giggles and snickers. “WHAT’RE THOOOOSE!?!” someone yelled. The teacher rolled his eyes. “Settle down now,” the teacher yelled over the cacophony and laughter. “Now, back to boy bands,” he cleared his throat. “Of course there was still much havoc to follow. More music was made, and more boy bands followed, such as Titanic Unjustified, Project Predator, and Glowing Effect of the Canadian Scream, also known as GETCS. Thankfully none of these bands have been at their high point at the same time as another—which would have caused extreme fandom wars, I assume you learned about that last year in your Basic Fandom elective in 6th grade—although there was a close call in 2020, coincidentally the same year President West was elected. Although I’m sure you’ve learned about our Presidential Dark Ages in your

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

American History class with Mrs. Miner. Now, if you’ll please . . .” K8 stared absentmindedly out the window. Some of the kids from the elementary sector were running around outside. There were a few flying cars (most commonly called hovercars, they’re only about thirty to forty feet off the ground) and ground cars coming in and out of the parking lot. She saw a few of the students from the high school sector setting up some holosigns there flashing things like No Control Then, No Control Now and If We’re Grounded, Then So Are You and such. Of course, she thought. There had been a surprising rise in aerial-aerial and aerial-ground car crashes lately. Probably because of the lack of traffic drones in some areas. The teacher tapped a few things into the fingerpad by his desk, and the window went black. He gave K8 a pointed look. “Thank you for joining us, K8. Now class, I’m sure you remembered our small lesson on the Great Restart last quarter?” There was a small silence. Mr. Montagu-Douglas-Scott (snicker) sighed heavily. “Let me refresh your memories. The Great Restart started October 29th, 2015, and ended May 12th, 2016. It was a restart of all data on the Internet, on every website ever created. Everything was deleted because the Internet couldn’t take anymore. There was too much data, and, the United Nations agreed, too much abuse. So the world—except for the governments and select news networks—had to live their lives without Internet for a few months. It was scheduled to be stopped in November of 2016, but there was too much damage. Teens committing suicide with music-less and communication-less lives, YouTubers went broke and some even became homeless, and services such as PayPal and Amazon were temporarily shut down. The reason I’m bringing this up is because I’m giving you all a chance to earn extra credit with writing an essay about this. But before that, you all need to present your Build-a-YouTuber Project. Who wants to go first?” “Hey, are you guys going to the Halloween Dance?” NuGrl03 ran to catch up with BlanketOfD@rkne$$ and K8 after class. “Probably. It’s the most fun,” K8 said. “What are you planning to be?” Nu giggled. “I’m gonna be a 2015 basic white girl. I found a fake selfie stick at the Cultural History Museum in Lawritchitence last summer, and my brother’s boyfriend made a Starbucks coffee cup hologram that we can 3-D print then paint. My dad’s gonna sew some joggers for me too!” Blanket snorted.

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. . . she typed into her holopad as some of her favorite postpunkgrindrockemetalcore music blasted into her ears.

que sera in minor key Poetry

Zara Batalvi, Grade 11, Age 16, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, Alexandria, VA. Denise Castaldo, Educator; Writopia Lab D.C., Affiliate; Gold Medal

little girls run away from home, trying to find themselves in the bumps of nicked collarbones like chipped wine glasses. looking for love in the acid breath of strangers who want to feel their cracked, bleeding lips

“Joggers. So 2015. So mainstream.” “My costume is a surprise,” K8 said. “What about you Blanket?” “I’m being me,” Blanket said. She sighed. “I left my water simulator in my locker, and I feel like dropping dead any moment. Wanna come with me?” “Sure. Plus I heard we might get real water at the end of the month since our G.O.A.T. test scores were the highest in the tri-state area. No more atom or cell or whatever deception today!” Nu babbled as they took the walkway to F Hall. K8 giggled. “Did you see those 2-D pictures of escalators in Science yesterday? They’re like angled walkways. It’s so stupid!” Nu laughed. “Yeah, almost as stupid as stairs. Why climb when you can take a walkway or an elevator?” Blanket’s fingerpad scanned her thumb, and the locker opened. “I gotta go, I want to be early to Debate. I’m discussing whether the Great Restart was an actual Internet problem or that’s what the government wants us to think. I mean really, how would the Internet be too full? It’s totally aliens!” K8 said, and took the emergency-non-lateness walkway lane. “Alright. Let’s go.” Blanket and Nu made their way to Basic Robotics. “Ah, joggers. 2015. 2016. The mid-to-late2000s in general. The good old days . . .” Blanket said, a smile on her face. “The best time to be a teenager . . .” “What do you mean?” Nu said incredulously. “There were so many horrible things that happened those years. The corona satellite interferences of 2018, the fall of Facebook and Twitter the spring and summer of 2017, the extreme water shortage of ’19, the One Direction Massacre, the Great Restart, Donald whatever being elected,

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marking the beginning of the Presidential Dark Ages!” “Well, yes,” Blanket admitted. “But the music! The best music of the century was from the mid-to-late-2000s.” “And what’s wrong with music now?” “I don’t know, it just isn’t the same. It’s not as good as Green Day and Ethnic-Aquatic Respiratory Crisis and Panic! At the Disco and Stillborn Llama and Children of the Deathwish and Paramore and Band Name Here and—” “Okay! I get it! Abnormie. You actually like that stuff?” “Yes!” she said defensively. K8 was in the courtyard. She was working on an essay about life before flying cars. Well, she thought, would there have been fewer accidents? Or perhaps even more because there were lots of ground cars? There was a lot of pollution, that’s for sure. Unlike flying cars, which are maglev, although there was a short time when they were fan-powered . . . That didn’t go well. She sighed heavily and popped an earbud into one ear and connected the jack into her holopad. She smiled when she remembered her grandmother talking about when earbuds had wires and when Apple was the dominant smartphone company and Google the dominant search engine. She had scoffed and said, “Really? Everyone hates Apple. Microsoft and Bing are so much better. But . . . Google did invent the flying car,” she admitted. Life Before Flying Cars, she typed into her holopad as some of her favorite postpunkgrindrockemetalcore music blasted into her ears. She heard shouting from somewhere behind her. Annoyed, she put in both earbuds and turned up her music. She thought she heard a scream. She turned around, and found a hovercar hurling toward her. Everything went black.

—shifting like tectonics, running down bruised chins they kiss harder parting the red sea. ignore concentric headlights in the side mirror whispering que sera through phantom cigarettes a metronome of coughs

bury open hands d e e p in the ground. filling wounds to make them worth something using uncertainty as currency. after years of wandering the sea, salmon return to their birthplace follow the visceral instinct for a niche. in the same way, young girls look to their wrists the blue-tinted veins, saltwater streams under their skin. and hide cries for home tremolando in the crawl space lontano behind their knees. perdendosi.

letting loose constellations that had settled in sweltering lungs. prehistoric stardust an asthmatic supernova. their mothers watch them fade from milk cartons. remember babies who fumbled in wrinkling ribcages the universe’s tempo once in their heartbeat con animo, con amore, fortissimo. sleeping with mobiles circling their heads peach fuzz lining their spines. tiny palms clenched tightly, already protecting themselves from hand-me-down blisters. now children kiss their knuckles

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

Many writing selections have been excerpted. Go to artandwriting.org/galleries to read the works as they were submitted.

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But I Don’t Know America Short Story

Bryn Battani, Grade 9, Age 15, The Khabele School, Austin, TX. Lorena German, Educator; Region-at-Large, Affiliate; Gold Medal

The whole room turns to look at me in one swift motion. I feel forty eyes glued to my skin. “My name is Halima, my age is twelve, my from is Afghanistan.” I hear a few snickers from the corner of the room and I realize I have made another mistake. The teacher smiles from behind her glass eyes, and I sit down. I pull on my braided hair and try to fix my skirt. I watch everyone in the room, I take everything in, but it is so difficult when my mind is only a small enclosed place and this school is a universe of its own. I am taking the test to see what rooms I should go to. Right now, the people don’t know if I should go to the big rooms with lots of eyes or the smaller ones, like the ones with other students who can speak Farsi with me. I am looking at the paper. I am seeing the words. They don’t have a meaning. I am pulling at my hair again, and I am rubbing my skin because I know about all the thoughts in my head but I don’t have any of the words with meaning. “Halima.” I look, and behind me, I see the teacher with her kind smile behind her glass eyes. She is holding out a big, fat book with a shiny blue cover and words in red. Bilingual Dictionary. I flip open the pages and suddenly the world springs back to life as my eyes see the words, the ones that go with things, the ones that mean something. Suddenly I’m grinning and hugging the book to my chest. The sign in here says cafeteria, but really, I can’t see a thing, only hear the clatter of the people talking all around and the laughter while two brothers are arguing over

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their lunch boxes, prepared by their mothers at home. I don’t know if I want to choke or laugh. I have known hunger in the days where my father had no work, and I have seen the people who knew the hunger for much longer, but I keep walking toward the line, taking a tray. The girls behind me are shrieking, the boys are laughing, and the people behind the counter keep yelling—why? All I want to do is close my ears to all the sounds, but the people with the nets on their heads are the people who give out the meals. “Soup or salad, hon?” Her voice is sharp and demanding. I nod toward the bowl, and I hand my card out as confidently as I can so they can see that my lunch is free and they don’t have to yell for the money from me. I hope they see the red sticker, the one that means no pork, please. She thrusts my tray toward me, with a steaming bowl and a sandwich on pale bread. I take off one slice and see the meat. “Ma’am, pork?” I point to my card. “Not pork, salami,” she says. I am bewildered, but I take the tray and begin to walk toward the tables. “Hey!” I turn around. “Wait, I’m so sorry, are you Muslim?” I see a pretty girl standing there, pointing at my sandwich. She has blonde hair and bright-green eyes with tiny freckles right underneath. Her clothes are clean and fit her nicely, and she wears pretty earrings like a movie star. I have never seen this girl before. I don’t know who she is. “Are you Muslim?” I blink and then I freeze up in front of this girl, because I don’t like talking about this. My parents told me not to like talking about this. “That’s a salami sandwich, and that’s pork.” I am silent. “They told you it wasn’t pork, but salami’s made out of pork, usually.” She looks down at my tray. She makes a concerned face that’s mostly real but a little bit rehearsed, a little nervous, almost looking for my approval, but I feel that her eyes are still kind. I still don’t know who I can trust in this place, but she seems like she does, so I say, thank you so much, I’ll go back—

. . . it was 2014, and it was January, and it was Kabul . . . That’s what I want to say. All I say is, “oh.” “You might want to ask them for another one, without the pork.” I try to look gracious. I smile, she leaves. I return to the counter and the food and the trays, with my own, to hand it back. “Uh-uh, no hon, you got your hands on that tray and that’s the only one you get for today.” I don’t know what to do and I really, really don’t know what to say— “But I . . .” I search through my head and the time passes and then I notice the teacher I like, my favorite, is here, the one from the classes with the rest of the kids who can speak Farsi with me. I turn around, and she tells me to wait while she talks to the people behind the counter while she frowns behind her glass eyes. She walks away with the woman. I keep waiting, and because I’m looking for what to do, I start to smile at the people passing by. Some ignore me. Some return my smile, tentatively, unsure of the girl standing before them so empty-headed but with so much on her mind. Later, my teacher returns with another sandwich on the same pale bread. She shows me—no pork, just green leaves and cheese and steaming soup in a bowl. “Thank you,” I say. She looks happy, but I can feel the frustration in her, and I feel a little guilty that I can’t thank her with any more English words. My story is not long, but it is not short either; it is like so many others. I went to school some years, but some years got cut short. Even then, it was only a few hours every day. Today, these days feel like forever. But back then, it was 2014, and it was January, and it was Kabul,

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

and we were Hazaras, and it wasn’t safe. My brothers played every day, but people were fighting with guns. The Taliban was everywhere like dark clouds. My little brother liked to sleep in his closet, where he said nobody could find him. I told him that was silly, but all of us were scared. Now I’m here, and the teacher wants to know about my journey. Why did you leave? Who went with you? How did you get here? The thing the teacher doesn’t know is that my journey is only beginning. The teacher wants me to write, what do I like about America? America? I just know school, Walmart and Publix. But I don’t know America. I think maybe sometimes I am making friends. My best friends are the ones who can speak Farsi with me. We’re all a little nervous. I’m a little shy anyway. The other girls in that class are closer with each other than with me, but I am getting to know them. I like to take my time. I have been to another one of my friend’s apartments and invited her to mine, and we have worked on schoolwork together. Some of the other girls are kind, too. “Hey Halima!” And, in the hallways, I still say hello to the pretty blonde girl from the cafeteria. This empty-headed girl with so much on her mind has such joy in her heart. I told my teacher once that I just know school, Walmart and Publix. But now I think that maybe on some days I start to know America.

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Who? Personal Essay & Memoir

Daniel Blokh, Grade 9, Age 14, Alabama School of Fine Arts, Birmingham, AL. Iris Rinke-Hammer, Educator; Region-at-Large, Affiliate; Gold Medal

“When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.”—Ralph Ellison The bottle tumbles, turns, ricochets across the room. “Billy and . . . ” Cheering erupts from the crowd, all of us laughing and doing drum-rolls on the wooden floor. The bottle rolls once more, twice more, slows, and stops. “ . . . Jane!” An eruption of clapping fills the room, and I pray my parents don’t hear us from upstairs. Both of the chosen players stand up, faces red, eyes glued to the floor. They walk to the center of the room. Everyone watches intently, snickering occasionally. After a few awkward seconds, they look up at each other, and Billy quickly pulls in for the kiss. What seems to be a peck, though, develops into something longer and more intimate. They hold it there for a few seconds, then a few seconds more, before finally separating, their eyes still locked. “Alright, alright, get on with it,” someone says. The two pull away, blushing even harder, and quickly hurry back to their cliques. Jake puts his hand on the bottle. Once it’s quiet, Jake spins the bottle again. It rotates a few times quickly, slows down, and then points to . . . Me. Oooing erupts from the crowd. I try to shift in my seat to make it seem like it fell on the freshman girl next to me instead, but it doesn’t work. Alright, I think to myself, there’s nothing I can do. Maybe if I hope hard enough, it’ll fall on someone who’d chicken out on the whole thing. “I hope it rolls on me again,” I say. Such a phenomenon resulted in the person having to kiss a mirror while everyone sings Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.” Somewhere inside me, though, I’m really hoping I get to kiss someone—even if it’s not a person I’d enjoy kissing. “Quiet down, everyone,” Jake says, launching the bottle into motion again. It’s weaker this time, rolling just a couple of times before falling on Jake himself. He shrugs and sighs slightly, getting up from his seat. I rise as well, meeting him in the center of the room. I can almost feel the pressure of the eyes around us, pushing us toward one another. But I try not to look around, focusing instead on how to approach this. I’ve “kissed” before, but never like this,

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never in the way people have done in the rounds before. How does one even do this? God, what if my parents walk in? No, don’t worry about that. Don’t back off, or they’ll laugh. I can see him brace himself, lips unfolding reluctantly as I move toward him, our mouths reflections of each other. I lean in. He closes his eyes. I gulp. One day, when my parents are running late picking me up from school, I decide to try out our school’s “gender and sexuality forum.” It’s been a sort of myth for me, hanging around the edges of conversations between people I didn’t know, showing up in the morning announcements every few weeks. I never considered going until today. What better time is there? My parents are somewhere in the heap of traffic, and I’ve got plenty of time. So, I decide to walk to the student lounge, where the forum is taking place. I look through the window before I enter. There are a few familiar faces, people I’ve chatted with briefly in the past, but many of them seem entirely unfamiliar. Shrugging, I enter the room. Immediately, everyone smiles. “Welcome!” someone says behind me, and I turn to see a tall blonde girl grinning broadly at me. “Take a seat.” I look around. A kid with orange hair, who I somewhat recognize from my homeroom, waves me over next to him. I plop down. “Hooray!” the girl who greeted me says. “Someone new finally came!” She turns to me. “Want to introduce yourself?” “Uh . . . sure,” I say, feeling somewhat excited to speak. “I’m Daniel. Ninth grade.” “Pronouns?” the girl says. “Huh?” I ask. “Do you prefer he, him, his, or she, her, hers, or—” “The first one,” I say. I feel as though I’ve messed up, and my cheeks flush a little. “Okay, thanks,” she says, smiling. “It’s alright if you’re not sure. In fact, pronouns are our topic of the day.” Throughout the rest of the meeting, we discuss many things; self-definition, respect, identity. I dive into the topics with the eagerness of someone who has just discovered a new world. I have the strange notion that if I pursue them enough, I may find some of the answers that I’ve been looking for, subconsciously. The other people notice my excitement, and it seems to pump them up as well. I leave the meeting bent on coming to the next one. I feel engaged, excited, lost in thought. And most of all, my head is brimming with one thing: questions.

Anthem for the Single Teenager Personal Essay & Memoir

Allison Boyce, Grade 12, Age 18, Desert Mountain High School, Scottsdale, AZ. Kevin Sheh, Educator; Young Authors of Arizona, Affiliate; Gold Medal

“Last night I dreamt/ That somebody loved me/ No hope, no harm/ Just another false alarm.”—The Smiths Wear the jeans with the rip near the crotch—it’s not like anyone’s going to be staring down there anyway. Accompany your friend and her boyfriend to the movies. Lean in to tell a joke, but stop because he has an Arm Over Her Shoulder and you can clearly sense that Now Is Not a Good Time. Roll your eyes at the couple embracing as if one of them is leaving for war in front of your Spanish class. Celebrate Valentine’s Day by watching shows about catching Big Foot with your neighbor—don’t worry about dressing up or getting rid of your pasta breath after dinner to make out with a guy in his car. Groan in exasperation during the all-girls’ sleepover for your chemistry partner’s birthday party when someone suggests playing Fuck, Marry, Kill. When they ask you who you like, tell them yourself. Ask them, can’t we talk about anything else for God’s sake? The math test in third period? The oil crisis in Nepal? Do we really have to watch The Notebook again? Is there any chance we could watch Inception instead? No? Cool. Tell your mother that no one asked you to homecoming because none of the boys at school can keep up with your smart mouth and you didn’t really want to go anyway.

See her frown as she wonders if you’re turning into the black sheep of the family who will never get married or have children and will live alone, roaming the forest with a wolf pack. When you listen to all the songs about heartbeats going wild, wonder if what they say could ever be true. Wonder if there really is someone out there who will help you carry your load of sadness and joy so that you can help carry theirs. Wonder if someday your tiny blip of an existence will mean the world to someone else. Wonder if you can be like Atlas for them (if you are strong enough to carry their world for them when they need you to). Wait for your time. Wait for your turn to have the exciting story to tell at the lunch table about the boy you met at band camp over summer. Wait for the texting all night and the cheesy prom picture and the sweet delirium. Wait for what they say is coming soon, what should have happened already, what is supposed to find you when you least expect it. Wait, pretend you’re not waiting, feel the envy blow up inside you every time someone else finds it. Attach your successes and dreams to the arrival of this future Boy, wherever he is, who will finally make your life the teenage dream that everyone insists it needs to be (because otherwise, you’re not really living it right). Get tired of that feeling following you around wherever you go (the feeling that your life is on pause, that these days you’re living while you’re single are irrelevant and somehow don’t count). Get tired of waiting. Start wondering why you’re waiting when you could be doing something else, something productive that will make you feel like you are a whole person (you are not incomplete, like a jigsaw puzzle; you are not searching for a missing half). And then (when you realize what I have been waiting for you to see): toss your hair back and put on your ripped jeans. Feel this: unstoppable.

Wear the jeans with the rip near the crotch—it’s not like anyone’s going to be staring down there anyway. 2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

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My grandmother will call it the miracle that knifed her in the heart. A swollen dream. The Mothers Personal Essay & Memoir

Katherine Du, Grade 11, Age 15, Greenwich Academy, Greenwich, CT. Jeff Schwartz, Educator; Writopia Lab Westchester & Fairfield, Affiliate; Gold Medal

My grandmother is eight years old when she sees her birthmother’s ovaries bleed into a wooden bucket. She hears moaning. Melting. Something godless as the blood pours like congealed tea from a flask. Forty hours later, the light unfastens tenderly from her birthmother’s eyes. … Months after her birth, my grandmother is sold to a family with food and a stillborn daughter. They live on the other side of the mountains, away from Chongqing, away from the war. The family with food is a textile tycoon. It yawns, rich from the blood of others. Before her eyes know to lower her voice to cool, my grandmother asks where the lily-like puffs are born. Her milk mother holds her like a glass doll. Cotton is a dream, my angel. Never question the mother of dreams. … It is December 13, 1937, a day as timeworn as bloodless winter light. My grandmother is beginning to forget the shape of her birthmother’s voice when they descend: the Japanese, their gun-licked fingers, their salt-smoked lips. Three hundred thousand Chinese will sprinkle these streets. Unborn children glued to the tips of bayonets. Bodies in the dust. Most are women with bellies sliced open like flayed salmon, purple-bruised legs splayed out in invitation. … My grandmother’s milk mother leaves her textile factory hours before the Rape of Nanjing, only to die weeks later of the influenza. My grandmother will call it the miracle that knifed her in the heart. A swollen dream.

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… At seven years old, my grandmother leaves the empty house of textiles. With a cotton bag of prayers and morsels, she walks three hundred li through the remains of the Sichuan countryside. One hundred miles through a world of feral fear. All around her are volcanoes of upturned dirt, frosted shells of peasants, broken faith. After two suns and moons pass, a mountain ridge creeps toward her with no beginning or end. She sees a dip down the middle, a gorgeous wound. Her bamboo sandals carve rivers of blood on the soles of her feet as she runs. Ascends. Presses on. Dusk swallows the luster of the day. She persists. Her eyes shutter, but she forces them open. Pretends they are orbs of fire. Soon the sun drips scarlet blood on the canvas of the sky. … A year after my grandmother returns to her homeland, her birthmother bleeds endlessly. My grandmother learns to pack, then unpack a box of ice around her heart. Eventually her eldest sister embraces Chairman Mao, and the five blood siblings are fed well and taught the ways of the world. They spring fire from wet matches. Attend Chongqing University. The Japanese professors inflame my grandmother at first, but on a fateful day of downpour, she slips in a pool of mud. A tender hand stretches before her eyes. She holds it. She will never let go of the Japanese professor who shows her that a nation does not define its people, that forgiveness is the only weapon that can end war. … In 1967, my grandmother flees a Chongqing ruptured by opposition factions within Chairman Mao’s paramilitary. My grandmother wraps her daughter in her arms. Scales the mountain behind the university. She is breathless. Boneless. Pockets of earth erupt inches away. In her mind, she is again on the mountain of her youth. That gorgeous wound. She is drinking the story of her blood, cresting the mountain to the place where the sun will rise.

Hoping for Disaster Critical Essay

Amy Dong, Grade 12, Age 17, St. John’s School, Houston, TX. Linda Carswell, Educator; Harris County Department of Education, Affiliate; Gold Medal

Our pop culture professor proposes the following scenario: A television ad shows a young family driving up a mountain to their winter vacation home. The father sits comfortably at the wheel, and the mother is turned around in her seat, talking with the two children. What happens at the end of the commercial? If you predicted something “bad” would happen, you would be wrong. Our professor goes on to tell us that the ad ends in a family reunion at their vacation home. But why do we expect the worse in the first place? According to our teacher, it is because we are “programmed in our narratives to expect disasters.” News that pertains to us is, more often than not, buried under a mountain of sensationalism. News outlets would rather drown us with disaster stories than let us swim through a sea of mundane events. The pervasiveness of television has certainly contributed to our fascination with disasters. For decades, television has served as one of our main sources for “breaking news.” What makes this form of media so appealing, however, is not its objective presentation of facts but rather its sensationalized projection of reality. Television news has the power to convey—and sometimes even create—a sense of national significance. Large events, such as September 11, Hurricane Katrina, and

the Boston Marathon bombings, always receive aroundthe-clock television coverage from cable news networks. These broadcast outlets entice us to participate in the chaos without forcing us to face the repercussions. We cling to catastrophe from the safety of our own homes. The recent rise of social media only reinforces our culture of sensationalism. With the ability to present an unlimited amount of unfiltered information to such a large audience, social media now has the “power to define disaster.” In this context, then, media sites such as blogs, photo and video sharing platforms, and social networks do not merely convey information about disasters. Instead, to compete for our attention, they blow disasters into hyperbolic proportions, hoping that their exaggerated coverage of any isolated event will shock us into sharing their photos, tweeting their messages, and commenting on and liking their posts. But with so many digital outlets constantly bombarding us with information, we can’t help but feel drawn to sensationalized media. We know we don’t need it, but we want it anyway to break up the incessant stream of white noise. Indeed, what we replay and share over and over again are not the stories related to our daily lives; they are the Vine videos that captured 6 seconds of the Boston Marathon bombings, the Facebook pictures that showed New Orleans in ruins after Hurricane Katrina, the dozens of news articles that detailed the graphic Ferguson shootings. By capturing our attention with exaggeration, sensationalized news essentially renders objective journalism obsolete. A simple presentation of facts may still be informative, but it will no longer interest us as we increasingly turn toward news presented in an emotionally charged, overembellished way. The ominous statement that the media now “defines disaster” seems all too justified. And that may be a disaster in itself.

News outlets would rather drown us with disaster stories than let us swim through a sea of mundane events. 2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

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Wilt Poetry

Maya Eashwaran, Grade 11, Age 16, Milton High School, Alpharetta, GA . Marea Haslett, Educator, Savannah College of Art and Design, Affiliate; Gold Medal, American Voices Medal, and Best-in-Grade Award

In the Yamuna, a farmer cleaves through grass like hair, a discourse in beetles. His wife gave birth to a baby girl in the spring amid the grease and begonia sweat of a house with no windows and no water heater, gave her the land in her palms. He worries about his daughter, he worries about his wife and her ocean of a stomach drying with each month. He knows he will cry on the harvest moon when there is no rice for his unborn son. The drought has taken its lap of his land, marinates its tongue in dust, feasts on dirt with peanuts. A salty kiss. His wife looks too small in her childbearing hips, feels her son fluttering inside her like a bird but feels empty nested already, their son dehydrated from searching for sustenance in a dried waterhole of a stomach. His wife bleeds life everywhere but his pink bird-heart, calls her son blessed. Summer estranged itself with saltines and bug swatters and baby shoes, left remains in gutters and fish with flat lungs. Sunflowers stop sacrificing their petals upward, sun under their scalps, everywhere all at once, a phantom. Daughters stop burning newspapers and start burning stillborn rice instead. Pelicans are reported to have shed the sky like grouse, burnt black for reaching upward for some cosmic relief, abalone are hollowed and eaten like coconut, the children believe this is a way of mourning for the farmer’s stillborn son. Soon, they will let the sun burn his body and throw flowers on his blue face as funeral rites for a son and prayers for a father sinking his hands in earth for a breath into his son’s lung-less lips.

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me and Uncle Ben go bar-hopping in Brooklyn Poetry

David Ehmcke, Grade 12, Age 17, East High School, Sioux City, IA. Wendy Bryce, Educator; Belin-Blank Center, Affiliate;

like you know black and the price it goes for. You don’t know what it is. To die slow on the shelves of your enemy. To fill they children’s bellies. To have them profit off your pain. You don’t know what I do. You don’t know me.

Gold Medal

So, me and Uncle Ben are in this bar, right? And he’s got that look in his eye like we gon’ drink ourselves up a new backstory I say— Oh no. Not this again. I’ve know that Uncle B. You the dirtiest of rice! You cotton-picker gone corporate! You Aunt-Jemima’s-homeboy-on-the-low You recipe for self-sale! Yo Uncle Ben, You think you be able to drink ’till your skin goes blind?

Understanding my mistake, I put down my glass The whiskey turns a deeper shade of brown I attempt to vocalize an apology, but no sound comes out Rice begins to fill my mouth My hands start turning to cardboard I call out— Uncle Ben, what does this mean? A small grin appears on his ever-exploited face Sympathetically, he says— When them folk have gone and come for your bones, and they attempt to write your legacy, the only part of you that they will remember is me.

You can’t drink the caricature off your face! You can’t drink their hands off your throat! You think we ever be more than a noose!? You think we ever be more than the dirt!? Them folk ain’t neva’ gon’ forget who you really are. He furrows his brow with a muted anger I can see the cardboard box in his eyes Nervously, I allow the whiskey in my cup to enter my apologetic mouth. With a newfound calmness, Uncle B. spits— Stop. Let that whiskey sit and stay a while. Allow it to burn the blood out the back of your throat. Watch it build a home in your mouth. Call it Harlem. It will be the hardest thing for you to swallow. You see, you can’t keep speakin’

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

Many writing selections have been excerpted. Go to artandwriting.org/galleries to read the works as they were submitted.

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A Story About Ice Cream Stands After They Close Short Story

Emma Eisler, Grade 11, Age 16, School of the Arts, San Francisco, CA. Heather Woodward, Educator; Region-at-Large, Affiliate; Gold Medal

I’ll be honest; I never actually went to Foster’s Old-Fashioned Freeze while it was open. It felt like I had, though. Some places are like that, so steeped in nostalgia you can taste the soft-serve without ever actually ordering a cone. The Menlo Park location was the final stronghold of the formerly prosperous seventy-year-old chain. The stand was blue with a striped awning and a neon-lit sign that might have been iconic if more people cared about the Foster’s Freezes of the world. A thing that nobody knows about me is this: I cried when I found out Foster’s Freeze was closing. I am as guilty as everyone who waited in line on that last day. Because I did not go to Foster’s Freeze when I could, and nor did they. And now we’ve all gone home to cry about it. I don’t know why I’m thinking about this. It’s been a month since it happened. It shouldn’t matter by now. We are lying in a field at a high school I don’t attend. We’re lying there, and my skirt is somewhere in the grass behind me. It’s been dark out for hours now, and I’m starting to think it might stay that way forever. I can feel the prickliness of blades of grass on my back. The boy I’m with is moving his hand up my thigh. The moment is speeding toward me like Caltrain as it hurtles past the Menlo Park stop, so quickly that there’s no point in trying to jump out of the way. The sky is so huge it’s killing me to look up. I wonder if a lot of people feel the same way—like the earth is so vast it hurts. There are probably whole masses of people who have cried about the sky, the rain, the clouds. But who is going to cry about ice cream stands after they close? His mouth is on my neck, and I could stop this in a second with no more than a word. But I am too caught up in thinking about where that sign went, what happens to signs after the stores close. No, that isn’t really what I’m thinking about. I’m thinking about, and really wondering, who is going to cry for me, because it seems an awful burden to do that all on my own.

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“That feel good?” he asks, and his words are all lumped together so it takes a second to figure out what he’s saying. No it doesn’t, I could say. I am sad, and I want to go home. “Yeah.” My fingers wind through his hair. “Sure it does.” The thing is, I really thought I’d go to Foster’s Freeze one day. It seemed only natural. I’d be walking through the Menlo Park heat and, all of a sudden, I’d start craving soft-serve. I’d walk up to the stand and buy a cone, and it would drip in my hands, sweet and sticky, and then I’d go home and not ever think about it again. He moves his hand from my thigh and rests one arm on each side of my head. He leans in and kisses me and I think, okay, I know how to kiss; this shouldn’t be too hard. Something I should point out is that the boy I’m with is not my boyfriend, not exactly anyway. I don’t even know why I’m here, actually. Just that I felt really stuck in my head, and I thought a 1:00 a.m. rendezvous in a field might help. Only now all I can think about is Foster’s Freeze, and how I should’ve gone there when I was four or nine or fifteen. Another thing I should mention about the boy I’m with is that he is the kind of boy who talks a lot about “fucking.” Whenever he says it, I wonder how he decided that “fucking” is the right word. I think he likes it because it sounds harsh, the kind of word that carves a space around a person. Maybe that’s because I’ve never done it though, fucked. Maybe you can only learn the right terminology after it’s over. The bigger question is what right I have to talk so much about things I’ve never tried. It’s all speculation, after all. Everything I think I know is really only an idea I’ve guessed. He sits up and reaches for the waistband of my underwear. “Is this okay?” I really thought I was the kind of person who would go to Foster’s Freeze. I’ve thought a lot of things about myself, actually, but with every ice cream store that closes, it seems one of these beliefs boards up its doors too. “Yeah. Do it,” my voice says. He slides off my underwear and throws it over his shoulder onto the grass. Probably I’m supposed to think this is smooth or hot, but all I can focus on is how it’s going to take forever to get dressed after this. I’ll have to look for every item of clothing. By the time I’ve found it all, he could already have gone home, in which case I will sit back down to watch the sun rise over a world with plenty of fucking but no Foster’s Freeze.

I can tell it will be morning soon, though I can’t describe what about the sky tells me this. I hear the unwrapping of a condom somewhere far from me. When Foster’s Freeze first opened, were the teenagers like they are now? There’s a sharp edge to being young, I’ve learned, but it never seems that way in movies about the 1950s. Foster’s Freeze seemed as simple as the ice cream it served. Then again, that could be nostalgia at work. It is entirely possible that all these stories I tell myself about where and when I live are really stories about every other place and every other time too. I guess that wouldn’t be the worst thing. Maybe that means, when I cry for myself, I am also crying for every other teenager who has ever lived to see an ice cream stand close. And maybe when those teenagers cry, their tears are as much for me as they are for them. He groans, and I feel as grossed out by the sound as I was the first time I saw porn. What I’m doing, this act, is too personal to even talk about. I don’t get how boys can laugh or call it “fucking” like it doesn’t matter at all. I don’t understand why I can’t be like that too. When I feel really low, I imagine I am Atlas holding the whole sky. I can almost feel my arms buckling beneath the weight, and I am crushed by the awareness that nothing I do can ever make the atmosphere any lighter. I am just one person, and there aren’t really any strangers out there in the world crying for me. My eyes are squeezed shut, and I have listened to a whole chorus of other girls saying the first time isn’t all that great, but it still comes as a surprise when it happens to me. I bite down on my lip and try to float as far away from my body as I can go, as far away as I can ever be from the fact that I am a girl, and certain things are always going to be harder for girls. It ends pretty quickly, as I was also led to expect. He doesn’t kiss me, which is fine. I didn’t expect him to. “We should hang out again soon,” he says. “Right. Let’s do that.”

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

He stands and holds out a hand to help me up too. I shake my head. “I’m gonna sit here a little longer. You can go.” He nods and takes a few steps but then turns back. “That wasn’t, like, your first time . . . right?” I force a laugh from deep in my throat. “What? No, of course not. I’ll see you at school.” He tosses my underwear to me before leaving. Nice, I think, now I have fewer pieces of clothing to find. I pull myself, slowly, to my feet. The grass has left little imprints all over my legs and arms. I yawn, and it is strange to find myself yawning, a tiny ordinary motion in the midst of an event so immense. I pull my shirt over my head, snap the buttons on my skirt. The moonlight is wavering above me, and I can tell it will be morning soon, though I can’t describe what about the sky tells me this. There is a light breeze brushing through the field, and it wraps around me and touches me everywhere at once. As I wander my way out of the high school I don’t attend, I am aware of a pain sitting in my stomach. It is a pain that is hard and jagged and the exact opposite of that tiny touch of wind. I should point out that I am someone who feels pain a lot. Usually, though, the pain is in my head. I can spend whole weeks walking around with a headache that isn’t a headache in the traditional sense, but is definitely an ache and definitely lives in my head. So I am used to hurting, and I am used to dealing with it. But this pain is different. This is pain residing where it matters most. This is not a pain I was born with, but one I caused all by myself. I am watching Foster’s Freeze close in my head. And now I am going to cry. I am going to walk on the Menlo Park cement and cry, not for Foster’s Freeze or the sky, but for myself.

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Leaving Personal Essay & Memoir

Tessa Garwood, Grade 12, Age 17, Homestead High School, Fort Wayne, IN. Jamie Smith, Educator; Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Affiliate; Gold Medal

I never had time to be afraid of the monsters hiding in my closet because I lived with one instead; he came home from the bar at ungodly hours of the night in a drunken stupor, hurling senseless accusations until all was silent except for the barely audible sobs of my mother trying to piece herself together before the first light of dawn filtered through the windows and vaporized the demons of my father’s addiction. I spent many nights wishing I could disappear just as easily. Everything changed the night my mother, bathed in the soft glow emanating from the hallway light, urgently shook me awake. The house was a vacuum filled with the sound of her throwing open closet doors, zipping suitcases, fumbling for car keys, and preparing to leave behind the parts of us stained by the side effects of alcoholism. Flickering above the garage door, a security light illuminated the tears silently streaming down my mother’s stoic face as my four-year-old brother clung to her hand and we fled into the night like shadows. In daily life, the act of leaving is as commonplace as the fatigued students who toss backpacks into their cars after the final bell or the weary office workers who shut off the lights after the paperwork is filed and the last phone call is answered. As we hurtle toward an unknown future, we leave behind obsolete versions of ourselves with each passing hour—ghosts that can never be recovered, only remembered. One morning we wake up to find that we have outgrown our hometowns overnight—the communities we once held dear begin to feel more constricting than inti-

mate, and the niches once filled so naturally begin to feel alien. In many ways, the act of leaving provides a muchneeded breath of fresh air, allowing the opportunity to be freed from the entangling web of drama, tension, and complacency that forms after we spend too many years driving down the same streets, living next to familiar people, and looking out over an unchanging horizon. The act of leaving is not simply the final slam of a door, the last word of an argument, or the filling of a suitcase. It is the story of a girl who holds everyone she has ever wanted to love at arm’s length because she fears pain, scarring, and destruction. She falls for the boy who coaxes her deepest secrets from her mouth with honeysuckle promises and candy-coated lies, and when the falsified facade falls apart, she runs, because leaving is all she has ever known. She finds comfort in hotel rooms overflowing with vacancy; being full is too permanent, too vulnerable, and she has learned to fall in love with the emptiness instead of the person who caused it. There is nothing to be romanticized about the act of leaving. The void left inside of me after my parent’s divorce was an abyss that should have been filled with afternoons spent on swing sets, kicking my feet at the sky as I begged for my father to push me higher, and weekends spent plunging my feet into the streambed behind my house as minnows slipped between my bare ankles. I was haunted by the ghost of a father who was not an alcoholic, a father who chose to spend the night reading fairy tales to his children instead of looking for significance at the bottom of the bottle, a father remembered for his sober wisdom instead of his drunken rage—the father I deserved but was not given. I have not yet figured out what makes people decide when it is time to leave. Perhaps it happens on a whim, as two people close their eyes, point to a random town on the well-worn atlas stowed in the backseat of their car, and replace the crumbling foundations of their life with opportunity and anonymity.

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Bullet Stains Poetry

Hannah Godsill, Grade 7, Age 12, University School of the Lowcountry, Mount Pleasant, SC. Sara Peck, Educator; Region-atLarge, Affiliate; Gold Medal

You can’t grow up spending summers away from civilization for three weeks without learning something about home, Red, Black, Yellow, White, The yellow folders in my dad’s office, the pure white of my great-grandma’s hair. You gain a way of understanding how quickly your city can change Southbound from the mountains to the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Expecting to return to your mundane, uneventful hometown. Just playing the alphabet game with your best friend in the backseat of her dad’s colossal, rusty truck when he asks you if you heard what happened. The bodies, the gunshots, the bullet stains. A place you visited on a school trip Just three years ago. The stinging air of winter. Your white and khaki school attire. You think about how you shook the hand of the minister who was shot. His voice, deep as the rumbling truck your friend’s dad is steering. You’d been in the room before there were nine dead on the floor. You’re told of the massacre; Charleston’s international headlines, presidential limos, planes, men with suits and black glasses, backed-up streets. You wonder about the families of the victims. That church room the only image floating through your head as you close your eyes that night. Wondering about how agonizing the screams of terror must have been. The last breaths so erratic and sudden.

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It’s then when you faintly grasp the gunfire, how ghastly how abhorrent. You see the graveyard, flowers covering meadows. Confederate flags descending, nine lives ascending like angels. A city staying strong. You sometimes picture the AME church and see its allure— the arched doorways, the pearl-white paint, the cross at the main entrance. You’re home now with a new respect for your small town. Just looking at articles on your phone before nightfall. Looking at the harbor, sun gone and clamorous lights. The fireworks, on America’s birthday, They sound like gunshots. The noise rings through your ears, passing that AME church nearly every Saturday morning.  

Many writing selections have been excerpted. Go to artandwriting.org/galleries to read the works as they were submitted.

National Awards

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honorsband Flash Fiction

Angelo Hernandez-Sias, Grade 12, Age 17, Muskegon High School, Muskegon, MI. Kirk Carlson, Educator; Kendall College of

accept. Both of you sit. The five of them stand, leave, and sit again—this time, at the table next to yours—and continue their laughing and talking. On the wall at the far side of the room hangs a giant German flag. You and Quique stare.

Art & Design of Ferris State University, Affiliate; Gold Medal

Quique’s mom, white and fat, smokes with the windows up—her cigarette in her right hand, the cheetah-print steering wheel slip in her left. Mom, when will you quit sucking cancer sticks, Quique asks. When you start minding your own fucking business and quit worrying about grown folks, she says, pressing a little harder on the gas. You rest your head on the window—it jolts. I hate it when you say that, he says. Emi, she says, her blue eyes cooling yours through the rearview, tell your friend to watch his mouth before I turn this car around and take both of your asses home. I don’t want to get involved, you say, smiling (why do you smile). You know Quique hates it when you smile. You wince when he sees you. Beyond the wide cafeteria window is an infinite stretch of pine trees. You and Quique are the golden arches, about a mile away, that protrude from them. Everyone is white; you are cold. You left your sweater in Quique’s room. He, too, is shivering am i the cold’s cause or the cause’s cold or the cause’s cold’s cold will i ever be warm i will never be warm enough. There are silver tables, thirty of them, with black edges. You and Quique land at a table full of boys with white necks. Quique offers his hand. It is not burnt; they do not

The clouds have left, but the sky is black. You and Quique, alone, your backs on white wall cement. His right hand taps his torn trumpet case; his left hand’s fingertips linger into the gaps of the gray-brown vent on which you sit. A white man approaches you, asks, Where are your parents. They’re almost here, Quique tells him. The man leaves. This is right. There is something Quique must tell you . . . Hey, he starts. His voice, familiar. You’ve tasted Quique’s hey a thousand times before. What, you ask. A sigh. Never mind, he says. You’ve tasted Quique’s never mind even more. OK, you say. I want to tell you something, he says. Tell me. I can’t, he says, his head bent, his fingers straining the sweat from his palm like water from soaked ashes. Why not, you ask. It’s hard to say. I was . . . it was in first grade. Someone . . . touched you, you ask. He nods his head. You are silent. I’m so . . . His mother is here. He grabs his trumpet and you follow him out of the front door. In the car, his mother asks him, How was rehearsal. He says nothing. She repeats herself, terse this time. It was good, you tell her.

You know Quique hates it when you smile. You wince when he sees you. 116 artandwriting.org

Conversation About Gender-Neutral Bathrooms Surges Through Staples Journalism

Becky Hoving, Grade 11, Age 16, Staples High School, Westport, CT. Cody Thomas, Educator; Writopia Lab Westchester & Fairfield, Affiliate; Gold Medal

With twenty minutes left until the bell rings, Liam* raises his hand and politely asks his teacher if he may use the restroom. He exits his classroom and positions himself in front of the female and male restrooms, where he is confronted with a decision that most students do not have to face every day. For transgender and non-binary students like Liam, deciding which bathroom to use is a decision that is not so easy to make. “There was a time in the beginning of my transition when using the girls’ restroom would feel really dysphoric, but I also felt it wasn’t socially acceptable to use the boys’ one either,” Liam said. “It can definitely be ambiguous for non-binary or transgender people when it comes to choosing restrooms.” Someone who is non-binary does not identify themselves clearly with the gender they were assigned at birth. Given the challenges connected with gender identity, bathroom assignments for non-binary people can be tricky. However, Sue Lavasseur, supervisor of health services for Westport Public Schools, says the school leaves the decision up to the student. “The issue of where to go to the bathroom is certainly something that we are all trying to work around. However, students who are transgender all have access to the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity,” she said. “If they feel they want a private bathroom, we give that student access to a private bathroom. Some students prefer to use the bathroom in the nurse’s office; it really just depends on the student.” Still, Staples has yet to provide gender-neutral bathrooms, a trend in recent years on college campuses. Lavasseur says it is something the school is “considering.” Andy*, another transgender student at Staples, supports the idea of gender-neutral bathrooms. “They’re a space where every person, regardless of gender, can feel comfortable,” he said. “When I’m in public, I’ll try my best to find a gender-neutral bathroom—it

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

helps me not feel out of place.” Liam says the school is doing its best to accommodate non-binary students, but that the current system still has flaws. “Staples already offers unisex bathroom and locker options to transgender students, which is pretty great,” he said. “However, single-person unisex facilities can still have disadvantages. It could be difficult for questioning or closeted trans students to access them, for instance.” On the other hand, Megan Brown ’17 notes that multiperson gender-neutral bathrooms would introduce an entirely different set of complications. “Yes, gender-neutral bathrooms would assure that transgenders are much more comfortable. But it would also mean that girls and boys would be using the same bathroom, which is something not everyone would be comfortable with,” Brown said, noting that the idea of using the bathroom with boys her age would be “so unusual” and ultimately “awkward for everyone.” Nicole Kiker ’17 supports the idea of gender-neutral bathrooms, as long as they are in addition to the already existing, separate female and male bathrooms. “Ideally, gender-neutral bathrooms would be able to mitigate gender stigmas, but in a high school environment, that’s just not realistic.” In terms of Staples’ policy on transgender bathroom use, Lavasseur notes that “we’re still evolving,” but also cites respect as the “underlying message.” “It is a new topic, but it’s really not that different. It fits right into that anti-discrimination policy,” she said. “However, we do feel like, for students, there needs to be an individual plan as well. Not all transgender students are going to want to do the same thing.” Andy feels as though this “individual plan” has been working for him, but acknowledged that it might not be the same for all students. Dr. Valerie Bachich, coordinator of psychological services for Westport Public Schools, thinks all students should be respected, and that that responsibility falls on the student body. “I think in terms of how students can help, it’s very important for everyone to accept these students for who they are,” she said. “Ultimately, we want to make sure that Staples is a gender-inclusive environment and that we are doing everything we can to make sure that all students feel safe, comfortable, and welcomed.” *Due to the sensitivity of the article, names have been changed.

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Spanish (what my father taught me about loving) Poetry

Aracely Medina, Grade 12, Age 17, Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, Jacksonville, FL. Tiffany Melanson, Educator; Region-at-Large, Affiliate; Gold Medal

At the table I watched his trimmed black mustache wiggle as he spoke. His ranchera music, filling hallways and cars, I sat bloating with rhythm. My father said chiles grew sweet on the mountains in Mexico, his vowels leafy cilantro, and onion the chunky pudding of avocado, or rather the coconut candy, he bought me striped green, white, and red. Years later my father long moved out Spanish came out to a boy over dinner mi amor, mi corazón, my love, my heart. Warm as a flour tortilla in the palm, snuggled to me like the black sombrero my father placed firmly on my head laughing at how it swallowed me. Parting, I left the boy at the doorstep grasping at my words eating the watercolor sound adiós, mi amor, adiós.  

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Hereditary (A Slam Poem) Poetry

Malachi Jones, Grade 10, Age 15, Charleston County School of the Arts, North Charleston, SC. Danielle DeTiberus, Educator; Region-at-Large, Affiliate; Gold Medal

I was born of a fearless heritage. Jones and Moorer men made themselves in this forced promise land even though their last name wasn’t really their own. Through the god forgotten dirt they grew success. The mouths of their children fed by their land and no one else’s. So I say, Give me land and I will multiply like my deceased great grandfathers. Give me work and I will provide like my deceased great grandfathers. Give me love and I will use it, waste it, seek out for more, produce a bastard kid, and continue life as if nothing happened like all the living male figures in my life. Jerry, my burdened brother, you’re six now, so I think you should know that Grandpa lost vision in his right eye 8 years ago, but fast forward 4 more, add seven months, a 14-hour drive, a migration to the south with no second thought and here you are at 2 years old. Your dad gone, must’ve gotten lost in time. “Cold hearted,” but that’s simply the absence of heat. I’ll tell you where it went: through the ear, into Grandpa’s opaque iris every time we mention that man’s name. Jerry, he has managed to turn a blind eye. But learn to love him anyway and cherish it as a luxury he never had. The gift of loving a father. An irretrievable joy, ribbon-wrapped, six feet underground in a New York cemetery. And love your half-brother and sister because they have different mothers too. I promise you, I really do promise you that once you’ve known him long enough you’ll begin to think that infidelity is an addiction.

Probably stronger than meth, coke, the pills, heroin, love itself, and nicotine. Nicotine. Nicotine took hold of my grandmother long before my father was born. She was the mutual friend that my grandparents shared. Through her, they met and love developed from the smoky remains. But who would’ve thought that tobacco can burn so thick that past lives can seem to burn away with it too. Conversations blossomed into something more, germinated with wedding bands, fertilized with a honeymoon, budding through late night kisses, and from the flower that was Dorothy Jones came a Thorne. That’s what she named him. A rose’s defense because all she could be at the moment was vulnerable Thorne not Hawthorne like his father, who didn’t seem to bother to disclose that his love life stretched much farther than the Bronx borough. His secret life he hid so thorough that it wasn’t until she was in labor that he decided to do her a favor to tell her that Hawthorne Jr. already existed. Like I said, he was just so thorough So my grandmother decided to “thorough” away the h-a-w. ’Cause only a thorn in the side hurts a woman more than knowing her lover, someone she was supposed to die for, was sneaking out of side doors taking late-night drives toward women that my grandmother to this day will still call whores. So it was after they cut the umbilical cord that Nicki became little sister of sorts to my father. A habitual smoker himself And I’m not going to lie, from the outside, he seems to have made wealth, but what am I? I’m not. Simply connected through affiliation. And he didn’t abandon me. He was honorable and told my mom the truth.

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A year after I was born, he told her, “I love someone else, and I can’t be with you.” And my artistic freedom is always the subject of feuds. Writing my life in the lines is not allowed. Not acting black enough is not allowed. Being too white is not allowed. And when we disagree, we disagree loud that’s why I’m never going to read this poem if he ever decides to show his face in one of these crowds. This doesn’t make his mistakes admissible. You would think that calling you kid is a part of the principle. Disconnected because all I get when I call are deadlines. And no, I’m not satisfied that he only provides dollar signs . . . and commas, so allow me to take a breath because my uncles are the only male role models I have left. Turns out I’m wrong because they’ve all done the same. If I’m the spitting image of my father, my cousins are mucus to theirs. Saliva is always exchanged but no one ever cares for mucus. From my throat I feel I have spoken my future. I’ll cheat on my wife and have a second kid. He’ll have exchanged more words with the automated system than he would with me. And I’ll have broken into another woman heart. Another woman’s dream. And once I’ve sowed my royal oats, there’s no knitting back that broken family. In my ancestry, this is a trend that spans end to end of every single generation. ’Cause I’m not fearless, not like the rest of the Jones and Moorer men. I fear of becoming just like those brave souls when I grow old. And if you didn’t hear what I was afraid of I’m afraid I’ll have to tell you again I’m afraid of becoming a man in this heritage of fearless men.

Many writing selections have been excerpted. Go to artandwriting.org/galleries to read the works as they were submitted.

National Awards

119

Death Is Linear, Time Is Negotiable Science Fiction & Fantasy

Cameron Kelley, Grade 12, Age 17, Harborside Academy, Kenosha, WI. LuAnn Underwood, Educator; Southeast Wisconsin Scholastic Writing Region, Affiliate; Gold Medal

When she was pregnant, my mom expected twins. She and my pa picked out the names—Addy and Alexi—bought us matching cribs and clothes, and told anyone who would listen about us. When my sister and I were born, our hearts beat like a sad song’s drum line. We were flimsy paper held together with old glue, our arteries made of rusty copper. Only one of us survived the week at the hospital. My sister died holding my hand. ** When I was too young to measure my life in months, they buried my sister in a pretty wooden box. She was exactly like me, a carbon copy, except for the parts of her that didn’t work. After the funeral, my parents refused to talk about her, even as I held conversations with a girl named Alexi who they could not see. When I graduated high school, I went to the graveyard. My sister’s grave was not new and not old. It was my age. Barely begun and already world heavy. On the stone, the same year etched twice held the grief of young parents. “Liked fire and fast cars and other dangerous things,” said my sister. She was talking about the girl buried next to her. “That’s no fun,” I replied. The game wasn’t played like this. “I don’t like it when they’ve got no After.” “You’re not going to leave me alone now, are you,” she asked me. I could sort of make her out, sitting with her back to the stone that marked her grave, face turned up to catch the sun. “Of course not.”

“I think I’m going to like community college.” “Yeah. I think I will too.” ** When she was pregnant, my mom ate a clock every morning. She craved nothing for breakfast but oatmeal with butter, and my pa would make it for her, stirring it with his thick metal ladle. He would wait until he couldn’t hear the ticking of the hands going round and round, and then he’d serve it up to her in my grandmother’s ceramic bowl. When I was sixteen, empty and suspended in my mourning, free falling in my grief, I destroyed every plate and bowl my mother owned. It was cruel, and I regretted it the minute I looked down at the remains of the pottery at my feet. My mom burst into the kitchen. There was a frantic fear in her eyes. “Look what you’ve done now,” said the ghost of my twin sister. She was hurting as much as I was, but she didn’t have the solid hands with which to hold the cutlery. “Why did you let her leave me,” I demanded of my mother. I meant my grandmother, I meant Alexi. I didn’t know who I meant, just that I was lonely. “I didn’t—” “Why did you never talk about it, why didn’t you say something.” That was cruel too. My mom was just a person. People don’t always know how to let secrets slip. “Oh, baby.” I couldn’t tell why, why she wasn’t angry or upset about the damage I had done, not until I tasted salt and felt hot liquid down my cheeks. She wrapped me in her arms. “Baby, I’m so sorry.” I snuck a look at my sister, and she looked wistful. ** When my mother was pregnant, she had wanted two daughters who were masters of time. My mother never wanted a day to run away from us. Now, I cannot run away from my sister. I have never looked at my own After. I am too worried about what it will look like. Worried that it will read like my sister’s novel, and not my own.

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The Resurrection Poetry

Anna Lance, Grade 12, Age 17, West High School, Anchorage, AK. Temperance Tinker, Educator; Young Emerging Artists, Inc., Affiliate; Gold Medal

I. MARY. Stayed at home. The rooms bundled with mourning, memories shared around bites of barley bread, tossed and chattered conversation. The swing of eyes leaned against her as she moved through with the earthenware milk and spirits. Your brother was a good man they’d say, good before God and before men. She’d nod and smile around the bright pressure like seeds and flour burning in her throat or watered wine on dry ground. Would try not to duck the caresses on her hair, recalling the sweet dark stickiness, how little she minded cleaning out the symbolic gunk of road-dust once she’d knelt and washed His feet. II. MARTHA. Met Him on the road. Heart a skinned rabbit revitalized, bloody and fitful, its feet hammering. His shape a form of color and shadow with the faithfuls at his heels. The first word out of her mouth was Lord but the rest of her sentence said why. His answers: frustratingly analgesic to the heat of desperate grief, allowing her to cool her forehead against the railings of His irreproachable logic. Mouth all acid. Disciples silent. Yes, you are the Messiah son of God the resurrection and the life she said and let Him feel as a convulsion in the Bethany midday burn the resolution, as they stood there, raw and shifting but you let him die. III. JESUS. Felt very tired. Knew what had to be done, and what couldn’t. Followed the sisters with a heavy step to the tomb. Thought about homilies and ineffable purpose and how much it hurts to love a man tenderly and have him leave

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and rend their small world with his leaving. How undoing is not the same as preventing the ever having done. How alive he used to come in daylight, the ruck of the scythe-scar on his smile and his carefully displayed doubts, the talks they’d have about what happens when you die and how to prove the unprovable and how perfect he was in his willingness to learn. Salt of the earth and spark of the sun. Saw the sisters crying, and the stone nudged almost casually to shield the yawning mouth of the full-bellied cave. Covered His face with His hands. Wept. IV. LAZARUS. Woke up. Startled first by the smell of four days’ worth of his own decay. Then the spiced linen on his lips and nose and eyes and the regretful curve of his back as if he’d spent the night in a bad position. Then: the sounds. Mary Martha he wanted to say, speech fighting forward slow as sleepwalking but not even in the stale nothing that had removed him unceremoniously from his love did he dare to think the other name. Realized suddenly that he was no longer sick. Heard the hoarse cry, shuddering low for some reason Lazarus come out! Followed His command. Did not understand. Take off the grave clothes and let go. Felt the shroud fall and his brain fill with fire. Saw light.

Many writing selections have been excerpted. Go to artandwriting.org/galleries to read the works as they were submitted.

National Awards

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The Lost Child Short Story

Emma Lickey, Grade 9, Age 14, Grant High School, Portland, OR. Sharee Chapman, Educator; Region-at-Large, Affiliate; Gold Medal

When I first met Hassan, his body was a mural of blood and salt. Under clouds like pale vipers, he came to us in the back of a truck, his head lolling over the face of the dead girl in his lap. He kissed the bones plating her eyes, filling the wells of her cheeks with tears, stroking the broken nub of her knee, tracing the poisoned veins. Honey leaked from the burns dashing his arms, gleaming like beetle’s skin. Ash knitted into the seams of his clothing. Consciousness left him with one hand tangled in the girl’s hair. Harris, always quicker than me, jumped into action. Cracking clicked from his bad knee as he lifted the girl from the boy’s lap and carried her through the camelhair flaps of the medical tent. I picked up the boy, and it was not my weeks of exertion that made it so effortless. I washed my hands and snapped on gloves, brushing pillars of sand off my clothes onto the thin plastic floor. An older medic told me years ago that you never forget your first child, his lips folding away like the corners of an abused book. Hassan was my first child. I had treated women howling of rape, rough men, rebels who rumbled into camp to get their arms set and spread the good word, spirits still roaring with their linked passion. But Hassan was my first child, and I never forgot his thick hair and pale almond skin, his long fingers that held everything a child shouldn’t know. When I told my parents I was leaving for the Middle East, my father slapped me on the back and my mother burst into tears. “Why?” she snapped. “So you can get shot just like your cousin?” “Don’t listen to her, Ellie,” my father said. “Go save some lives. We didn’t put you through med school for nothing.” “Jesus, Matt, she’s going to Turkey, not Providence. You could get shot for wearing those shorts!” At first, I hated it. Six months couldn’t pass fast enough. I hated the long plane ride, the white sun, the bright colors of cheap plastic that tiled anything worth saving. I hated the long flowing clothes that protected me from the sand. I hated the labyrinth of tents, the ragged allies, the moaning, the poverty. I hated the blustering jets that streaked overhead and the families who’d

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forsaken hope along with their last few dollars. I hated the plains of gravel and the children who caught a breeze under their feet and seemed to fly, finding joy in a joyless place, who thought that the bombers in the sky were nothing more than black birds. Or perhaps they knew better—they were so awfully aware of their surroundings. Their mothers had to look on with horror as their babies witnessed death and their belly buttons hardened and pushed out like worms. I isolated myself in the medical tent, required by the UNHCR to be as clean as possible. Mesh cots lined one long wall, cabinets and desks the other. Boxy machines whirred between patients. On the end, a yellow curtain closed off a private space for Harris and me, divided again by a translucent parchment screen. I found solace in the clean white plastic and aloe-scented hand sanitizer that reminded me of home. I relished the snap of gloves sealing my hands in latex and the feline chk-chk of electrical equipment. Every parallel stitch and waxy bandage reassured me I was doing the right thing and making a difference. Hassan almost didn’t survive, and it was thanks to my distraction. When I pulled off his shirt to find the puncture holes in his bruised abdomen, I found the pictures sown into the hem. Slipping them from their pockets, I unfolded a lovely young girl. A birthmark branded the slender bone cupping her ear and her small, carefully brushed teeth shined. Her eyes were astonishing even on the washed-out paper, phosphorescent green like some kind of undersea being. I knew she had been the girl in the truck bed, no older than six when she died. Others were in the photos, as well. A woman wrapped in a long skirt slit open around the ankle to reveal the gold inner flesh. A tall man, handsome, with a black beard anchored to his cheekbones. An old woman kneeling between Hassan and the little girl—written in Arabic on the back—Hassan, Nana, and Rima. Rima crushing pomegranate between her teeth. Hassan side by side with another boy, beaming under oiled fronds of black hair and navy uniforms, their legs splayed. Nana, spattered in almond oil as she swaddled Rima. As I tore out the pictures, Hassan woke up and began to scratch at the wounds on his back. Elated with fever, his fingers began to probe, digging into the sores puckering his skin. I watched this happen out of the corner of my eye, grazing the benevolent love of his mother as she held Hassan in her arms. Only when blood began to pour did the photos fall from my hands. +++

When I first met Hassan, his body was a mural of blood and salt. Sitting up in a cot, Hassan gave me his name and city, Aleppo. Sand crackled in his hair and checkered his arms. Wind had stressed his skin into a mosaic of flaking sequins like dandelion seeds. “Where is Rima?” he asked, pulling my shoulder. Rima, the little girl in the picture. Rima, with the splintered leg. Rima, lying in a desert grave, ribbons of sand claiming her as its own. Hassan had been asleep for three days. During that time, his wounds had mellowed in their white linen. Sometimes I liked to imagine myself as a healing spirit, cool blue pluming from my fingertips. With Hassan it was different—he sparked a need in me I had never experienced before. Something about his limp chin and wise eyes drew it from me to every point of offense, down to the smallest sliver dicing his thumb. I could think of nothing but making this boy whole again. But, no matter how I reaped my memories of medical school, I couldn’t sew together an answer to his question. “Rima, sister?” I asked, biting my lip in shame at my tuneless Arabic. “I speak English,” said Hassan. “Yes, she is my sister.” “Your sister, then,” I said, smoothing the crumpled linens on his bed. “I’m so sorry.” “She is hurt?” Hassan asked. “She steps on a mine and I pull her away. But her leg is broken.” “No, Hassan. Rima died.” Each word dropping like cold black pebbles. After a moment of silence, when an impatient wind sliced open the tent, Hassan shut his eyes. Tears speared his palms, and he scratched at his scabby burns, ripping them away until they began to spurt blood. I watched in horror as he screamed, crushing his temples between his palms, gummy skin trailing from his nails. Unsure of where to begin calming him, I grasped his hands and felt them wavering to stay upright. I watched the walls rippling around us and felt an ice creaking in my heart that seemed to come from Hassan himself.

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

+++ Harris told me that Aleppo had seen terrible damage, holding up his phone to confirm his words. Snapshot after snapshot of paper and trash sailing through streets in a haunting ballet, bony children and amputated dogs hunting together through bombed apartment buildings, charred elbows, their toes chewed by worms. Run, I thought, thumbing through the pages of snarled lives, just run away. I watched Hassan from the bed of an old woman, who grasped at my hair in her illusion and prayed to Allah for the fried sujuk and tabbouleh of her childhood. Hassan lay on his back, ripping fronds of skin off his fingernails and laying them on his tongue. I held a cup of water to the woman’s chipped lips and moved on to Hassan. Though he didn’t move his eyes from the fabric of the ceiling, an apology kicked its way off his tongue. “I am sorry for my anger,” he said formally. “Mama is not proud of me.” “Where are your mother and father?” I asked, too eager. Hassan’s eyes dropped askew. “She lives now with Rima.” “And your Nana? Where is she?” “Nana is not in my family. She is our woman of cooking and cleaning.” “Not your mother?” “Women are equal to men.” Love fanned in his eyes as he said, “Mama taught at school.” “And your father?” “Papa was doctor, like you.” Hassan glanced up at me, just as the old woman started gasping again. For a moment, I could have sworn he was my youngest brother Parker, smirking with pride as he baptized his latest LEGO tower with a plastic orange flag. I pulled Hassan’s covers over his shoulders and turned to pound a wad of phlegm, hard as a nut, from the woman’s lungs.

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missing in action

telepath

How to Love America

Poetry

Poetry

Personal Essay & Memoir

Elliot Hueske, Grade 9, Age 14, Charleston County School

Joey Reisberg, Grade 10, Age 16, George Washington Carver

Rowana Miller, Grade 10, Age 15, The Beacon School,

of the Arts, North Charleston, SC. Danielle DeTiberus, Educator;

Center for Arts and Technology, Towson, MD. Suzanne Supplee,

Region-at-Large, Affiliate; Gold Medal

Educator; Region-at-Large, Affiliate; Gold Medal

Writing Awards, Affiliate; Gold Medal

in blurs of misty teal and neon light a fingered cloud of ice and dusted dreams had laced through bands of ultraviolet nights and broken tightened borders at the seams.

Gregor Samsa Burns Ants as a Child

You start with the Pledge of Allegiance. How else? You’ve known it since you were five, back when it was a collection of syllables rather than words, and you heard it as I Pledgel Legions. You didn’t know what a pledgel was, but you said it anyway, because it came on over the loudspeaker in your kindergarten classroom and your teacher that year was soft like a gingerbread lady with an icing smile, and she told you the words were good and right. Later, you learned the real words, and you chuckled at your childish stupidity. You were nine, or maybe ten, but a mature ten. You thought it then, and you still think it now, even as your memories contradict it. And once, you got to lead the Pledge. It wasn’t about the words, though, even though they were more than syllables at that point. It was about the pride that came from knowing that all the voices in all the rooms were trying to match their mouth movements to yours. Really, it was a performance, and you were the star. It wasn’t about America. America never shimmered in between the folds of your brain as you articulated the words that weren’t just syllables anymore but might as well have been. Instead, America was outside of you. It was your cocoon and your coffin and you were complacent. Soon enough, you started seeing America. You saw America in the fumes choked out by buses that dragged across Twenty-third Street and you saw America in the office buildings with plants on their windowsills that blocked you from seeing the people inside. You saw America in the flashing billboards in Times Square that always switched commercials as soon as you looked up at them, and you saw America in the parking lot outside your window that tore itself up and stacked its fragments into a hotel made up of puzzle pieces that didn’t fit together. And that’s when you realized that America was consummate but that it was nothing. America was the sum of the Pledge and the destruction, and when you added the two extremes, you got zero. You knew that America was founded on the principle of liberty (liberty for straight, white men, at least)—that’s what you learned in seventh grade—but that year, your

she watched as stars descended; taking years, like spit from glowing mouths of time and space and satellites had wiped away her tears with hands of glass and hair of iron lace. and time away had shattered all her thoughts of him returning with a beam of sun, his eyes were dark but glowed with sixty watts replaced her hands (once closed in his) with guns. and gravity had never pulled him home, back to his little girl, sleeping alone.

Take your daddy’s magnifying glass into the backyard. Scatter sweet crumbs from your pockets and watch the juicy ants tremble out of their bumpy homes. They are so trusting, trickling from their hidey-holes, so you just want to scoop them up and feel them murmuring against your heart. But you are a boy with a sling in his back pocket, and somewhere a guy named Franz Kafka is sealing your fate, so you squeeze a fatal burst of sunlight through the glass. The annihilation is total. You hang flypaper curtains in the kitchen, clip off butterfly wings, sprinkle salt on slugs and try not to cry as they ooze. You don’t know why you are doing this. You wrench earthworms out of the ground. You know that life is pointless and absurd and you are god of the grasshoppers and their silvery sound. You try to sleep, but you can’t stop hearing millions of mandibles, and the faintest flutter of wings in your abdomen.

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New York, NY. Kathleen Willett, Educator; NYC Scholastic Art &

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

teacher was the opposite of gingerbread, more like a stapler chomping through crisp pages, but a stapler is useful to those pages because it unites them, while you realized that what use does gingerbread have anyway? You’re writing this now, and you’re rereading what you’ve gotten down so far and thinking that this doesn’t look like how to love America. How to love America should be streaked with red and white and blue and be written like you’re shouting empowerment into a megaphone. It shouldn’t be casual acceptance that’s really a disguise for unawareness and suspiciousness of the solidity that the Pledge promises. But that’s where the critic peeking out of your ear is wrong. You love America because you hate the way America encased you in itself without informing you of its presence. Because you love America by lamenting the interchangeable bags of white skin and false patriotism that are running for president in 2016. You love America by studying the loopholes in the Hazelwood Standard majority opinion and allowing a ribbon of criticism to spew from your throat. You love America by asking why has Silicon Valley been able to suffocate this country with bubble wrap, and why don’t we realize that there is gunpowder in our tea, and why are some people large and distorted like you’re seeing them through a curved magnifying glass but others are so small that we don’t notice that the sun is bouncing off the lens and frying them. You abhor the Americans who drawl that our country is immaculate, even though their fingers wrap around guns that suck in all the life within fifty miles but are still, somehow, symbols of freedom. Honestly, you’d rather be one of the lives that gets sucked into the gun than be associated with those who carry it. So really, you love the idea of America, rather than the radioactive, plastic paradise that the gun-toters claim is their homeland. This is how to love America. Love America for what it could be rather than what it has become. Love America for the seedlings that are frozen, afraid to germinate, under soil that is the only barrier between them and the fire-blazing air. Love America for a quill that danced through ink and parchment two hundred and fifty years ago in hope for a country in which revolution was cultivated rather than stifled. This is how to love America.

Many writing selections have been excerpted. Go to artandwriting.org/galleries to read the works as they were submitted.

National Awards

125

Cherry Lipbalm Poetry

Susannah Oxley, Grade 11, Age 16, Boise High School, Boise, ID. Teri Weisensel, Educator; Boise State Writing Project, Affiliate; Gold Medal

Girls are friends, not lovers. A sentence uttered under a stranger’s breath, as I hold my best friend’s hand in the supermarket, age 7. Words that eroded the lining of my skull and sank to the bottoms of my feet, glued themselves in my memory. “Girls are friends, not lovers.” I mutter to a boy in false vow as he spits hate to a rainbow bumpersticker claiming malevolence and threatening violence if “one of those” come near him, age 11. “Girls are friends, not lovers.” I try to bury the flowers blooming in my belly, smiling, as I taste her cherry lipbalm on the corners of my mouth, imprints of a dare, age 13. “Girls are friends, not lovers.” I remember the first time her eyes met mine, like safety, like “You’re not alone.” She speaks like the way honey is smooth, sweet, and spreads through my veins like a dormant virus. “Girls are friends, not lovers.” I douse the evil bred in my brain with freezing water, in the hopes to drown the demons that taught me to swim through a sea of hate quietly, without stirring waves. Reluctantly, I feel it leaving, as I learn the things I’m feeling are normal, good, even beautiful, age 14.

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“Girls are friends, not lovers” A thought all but forgotten now, as your lips are on mine, a whole new covanent. When you open your mouth, everything turns to marmalade, my fists unclench, my skin softens. I hear ghosts echoing strings of hate in the back of my mind, I hear them without listening, like background noise, bringing down the pillars above them.  

Undocumented Immigrant Journalism

Shaima Parveen, Grade 12, Age 18, Livingston High School, Livingston, NJ. Jennifer Johnson, Educator; Region-at-Large, Affiliate; Gold Medal

On October 10, 2012, just after 11:00 p.m., sixteen-yearold Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez lay dead on a sidewalk just across the Mexican-Arizona border, after he had been shot seven times in the back by U.S. Border Patrol agents who had spotted the boy crossing the border. Rodriguez’s death serves as a metaphor for the contemporary prevalence of misunderstanding directed at undocumented Mexican immigrants. While some of these border crossers may, in fact, be involved in illegal activities, most are law-abiding people simply seeking a better life for themselves and their families, and in spite of their honorable intentions, their motives are often misunderstood, causing many Americans to identify them as “illegal aliens” greedy for American profits and resources. Primarily, while portraying undocumented Mexican immigrants as criminals, the majority of Americans misunderstand the intolerable living conditions these immigrants face in their homeland and resent their pursuit of the American Dream. In The Epic of America, James Truslow Adams states that the American dream is “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement” (Truslow, 214). His explanation is the motivation that drives increasing numbers of Mexicans to risk their lives to cross the border into the United States. Nonetheless, many Americans, particularly those in the border states, driven by prejudice and financial pressure, resent these immigrants’ attempts to enter the United States and take steps to expel them. In “Immigration,” an episode of the documentary series 30 Days, Frank George, a Minuteman passionate about ending illegal immigration, is forced to live with the Gonzalez family, undocumented Mexican immigrants. George, himself originally an immigrant forced to leave Cuba because of political oppression, entered America legally. He believes “it is important to abide by the law” and fears that the influx of undocumented immigrants will eventually bring about the dissolution of America. Though George does not explicitly classify undocumented Mexican immigrants as criminals, he compares them to the terrorists of 9/11, implying that they pose a threat to the

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

United States. George symbolizes the feelings of many Americans who fail to recognize that today’s Mexican immigrants are simply pursuing the same American dream that other immigrants have sought for generations. It is ironic that many of these protesters, like George, descend from immigrant families themselves. However, when asked if an individual’s family history affected his/her opinion of undocumented immigrants, 86.67% of those surveyed responded that it did, and 100% of those positive responses came from the descendants of immigrants, suggesting that an individual’s personal history in terms of immigration does have an impact on his/her perception of undocumented Mexican immigrants. Secondarily, misunderstanding of undocumented immigrants often leads to extensive violence and conflict, which must end for the well-being of all Americans. According to the Department of Homeland Security, sixteen civilians have been killed by Border Patrol agents in less than two years. In response to this recent tragedy, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection is reviewing its guidelines for the use of force. Although most media attention is directed at brutal hate crimes, violence against undocumented immigrants is most common in the workplace, where undocumented immigrants are vulnerable to employers’ deportation threats. When recently asked about his experience, an undocumented immigrant explained the abuse he witnessed while working for the fast-food restaurant McDonald’s: “Behind closed doors, employers rely [on] and need immigrants because they can manipulate and abuse them through fear tactics, such as calling immigration on them if they don’t work. More often than not, immigrants face sexual abuse at work, pay that’s below the minimum wage, and exploitation because their employer knows how desperately the person needs their job [to] support their family.” By using threats of deportation to control undocumented immigrants, employers are able to take advantage of their status to force them to work under substandard conditions. According to “Crimes Against Illegal Immigrants” in Boston magazine, “For immigrant victims of sexual abuse, justice is nearly impossible to come by.” Some Americans argue that Constitutional rights do not extend to undocumented immigrants since they are not citizens of America. These Americans fail to realize that undocumented immigrants are residents of our country who plan to remain here and, therefore, should be entitled to the same Constitutional rights as others.

National Awards

127

A Selected Collection of Human Anatomy Personal Essay & Memoir



Marissa Robertson, Grade 12, Age 17, Milwaukee High School of the Arts, Milwaukee, WI. James Bruss, Educator; Still Waters Collective, Affiliate; Gold Medal

HANDS My palms are speckled with hard, yellow dots where joints meet thick flesh and hands meet palms. They are souvenirs from adventures in my backyard, scaling trees and slicing down imaginary enemies with sticks. My aunts and uncles don’t agree. Ay que linda, they say, in fast voices that have more sharp sounds than kindness. Why do you do this to yourself? I try to explain that the best way to hop up into the tree behind our house requires gripping hard bark, and that’s where those calluses came from. I try to explain that it’s fine because you can see over two yards standing in that tree, and the neighbor’s dog likes to bark when he sees me. But they don’t understand. They shuffle me into the kitchen to help with dinner. I can only watch from the window as the boys climb my tree the wrong way. It isn’t fair. I ball up my hands in rough, angry fists, but no one cares. I’m passed a bowl of tomatoes to chop. This is what we do. This is how our family is, my mom says, after they’ve left, eyes heavy-lidded and back bowed from the kitchen she’s cleared, dishes she’s washed, and plates she’s sent off at the end of the night. I don’t think it’s right. It’s like how I get yelled at for spitting when my dad can whenever he wants, or how mom shouts when she catches me darting around, wrestling with my friends, scraping my knees, creating more memories. I hate when they punish me for pouting after someone else forces me into a dress. Yet my calluses fade and my hands grow smooth. Dresses clog up my closet and my jeans disappear. I spend more time behind windows than outside of them, and my favorite tree starts to lose its branches.

But my knees stay scarred, and I still remember. LIPS The television tells me that lips are for kissing. They’re attached to your mouth, which is meant for talking, but lips are unequivocally meant for kissing. They’re meant for mashing into a dashing prince’s as the music crescendos and the sunset bleeds gold all over the horizon. They’re meant for dirty smacks in your parent’s basement, crushing against a boy who may or may not be your boyfriend. They’re meant for a tender press between a husband and wife, dressed in frilly white and tuxedo black, while the crowd applauds and the light flares against the camera lens. What I don’t see is a surprise attack of wet and soft, where one girl leaves another lost, shocked in a gaping mouth state between disbelief and excitement. I don’t see two pairs of lips in the darkness of your best friend’s bedroom, knowing that if her door cracks open, if her parents step in, all will be lost. I don’t see two girls, parting at a bus stop, a quick press against each other before departing. I don’t see it, but that hardly means it doesn’t happen. EYES A girl I used to know wants blue eyes. She tells me this, gazing blazingly through swirling mocha and ebony. The color of bread crust. The color of chocolate. The color of burning wood. I ask her why, and she scoffs. “Why not?” she says. “Why would I want these? They’re the color of crap. All the prettiest girls have blue eyes.” I nod my head, as if I agree, and keep my truth to myself. I can’t picture myself with pale-blue eyes. The darkness that blurs the idea of pupil and iris is perfect to me. It is the color of midnight. It’s the color of shadows. I shake my head after a while of silence, because it seems sad that I have this and she does not. “Your eyes are beautiful,” I tell her, and I mean it. She doesn’t believe me.

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The Water Prince Flash Fiction

Heather Talma, Grade 12, Age 17, North High School, Fargo, ND. Hannah Andring, Educator; Red River Valley Writing Project at NDSU, Affiliate; Gold Medal

My brother always told me, growing up, a beautiful story of how he found me. “I was thirteen years old,” he’d start with, “living alone at the time, and I went out on my canoe to go fishing like every other day.” When I was very little, I’d often chime in with, “But it wasn’t like every other day, was it?” And he’d smile and say, “No. That day was a very, very special day. Because that’s the day the Water Prince was born.” I’d sit on his lap, and he’d hold me tight and tell me the story. “Well now, I’d just caught myself a mighty big fish when, all of a sudden, the water began to glow. It started near my boat, and soon there was a sparkling path leading into the thick rushes at the water’s edge.” This part, at least, was true. There were indeed thick rushes by the edge of the water. “And what did I see then?” I always waited, ears full of eagerness and eyes sparkling with joy. “I saw the rushes part before me, and into the sunlight came a beautiful basket woven from river reeds, and it was decorated with stones and shells and beautiful flowers, and over it was a veil of finest spider’s silk. And as the basket drifted closer to me, I could see inside, a tiny little baby. And this baby had silvery hair so soft, and his eyes were closed, but when he opened them, they were violet.” I would smile. I knew it was me. “And surrounding this basket were the frogs and butterflies and dragonflies. And, of course, the fairies.” “The fairies!” I would echo with excitement. “And the fairies came and alighted on my boat, and as the basket came closer, they whispered in my ears. ‘You must take care of this baby,’ they said. ‘He is the Prince of the Waters.’ And they whispered to me your name.” My eyes would be wide. I was completely spellbound. “And the basket reached my boat, rose up from the water, and gently floated inside, between the cross-benches. And then the baby opened his eyes for the first time, and in them I could see so much magic and wonder.”

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

Next there was my least favorite part, but I knew it would pass quickly. “‘Alas!’ the fairies said to me. ‘Though he is magnificent, he is born of water, and though he must have a dweller of land to take care of him, he shall never be able to breathe the air properly.’” I squirmed. “But then,” my brother continued, “there were more fairies, and these brought baskets of herbs, and they pointed along the riverbanks and over the hills and showed me where to gather them, so that the baby would not suffer so when his breathing grew tight.” I nodded. He’d used these herbs many times. “And they told me, ‘He cannot return to the water until he is grown. If he tries while he is still young, he will drown. But he may swim upon the surface, and learn to hold his breath so that he may dive for a little while and see his true home. And once he is grown, he may live in the water, or he may choose to live beside it and rule his kingdom from the shore.’” “And I’m gonna stay,” I always finished, “’cause I got my big brother here!” It wasn’t until I was much older that I learned the real story. He hadn’t caught a big fish. He’d been having trouble catching anything for months. The water never glowed. It was murky as always. The basket was old and falling apart, and it wasn’t decorated in shells and stones and flowers. It was decorated in death sigils with a candle burning at its head. A black candle. And I was no water prince. I was an unwanted child. Just a little baby, as the story said, though four months old rather than a newborn. And they had already figured out that I had asthma. And so, as was custom to their people, they set me adrift so I would die and bring them luck, rather than casting a shroud over them if I had been allowed to stay. He still won’t tell me just who “they” are. And when he found me, he picked me up right out of the basket and was so angry that I’d been abandoned that he knocked the candle off into the water, putting it out and extinguishing my death sentence. He took me home and, with what little he had, fed me, kept me warm. As for the herbs, he’d learned them from the village witch, who took pity on me. But at least he’d told me the story.

National Awards

129

In the Summer, My Brother Short Story

Julia Walton, Grade 11, Age 16, Academy of Notre Dame de Namur, Villanova, PA. Norma DaCrema, Educator; Philadelphia Writing Project, Affiliate; Gold Medal

At lunch our dog walks into the kitchen and eats my brother’s fruit and then leaves. My brother feeds it to our dog himself. When our dog is done, my brother wipes thick spit from his hands and says our dog needs lunch more than he does. I say, but brother, I cut that fruit for you. To slice an apple, hold the apple with its stem facing upright. Position your knife slightly away from the stem and slice downward to the cutting board. Do this on all sides of the apple. To make smaller slices, position the apple face-down and chop to any size desired. Give your brother the apple core. He will suck off the excess meat to get you your money’s worth. In the summer, my brother plays soccer and baseball and hockey with a half-dozen neighborhood kids and an ever-present symphony of cicadas. Though heat presses in from all sides—I keep our kitchen stocked with three fans for some relief—my brother plays Horse until his shirt is soaked through and he smells like our dog. He goes out in the morning and plays until lunch; at lunch he comes into the kitchen and he eats his fruit. At lunch I ask, “Why do you play so long out there?” I peel the skin off an orange. He sighs. “It’s better than being here all the time.” In my heart of hearts, I do not blame him. They play in the field behind our row of houses, a sunbaked field of grass between one neighborhood street and the next. The grass is brittle and scratches my brother’s legs and pokes his soft flesh when he falls. At lunch he has pear-green bruises. My mother would have done something about these bruises, but she is at work too much to notice.

Some neighbor had put nets there. My father had provided two moveable hoops. The kids produce their own balls and bats and pucks—my neighbor’s son has no hockey stick, and my brother gives him our own. “Why couldn’t you have just let him borrow it?” I ask as I place a fresh bowl of blueberries before him. He shrugs. “It’s what dad would have done.” Later that summer, my brother punches my neighbor’s son in the face. To cut a pineapple, place the pineapple on its side, and with a sharp chef’s knife, remove both the crown and the stem of the fruit. Place the pineapple upright, and begin removing the spiny outer skin. Be sure to follow the pineapple’s contours instead of chopping straight down— this will result in the most possible meat. The brown eye spots must be removed; cut a V-shaped groove along the diagonal line and discard each set of spots. Lay the skinned pineapple on its side again—cut into ring slices— cut the ring slices into chunks. Feed the pineapple to your brother. He will be disgusted. It will be too sweet and it will coat his tongue with bumps he can’t get rid of. At breakfast my brother will not talk to me. I wake him up at seven after my mother leaves for work, and he rolls over and rises slowly. He sits at the table and rubs his eyes and grunts at things I say; he yawns and doesn’t say himself much of anything. He eats oatmeal with brown sugar and bananas. He finishes. He leaves. It is seven forty-five. The neighborhood kids will not begin to arrive until nine, and until then he plays basketball by himself. I can hear him through the window as I wash dishes at the kitchen sink: The ball falls dully on dry grass, sharply on rims, swishes slightly as it leaves his hands. The clock ticks slowly behind me. I turn off the water, and I listen some more. In mid-July my brother comes in for lunch and he speaks. I pop cool grapes into my mouth. I ask him, “Why just play games every day?” He props up his head with his hand.

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“I don’t need to talk much when I’m playing soccer, or baseball, or whatever. I say what I need to, and then I just do it. It’s all about the game. I don’t need to do anything else.” “Do you really hate talking that much?” “Yeah,” he says, “guess so.” I think, you didn’t used to. I think, you used to sit with me on the porch in late afternoon and eat lemon water-ice from the grocery store, and you’d tell me play-by-play how you won your baseball game, ground ball to left field to get that last runner in. I’d say, what, not a home run? You would laugh and say, well, you can’t win them all like that. Our dog would sit by your lap, and our mother would wash the dishes, and our father would return from work to eat lemon water-ice too. My brother finishes. He leaves. The kitchen is empty. My father had a silver hockey stick, and loved conversation, and hated cranberries. He gave my brother extra chewing gum and played catch with my brother every night until dark. In the summer, days stretch on into infinity. To my brother there is nothing to expect before or to remember behind. There is only a pickup game in a field of low-cut grass and sunlight. There are people around him, most of the time; there are people who do not ask and people he never tells. He holds himself steady. In his mind, he can lose himself by kicking a ball toward a goal again and again and again. To dice a papaya, lay the papaya on its side and chop off the top end. Slice the papaya lengthwise—it will smell funny to your brother, who cannot quite put words to any sensation. He will say the inside looks like a cantaloupe, besides the smooth black seeds. You will disagree a little bit—you’ve dealt with enough fruits this past year—then you will change your mind and say, well, you guess it does after all. Hold the half-papaya firmly in one hand and scoop the seeds and sticky membrane into the trashcan. You will be absentminded, and forget there is no bag. Clean the trashcan. Put in a new bag. Your brother will help you. Slice the halves into halves, saw each section’s skin off, and dice the whole thing until your arms start to burn. Eat the whole thing with your brother. He will have never tasted papaya before, but he will eat it. My brother runs races with the neighbors’ kids, and after lunch I leave the kitchen to go and watch. It is hotter out there without my three fans. The grass is sharp. It tickles my feet over my flip-flops. The kids make a line with baseball bats and hockey sticks and they lean down

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

as the oldest says ready-set-go. I can see beads of sweat on my brother’s face—on his forehead, on the tip of his nose, on the line of his upper lip; his freckles seem darker than they once did. His brow furrows deep, and as they sprint away, his face holds the same expression. Near the soccer-net finish line, a boy suddenly bumps into my brother. “What the heck?” says my brother. He is angry. His brow sinks lower and he gets in the kid’s face, and the kid is the neighbor’s son who now owns our hockey stick. “Look, it was an accident, okay? You were right in front of me!” My brother scoffs. “What a lie—you think anyone’s gonna believe that?” My neighbor’s son boils. His chest puffs in indignation. His eyes open wider ever slightly, and his mouth presses together in a thin line. “Look, you don’t get to be a baby just because your dad died!” My brother stands stock still for a moment, just a moment. Then he recoils, and he punches my neighbor’s son in the face. There is anarchy, for a little while. Other kids have to pull my brother and my neighbor’s son apart. My brother wipes away a stream of blood from his nose and stalks away. He walks past me. I turn to him. He avoids my eyes. He leaves. To open up the heart of your brother, wait until just before twilight. As you’re chopping tomatoes for dinner, he will return from the day’s sport and sit at the table and cry. Finally, he will cry. He will take a deep breath, at first, then wrinkle his nose; the bottom of his lip will tremble, and he will cover his eyes with fists like a child. He is a child, as he has been all this time. He will wheeze. He will breathe hard and fast. His whole body will shake, and you will place down your kitchen knife and you will hold him. Say to him, brother, it’s hard to live beneath thick citrus skin. Let me peel away your problems upon my cutting board; I will chop up your loneliness and lay it there on the kitchen table. I can’t swallow it whole, brother—I must do it piece by piece. He will say to you, I miss him. Oh, God, I miss him. To your brother you will say, I know. To your brother you will say, I miss you more.

National Awards

131

From Across a Wide Divide: Chanting Torah in a Javanese Mosque Personal Essay & Memoir

Natalie Weinrauch, Grade 11, Age 17, Singapore American School, Singapore. Jennifer Maher, Educator; Region-at-Large, Affiliate; Gold Medal

I sit in this threadbare mosque in the jungles of Java, one white-skinned Jewish girl in a sea of brown-skinned Muslim faces. It started as one cross-cultural encounter, the privileged, secular American girl from cosmopolitan Singapore versus pretty much the opposite. That gulf in experience and understanding is wide enough. Two extra words, Jewish and Muslim, expand it immeasurably. It began as a touristy sort of thing, a visit to a local madrassa with my father near the sandstone Hindu temples of Borobudur. The place is no Taj Mahal. A sickly yellow paint, perhaps a color once more vibrant, curls up from the walls as if trying to escape. Disheveled chickens chase a cat into a hole in the brick that looks like it doesn’t lead anywhere good. Flies harass a boney cow who’d given up the fight long ago. After the classroom enveloped by splotched cinderblock and stifling heat, we come upon a separate building, one that looks a bit sturdier than the others. Children swarm toward it, carefully stooping to remove their shoes and splash water on their feet. I make an innocent comment to our Dutch guide, letting her know my faith. Her face lights up with excitement. She rushes ahead to whisper something to one of the teachers and returns with a question, “Can you chant Torah?” I don’t exactly feel like I’m entering the lions’ den, but I feel a tension in the pit of my stomach. The conflicted history between Jew and Muslim, the very real spasms of

hatred even today, are no secret to anyone in the room. When I was just an American to the kids, the wondrous stares seemed to reflect fascination in a novelty. Now, as the teacher is clearly providing this further detail about me, and invites me to chant, the stares are just as strong, but are they as friendly? A hesitant expression on the children’s faces is one thing. Off to the corner, I notice the man introduced to me earlier as the imam of the mosque. His eyes shoot daggers at me. I imagine what lies behind his scowl—I embody the oppressor, I am the Six Day War, the West Bank settler with eight children and a pistol in my belt, the denier of the Prophet. He makes me fidget with the tassels of the scarf they wrapped around my head that suddenly feels much too tight. Reluctance is cut short as I’m nudged to the front of the waiting crowd. I sing softly, “Vayedaber Adonay elMoshe lemor.” As the passage progresses, notes emerge more confidently. Ancient Hebrew wafts through the mosque like it naturally belongs. Fear recedes. Awareness of a greater opportunity rises. I feel shackles of history breaking, replaced by a moment of unity or at least respect. As they chant from the Koran in return, a true mark of genuine exchange, it seems as if a bridge is built. Back in the steamy outside, I sit with two fifteen-yearold girls and the Dutch interpreter. Siddi and Emi are the big sisters I never had, beautiful ones as they remove their scarves and shake out flowing hair equal in length and color to mine. Each of us spends hours in study, loves science as much as any boy, and wants to work someday as a doctor in a place just like this. Two hours pass with no mention of marriage and family, just talk of our learning and our dreams of how to apply it. Three peas in a pod. The differences between us are at once fascinating and unimportant. They’ve never tasted pizza or a Coke, keys to being an American but not a person. Returning to the hotel, my mother rushes to hug me. Has she heard of my triumph so soon? No. A mile from the mosque, two churches had been burned to the ground.  

I feel shackles of history breaking, replaced by a moment of unity or at least respect. 132

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Conversion Therapy: Legalized Torture Critical Essay

Peter Wenger, Grade 8, Age 13, Home School, New York, NY. Erin Dolias, Educator; NYC Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, Affiliate; Gold Medal

Leelah Alcorn was a 17-year-old transgender girl who committed suicide on December 28, 2014. In her suicide note she talks about the struggles of being a transgender girl and having unsupportive parents. A major part of her struggle was her parents’ refusal to allow her to transition and insistence that she undergo conversion therapy. Conversion therapy is a range of treatments that some believe can successfully make homosexuals become heterosexual and transgender people become cisgender (someone who associates with the gender he or she was assigned at birth). Conversion therapy, performed by for-profit businesses, uses physical and mental processes to try to change someone’s sexual orientation and/or gender expression. Supporters of these therapies believe that in order to change the sexual orientation/gender expression of a “patient,” you must “repair” the masculinity of said person. They do this by having the man a) play sports and avoid activities considered homosexual, such as going to the opera and/ or art exhibits; b) avoid women unless for romantic reasons and increase time with straight men; and c) engage in heterosexual sex, enter into a heterosexual marriage, and father children. A large part of any conversion is to let that person know that their “behavior” is unacceptable. Baptist pastor John MacArthur believes as a part of the treatment, parents must reject their homosexual kids: “You have to alienate them . . . You isolate them . . . You separate yourself from them. You turn them over to Satan.” In some extreme cases, children are subjected to aversion treatment. Aversion treatment is a controversial method of creating negative associations with the “un-

desirable” behavior. This has been used for alcohol and cigarette addictions as well as being gay. Aversion treatment when used in homosexuality can include ice blocks being placed on your hands, hot coils that can be turned on and off being wrapped around your arms, nausea-inducing drugs being injected into your system, and even the month of hell, which consists of tiny needles being stuck into your fingertips and running an electric current through said needles. All whilst pictures of men hugging, holding hands and/or engaging in explicit acts are shown to you. The goal is to make the “patient” associate contact with men in general with pain and vomit. Supporters of conversion therapy rely on a 2003 article by Dr. Robert L. Spitzer called “Can Some Gay Men and Lesbians Change Their Sexual Orientation? 200 Participants Reporting a Change from Homosexual to Heterosexual Orientation.” Dr. Spitzer explains that his results show that some homosexual adult volunteers reported a change on the Kinsey Scale. Conversion therapy activists have taken this study and used it to justify forcing conversion therapy on unwilling teenagers, even though this study used volunteering adults. Even Dr. Spitzer has said that in no way, shape, or form does his study justify forcing conversion therapy on unwilling teens. Last year, legislators in a number of states, including New York, Michigan, Minnesota, Maryland, Wisconsin, and Vermont, proposed but failed to pass laws banning conversion therapy. Not only that, but legislators in Oklahoma are “moving to make conversion therapy for children emphatically legal.” Now you may be asking yourself, “What can I do to make sure that conversion therapy becomes illegal in all fifty states?” The more we talk about it and spread the word, the more likely it is that our state will pass a ban. Talk about it. Tell your family, tell your friends, tell everyone. I think Laci Green summed it up best: “How many Leelah Alcorns will find themselves alone and broken on the side of the road unable to take it in anymore? If we’re serious about equality and treating each other with humanity, then conversion therapy, and especially conversion therapy forced on minors, needs to stop.”

A large part of any conversion is to let that person know that their “behavior” is unacceptable. 2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

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2016 National Medalists

Poetry

The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers congratulates more than

Alisha Yi, Grade 10, Age 15, Ed W. Clark High School, Las Vegas, NV. Melissa Villanueva, Educator, Springs Preserve, Affiliate; Gold Medal

You were very much short, with dark hair and big hands. And you liked the way she walked, from downtown and over & the way she paced in front of kitchen windows, the way it was white when she sat down in the big grove of elm trees & the way the road covered up the hitchhike in the fore-general store, sometimes, with a bare, red wagon out front. You liked the way the shop was painted, the same sandy beige like the steep trail just down the hill through the timber store, underneath gray overcast skies that hung so low, you could almost lick the clouds. But you didn’t like the way the wagon stopped, a bit beyond the bay, a blue lake that was usually white-capped like bare cotton balls & the way the big elm stood naked, without something at all, the way the ache clicked in you, like the same way her cane washed the pegged walnut floors, erect under her palms. You didn’t want to pretend, to be blind, just hoping to fill-in the absent peg on the kitchen window, when you came down with the jug, a little bit rumpled, shedding, so that you wouldn’t feel so terribly frightened that she never really came.

Many writing selections have been excerpted. Go to artandwriting.org/galleries to read the works as they were submitted.

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2,500 National Medalists in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards of 2016. These students in grades 7–12 represent all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and students attending American schools in 43 countries abroad. Alabama Daniel Blokh Emma Camp Julia Fleisig Kathryn Hargett Salter Hydinger Isibeal Owens Elizabeth Patterson Emily Slawson Anja Trierweiler Mira Walker Alaska Brian Britt Anna Lance Margaret May Arizona Amanda Amador Allison Boyce Alexandra Karaim Ruohan Miao Laura Tutelman Sharon Vaz Jane Wang Arkansas Kate Jones California Lilia Adams Alexandra Adcock Piper Alan Britt Alphson Savitri Asokan Caroline Bailey Ella Bandouveris Sara Bell Søren Bredberg Julia Cardenas Amanda Castillo Eva Chambers Anushree Chaudhuri NaEun Cheon Georgina Chiou Dayoung Chung Anja Clark James Cradit Ashley Crichton Gabriel Crown Benjamin Cruz Maddy Daum Katherine Deandre Elisa Dickson Lily Dodd Sarah Eicher

Emma Eisler Oceania Eshraghi Alexander Farac Jason Fong Jessie Gan Alexander Garza Kaity Gee Emma Glickman Hannah Gonzalez Dillon Graveline Tim Guiteras Beihua (Steven) Guo Derek Guo Brooks Harris Olivia Henrikson Eva Herman Braden Hollis Jeremy Hsiao Emily Hsu Keiji Ishida Laya Jacobson Amy Jeon Booker Johnson Charlotte Kanner Kayla Keener Emily Kim Jake Kim Madeline Kim Dante Kirkman Talya Klinger Tanaya Kollipara Alexandra Kukoff Zane Landin Celina Lee Hyo Jae Lee Matthew Lee Min Jae Lee Nathan Lee Nicki Lee Rebecca Lee Sophie Levy Jenny Li Jiaxuan Li Miranda Li Ysabel Li Katherine Liu Xochitl Luna Lavanya Mahadevan Vidhisha Mahesh Mia Martins Dzelila Maslesa Lauren Mcnabb-lacuata Mckinley McQuaide Yiwei Meng Moriah Meyers Emily Midgley

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

Alex Mo Sofia Montrone Hannah Mutz Madeline Nagle Dyllen Nellis Zoe Neuschatz Clara Nevins Gabrielle Occhipinti Nicholas Padmanabhan Natasha Partnoy Noel Peng James Poe Catherine Powell Sakura Price Sophia Qin Shiffy Rav-Noy Tara Reddy Vaughn Reisig Declan Riley Christina Roh Yoko Rosenbaum Andrew Rule Joshua Sahagun Maya Salameh Aaron Saliman Anastasia Sanchez Sienna Santer Calla Schubert Adam Semprevivo Jordan Semprevivo Sumin Seo Charles Shi Erin Shin Tandis Shoushtary Elisabeth Siegel Jason Sloves James Smathers Madison Smitley Clara Spars Meilan Steimle Erin Stoodley Meilinda Sun Hyun Seung Sung Cole Takara Andrew Takata Priya Thomas Anna Thompson Caroline Tilton Keith Tran Sarah Tran Sabrina Urban Nayzak Wali-Ali Kaitlyn Wang Kyle Wang Gene Tae Whang Nicholas Williams

Olivia Winslow Jessica Xu Jessica Yang Elyse Yim Jenny Yoon Rachel Yoon Connie Yuan Lillian Zeng Audrey Zhao Yanyilun Zhi Lily Zhou Colorado Catherine Barisas Madison Begines Simone Brewer Abby Bronchick Melody Brunswig David Cardoza Cheyenne Cooper Forrest Czarnecki Celia Ernstrom Blythe Feeney Addie Finch Cheney Francis Fiona Freeman-Grundei Talia Gordon Aubrey Hirst Amin Ibrahim Julia Ion Alyssa Jimeson Richter Jordaan David Karisny Kellen Kennedy Clare Liu Peyton Locke Amanda London Mia Nelson Kayla Robles Lyndsey Saltz Kai Shen Rebecca Shu Mason Smith Da-Eun Son Ashlyn Stahly Jacob Starr Hannah Taylor Savanna Terry Amber Threlkeld Daye Waldner Madison White Sai Kaushik Yeturu Amy Zhou Connecticut Ryan Amelio Caroline Challe Sharon Cheng Erin Cho Sammy Clark Alexandra Crampton Jo de Waal Yuheng (Peter) Deng Sydney DiStefano Katherine Du Blythe Filaski Maeve Flaherty Gillian Foley Hannah Gelnaw Ashley Gong

Ruby Gonzalez Hernandez Michelle Han Mechelle Horelick Rachel Horowitz-Benoit Becky Hoving Olivia Ivaldi Colette Juran Kylie Kearney Catherine Keating Alexander Kosyakov Daniel Kuriakose Katya Labowe-Stoll Rebecca Levenson Claudia Liu Peyton Marler Katelyn Martinez Claudia Mergy Megan Meyerson Jacqueline Minor Selena Muniz Kellan Navarre Bridget O’Brien Katie O’Shea Evan Ortiz Rhianna Ouellette Lukas Palumbo Kaleigh Perkins Max Rieser Diana Salcedo Winona Scheff Noah Sonnenberg Angela Sun Leslie Tapia-Bernal Nora Vilalobos Margaret Wagner Lauren Wyman Kaori Yasunaga Kenny Zheng Delaware Emilie Barniak Meredith Capuli Alina Caulfield Chloe DiCamillo Isabel Edstrom Adiah Holmes Ainsley Knox Emily Lugg Sarah Panek Alexis Peabody Kyna Smith Zihan Wu Washington, D.C. Maria Aschenbrener Natalie Beckford William Choi Sophia Clevenger Jonah Docter-Loeb Matthew Fuchs Meyer Lewin Miyu Nishio Gillian Page Rachel Page Sam Slater Clay Steinhilber Florida Hanna Ali Michael Anderson

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Zhanee Anderson Leonardo Bacan David Baptiste Katherine Barbieri Karina Benitez Wyatt Bergwin Meghana Bhimreddy Danielle Bimston Alexandra Bishop Camila Bohan Insaurralde Blake Borgeson Tyler Brunner Kailyn Bryant Evan Caldwell Sierra Callwood Melanie Camejo Coffigny Jada Cameron Maxine Campisciano Matthew Canford Kassandra Chang Catherine Chen Emily Cheshire Miranda Cornell Marcus Corugedo Mia Craig Palmer Crippen Madison-Joy Daorerk Justin Darrow Kayla Davis Wyatt Davis Farah Delgado Sasha Desilva Connor Dolan Alejandro Dominguez Eli Dreyfuss Amy Duncan Isabella Dunoyer Thu Duong Alexandra Eason Alex Ebrahimi Zachary Endicott Lenier Enrique Diana Eusebio Zack Evans Emily Faehnle Devon Felt McKenna Flanagan Marlena Fleck Evan Frost Larry Fullwood Jr. Sarah Garcia Melanie Gasparoni Celia Gerber Zoe Gibson Narrelle Gilchrist Elizabeth Gilmore Corinne Gonzalez Nina Gregg Kaitlyn Griffin Angelica Guerra Chasity Hale Mya Heavener Katie Hecht Callie Hitzing Amber Hooper Jacqueline Huang Sophie Hullinger Kaitlin Huo Stephanie Hyde True Jackson

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Jessica Jesudian Kelsey Johnson Christian Julia Nicole Lindner Joel Linkewer Ashley Liu Mallory Lundquist Janessa Ma Jiajun Ma Ariella Mamann Jessica Martinez Aracely Medina Lorence Medina Garrett Messineo Ciera Miller Will Miranda Ryan Molter Nicolas Mote Everett Myers Indigo Naar Matthew Nadel Katherine Nichols Katherine Noel Kaitlyn O’Malley Mei Lin O’Malley Alex Obar Claire Oberlin Andrew Padilla Victor Payton Justin Pentith Roy Perez Luciano Picone Marcus Pierre-Louis Shelby Pogue Amelia Polyviou Shelby Rabin Alexander Reyes Keith Richards Hunter Richardson Victoria Rodriguez Varela Phoebe Roess Studniarz Dominique Roitman Laura Rospigliosi Katherine Rosser Naylea Ruiz Sky Russell Ilana Sabban Tatiana Saleh Aidan Schaffert Brandon Schroeder Michelle Serafimovich Andrew Simon Rebecca Siqueiros Maya Slickis Asia Smith Sydney Soltau Minjoo Song Jack Spitler Kathryn Stenberg Marisa Stratton Acel Suriaga Ellery Susa Nikita Tanguturi Faye Thomas Kollyne Thomas Tiffany Tirtarahardja Valerie Trapp Bailey Triggs Rachel Truppman Cornelius Tulloch

Andrea Turner Christien Vargas Jocelyne Vasquez Samantha Verdisco Francesca von Krauland Eva Warne Sydni Wells Skye Williams Olivia Wilson Daniel Wu Yuanyi Yi Whitney Young Maxwell Zengage Sarina Zhou Georgia Woobin An Dani Ben-Arie Emily Betts Salvé Black Liberty Bulley Demetri Burke Jung Yi Byun Olivia Cambern Rachel Chae Lesley Chang Sophie Choi Allen Ding Evy DiSalvo Jefferson Dockter Maya Eashwaran Nigel Enoch Kinley Fuqua Taylor Gower Emmie Harvard Ashley Hendel Chihye Kim Hannah Kim Jueun Kim Yujin Kim Janice Kim Libby Kirk Jacqueline Lee Reina Lee Sarah Lee Senah Lee Shahla Mack Alyssa Mulé Jaclyn Mulé Clarissa Mullig Liana Nowak Savana Ogburn Ye Lynn Oh Daniel Park Sanha Park Sara Park Sarah Parker Ian Peng Austin Pham Isabelle Poore Max Schwalbach Zoe Searles Jihoon Shin Jimin Suh Rachel Tucker Emma Varland Raleigh Wunderlich Alyssa Zhang Amanda Zhang

Hawai’i Anton Allen Zachary Bell Rances Botacion Tatjana Calimpong-Burke John Fuller Madeline Hawk Ty Jumawan-raguirag Keatan Kamakaiwi Sheldon Labasan Sean Joshua Lopez Willie Jay Nicolas Maya Oda Mackey Rivera Sinautuloa Sataraka Ryuya Sekido Jasmine Singleton Kyra Tan Sylvie Tereschuk Sasha Tolbert Tiana Tran Jessica Vasquez Tia Williams Maya Woo Ji Eun Yang Idaho Zachary Fishburn Hallie Hinchman Emily Lampman Susannah Oxley Alexandra Swerdloff Ryan Zubery Illinois Meitav Aaron Melissa Abundez Yulia Ahlheim Douglas Alberts Aidan Anthony Querina Babbo Lisa Bellisario Stella Binion Lissette Bustamante Guadalupe Campos Lauren Cantu Lyrik Castro Mollie Chez Holly Cunningham Kiran D’Souza Grifinn Decker Remy Dhingra Sara DiFatta Jessica Duschean Alex Fleming Carlos Flores Wendy Flores Jessica Freeman Liana Fu Allison Gould E. Joon Han Aaron Holmes Yeonsoo Hong Lillian Hua Zachary Huff Claudia Isbell Kara Jackson Rose Jacobs Elizabeth Johns Cecilia Kearney

Taylor Knuth Alessandra Lane Mercedes Langdon Jordan Lence Mason Maj Demetrius Markham Alina Martinez Merhawit Maru Joseph Masini Kevin McDonald Legend McNeal Natalie Merlo Billie Murray Anushka Nair Bobby Neil Mia Neumann Cain Nocera Jessica Novotny Bilal Othman Daniela Perez Veronica Perez Claire Pikul Ryan Pristas Mecca Ramsey Ricardo Rivera Ava Rockafield Ellie Roussos Aubrey Saha Saarah Sajjad Bulat Schamiloglu Natalie Schlesinger Scout Schultz Adele Sego Sophie Shaffar Eymber Sommer Megan Stansbury Sahar Steiner Miranda Sun Kimberly Tapia Lauren Taylor Harrison Thomas Carrie Thompson Amy Tian Rebecca Timko Alexsandra Villarreal Anastasia Voelker Helena Vuong Brenden Wagner Ruoqi Wei Emma Wilson Gina Wiste Olivia Wojciak Angela Wong Arooj Zaidi Annie Zheng Martyna Zurek Indiana Finley Albaugh Rebecca Alifimoff Chloe Armbruster Matt Bailey Allison Baker Taylor Baker Lake Barnett Trinity Bell Sarah Bhuiya Connor Brinkley Jena Burris Josie Burton

Marie Burton Sophie Bysiek Shayla Grace Cabalan Christopher Catalogna Bryce Colón Naomi Culbertson Sarah Dunlap Madyson Emley Sarah Enkema Micaela Espinoza Chloe Fellmeth Ilan Friedland Carol Galicia Tessa Garwood Lauren Gill Kaitlyn Gillenwater Shelby Graber Lily Greathouse Megan Green Jesse Grimm Rei Griswold Madeline Gullion Gabrielle Hamilton Jordan Haworth-Zermeno Katelyn Heins Kayley Hodson Anna Hopkins Julia Jones Julie Kim Mariah Kindschy Michaela Krawczyk Jungjin Kwon Claire Lapp Claire MacDonald Annalyn Markley Alexis Martinez Natalie Mckibben Emily Misner Hannah Morris Patrick Mosher Alma Nunez Sara Nye Caroline Otter Payton Parrish Kendal Paul Mackenzye Penn Sarah Petersen Rachel Phillips Nathan Phuong Sarah Rasche Hayley Richard Manuel Rosales Mackenzie Rupp Sarah Sackmann Jasper Schroeder Courtney Seigel Molly Simmons Garrett Spoelhof Bridget Stockrahm Ian Stoots Drake Swartzentruber Alexandra Taylor Ethan Teel Akane Tokusumi Caroline Tsai Olivia Utterback Nathan Vogel Whitney Walker Mairi Weber-Hess Carli Williams

Karly Wolfcale Isabel Zuniga Iowa Bailey Bellon Hannah Bissen David Ehmcke Sarah Kreutner Jillian Kurovski Bobby Kwon Riley Pope Sophia Schlesinger Kansas Idely Alarcon Psalm Babiera Caroline Baloga Lexis Brungardt Makenzi Carlgren Ruby Castillo Orunima Chakraborti Rylie Cook Kylee Crump Sam Dykes Clare Fallon Jenna Farhat Laura Geven Margot Lockwood Morgan Massey Cauy Meier Kyra Miller Kylie Mitchell Scarlet Mitchell Gina Song Samyukta Trikkur Ahna Valdez Miranda Warnow Kylor Yohn Kentucky Katharine Barnett Zachary Bohannon Kali Burgin Colton Colglazier Elizabeth Coyle Kendall Crawford Gavin Duvall Ellis Fowler Jocelyn Geraci Sharlotte Higgs Katherine Horsford Xinlan Hu John Komaromy-Hiller Sarah Laake Isabella Lawson Sara Mai Dana Schneider Yvonne Shi Samantha Timmers Katherine Walker Emily Wang Jana Wiersema Rachel Wiley Urban Wyatt Louisiana Shelby Dwyer Sophie Evans Kindall Gant Cove Geary

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

Alexandra Gulden Walker Huston Maria Lew Raven Little Logan Magee Reed Parker Rebekah Rine Madeleine Yates Maine Alexandra Augur Claire Breger-Belsky Sadie Cowles Joey Han Katie Han Afton Morton Morgan Zenter Maryland Griffin Alaniz Justin Bassett Ella Breden Isabelle Cagle Bridget Curley Vrinda Deshpande Mollie Eisner Julia Gould Caterina Grandi Omar Harris Sydney Haywood Grace Howard Monica Ikegwu Julia Jordan Nicholas Kilner-Pontone Abigail Kim Yelim Kim Natalie Mallinoff Hannah Maydanik Margaret McMahon Katie Mlinek Nicholas Orsini Tricia Park Miyah Powe Viviana Prado-Núñez Dominique Ramsey Emma Reilly Joey Reisberg Catherine Rosas Jade Santillan Rose Sebastian James Tortorelli Conor Twohy Allison Wagner Flynn Walkinshaw Alexa Walls Amanda West Ilana Wolchinsky Reigna Wren Juwan Yi Massachusetts Soyoung (Alice) Ahn Jennifer Aubuchon Michelle Authelet Katherine Awalt-Conley Ali Bartlett Nathaniel Bolter Samantha Brussard Aalayah Cardoso Jessica Carr

Naomi Carrigg Aimee Casavant Andrew Chan Cathleen Chen Lena Christakis Sung Min Chu Sungmin Chu Nate Cioffi Lauren Comerato Mairead Dambruch Chad DeLisle Maddison Demars John Donovan Mackenzie Dubois Eve Elizondo Lily Everett Wesley Fedak Abby Frechette Colin Fredrickson Emma Friedlander Laura Geraci Eli Giordano Wyle Goddard Christina Gong Mak Graves Zoe Gu Emily Harding Monika Hedman Chung Eun Hong Erin Hong Lily Johnson Fiona Jungmann Jihyun Kim Eun Soo Koh Brian Koker Suzanne Kuczynski Ethan Lai Calvin Laituri Luc Lampietti Audrey Larson Ryan Leach Diana Lee Jennifer Lee Yeji Janey Lee Zachary Lee Grace Lees Tyler Lian Samantha Livermore Devon Lovely Sydney Maddox Anna Maguire Maya Manela Rey Mojica Ryan Moon Emma Neagle Jami Ocasio Maura O’Connor Katie Packowski Alex Pan Jungyeon Park Emily Parker Madeleine Perreault Abigail Pike Noah Pinnolis Kacya Polanco Dante Radysh Bowman Lucy Raeke Olivia Reavey Matter Remley Samantha Reynolds

Hannah Rogers Esme Roszel Mia Royce Jiayi Ruan Andrew Ryder Ellena Sakai Avik Sarkar Benjamin Schiffer Aaron Schwartz Niti Seereeram Kate Shaughnessey Xirui Song Kaylee Sostre Jim Sullivan Alexandra Upton Amelia Van Donsel Jamar Vassel Yu Wang Caroline Ward Rachael Wei Eliza Wildes Greta Wilensky Brianna Winn Bonnie Yun Cory Zhou Michigan Katie Adams Sarah Arnett Katie Balardo Charlie Beam Miranda Burns Hailey Callahan Micah Carpenter Abraham Cone Katherine Craymer Kayla Cross Alexa Curnutte Aidan Darby Danny Feinbloom Charlie Fexer Jared Freeman Lauren Gamboa Catherine Glazier Rachel Gluski Lauren Gregor Zachary Gudziak Faith Gwozdz Scott Hanna Hannah Hansen Nicole Heppard Angelo Hernandez-Sias Jinghan Hu Zakia Hunt Justin Hutchins Shira Karni Sam Kass Brittany Kauffman Moshammad Khadiza Sameed Khan Victoria Kincaid Yanka Kostova Claire Krueger McKayla Krygier Jefferson Lane Lizzy Lemieux Matthew Lewis Isabel Lorenzana Annalise Lozier Ada Marotzke

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Eva McCord Abigail McManaman Joseph Mead Jihye Nam Griffin Olis Zaida Pearson Isabelle Perchaluk Ethan Pestano Ethan Pipe Asha Raghavan Adam Rayes Simone Rosseau Samina Saifee Theodore Sase Cam Schuelke Ronak Sringari Colin Stanley Miranda Stano Max Stutz Hailey Swiatowy Safura Syed Lydia Tan Apolloniya Vlasova Christopher von Claparede Claire Wang Kerri Watkoske Ehren White Olivia Wiegers Erika Williams Sabrina Williams Tiffany Xu Stephanie Yim Shyaoman Zhang Jenny Zhi Minnesota Allison Baxter Tobio Cooperman James Farner Wyatt Galinski Abby Griffin Joe Gustaferro Belle Hulne Kathryn Humnick Allison Hunsley Maya Jackson Anika Korpi Laima Liulevicius Molly Meyer Lydia Moenkhaus Petra Noskova Alexandra Ohmann Sophie Peterson Renee Roth Mariah Schmidt Carmela Simione Hailey Stammer Lauren Woessner Mina Yuan Sherrill Zheng Mississippi Hailee Bugg Justin Calhoun Sherisse Joy Carino Brianna Dang Seth Feldon Naylon Harvey Hannah Herrin Ashton Hill

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Lilly Hunt Rahzizi Ishakarah Suhyun Kim Lindsay Lebaron Catherine Li Ryan Mccarty Sarah Roper Taylor Ross Charles Rounds Parrishana Sanders Jack Sewell Justice Wynn Desmond Young Missouri Oliver Carnes Kara Hill Ryan Hill Kylie Jacks Madeleine Johnson Allyson Kasper Ryann Kohls Keylisha Nelson Dakota Niederhauser Grant Pace McCown Rouse Min Jung Seo Sophie Utz Cassandra Wang Iyanla Williams Natalie Wohlgemuth Nebraska Axel Cervantes-Ayala Melanie Dryak Marco Garcia Carolyn Hoover Mary Hoover Frank Huerter Ethan Jendro Max Korensky Blaire Kratochvil Hannah Lazio Emma Monaghan Eh Moo Harper Newell Kaitlyn Rief Briana Running Sarah Skolaski Kara Sloane Charlie Steier Jonathan Vargas Nevada Kamia Borders Jannah Bowen Juli Cabral Anne-Korin Draper Emma-Nikole Georgiev Ava Goga Caitlynn Gunn Haley Hudson Hojin Jung Aidan Kennelley Nicole Laurencio Jessica Matthews Regina Olivares Tawcrenee Redhawk Brooke Reedy Isabella Romero

Kayla Talastas Valeria Vazquez-Garcia Marjorie Williams Alisha Yi Cho Yi New Hampshire Isabella Alvarez Isaac Bacon Evelyn Bollinger Grace Castonguay Carissa Chen Vanessa Chen Brian Downer Eli Dunker-Bendigo Mariah Dutil Ashlyn Forbes Athena Gerasoulis Caroline Grace Jaye Griffin Amanda Grinley Kaylee Hammond Madison Harlow Hannahrose Kindell Rachel Litchman Anna Michaud Alyson Murgatroy Gedeon Mwano Mei-An Nolan Griffin O’Brien Yeonsoo Park Julie Souryavong Eric Tang Theodore Weaver Emma E. Wellington Wendi Yan Cesar Zamudio Alex Zhang New Jersey Leah Ackerman Olivia Ackerman Risako Arcari Susanna Back Mikayla Benson Chloe Berger Marissa Butrico Sophia Cai Nancy Canevari Caitlin Chan Rachael Chau Alyssa Chen Rachel Chen Ruitao Chen Hyungjin Cho Grace Chong Sara Chopra Hyunkey Chung Nicholas D’ornellas Kiran Damodaran Caroline Davidson AJ Dennis Mary Dvorsky Skylar Eber Grace Enslow Jordan Fleming Junsean Fung Kyra Gensinger Emily Goncalves Kristina Gu

Satyen Gupta Hanna Hall Sung Eun Hong Amanda Huang Eileen Huang Isabella Inouye Sabina Jia Allison Jiang Hyun Woo Jin Uditi Karna Josh Katz Misa Kim Olivia Kim Sun Woo Kim Jane Lee Joo Sang Lee Annie Li Carrie Li Natalie Lifson Jessie Lin Nasrin Lin Helen Liu Jessalyn Lu Katie Maas Uma Mani Willow Martin Ellen Mei Ava Merker Elizabeth Merrigan Morgan Mills Addie Model Alexis Narotzky Baiyi Ning Mya Nunnally Ava Nusblatt Jennifer Park Lisa Park Sera Park Choi Shaima Parveen Celina Peralta Hitha Santosh Claire Schultz Isabel Sethi Jasmine Sharma Jerah Siegal Subhashree Sivakumar Stephanie Stifelman Ryan Sunada-Wong Eric Svetnikov Meredith Tamirian Parisa Thepmankorn Jacob Thomas Ishan Walia Tammy Wei Etan Weisfogel Dylan Winsick Grace Yan Kenneth Yan Jacqueline Yang Licheng Yang Yelin Yao Dasung Yoon Hyungjun Yoon Jonathan Yue Ezra Yun Vivian Zhang Lucy Zou

New Mexico Diego Herrera Isabel Jerome Marsaili Lowry Qiel Thompson Merit Willey Elle Wolfley New York Luke Abramowitz Aishazhan Abuova Aleah Adams Shahzadi Adeena Hannah Ahn Grant Albright Sophie Allen Alicia Alonso Kaitlyn Amable Jack Aman Eleni Aneziris Claire Annino Sophia Armenakas Lucy Aronoff Marion Avila Madison Baisden Sarah Barlow-Ochshorn Ashley Bartels Amanda Mai Becker Jon Beldner Betsey Bennett Salma Bensalim Romaissaa Benzizoune Maya Bernstein-Schalet Marielle Berrian Zachary Bilmen Jack Braun Daniel Bring Jared Brown Jane Bua Grace Byers Stephanie Byrns Riley Cady Emily Canning Isabella Cao Martina Cappellano Maddie Carapella Nicole Carlyle Carena Carrington Michelle Chan Steffie Chan Autumn Chapman Erica Chen Karen Chen Zejia Chen Jordan Cheng Hye Lee Cho Elizabeth Choquette Victoria Chuzhina Nicholas Conrey Sydney Copeland Elisa Cose Alma Crisp Amanda Cronin Jasmine Cui Imani Davis Zoe Davis Rebecca Decarlo Jedidiah Dewey Nuha Dolby Ellis Dulchin

Dakota Dunn Nathaniel Dunn Merle Dweck Jackson Ehrenworth Julia Ernst Matthew Fisch Charles Fleisher Chloe Fong Vanessa Foulke Sophie Frances Ruby Gerber Alessandro Getzel Laura Glesby Alexandra Godwin Liza Goncharova Grant Gordon Eleanor Gresham Mia Guariano Grace Gumina Chu Shiao Han Roxanne Harris Emily Harter Meghan Hayfield Luisa Healey Alison Hirsch Lucy Hodgman Samuel Hodman Lucas Hornsby Claire Hsiao Meihan Hu Rahat Huda Sophia Inck Emad Jamal Jeffrey Jeon Michael Jia Noreen Joa Mary Johnson Jake Jorgl Madison Jurusik Maryam Kajoshi Joo Eun Kang Tatum Karlik Warren Kennedy-Nolle Veronica Khim Heather Kim Hyunsun (Heidi) Kim Laurie King Claire Kozak Kayleigh Kreth John Kurpiewski Erica Kwak Bella Lagana Kai Lawrence Joseph Lee Azure Leffeld Shao Lei Barbara Letizia Kevin Liang Nathan Liang Silver Liftin Caroline Lin Yilin Lin Miles Lindquist Nora Littell Raquel Loeza Madison Lorenzo Janny Lu Justin Lu Samantha Lucas Ronan Madden

Kaley Mamo Veronica Marks Laiza Martinez Chloe McConnell Olivia Medina Gabriela Mernin Grace Metzler Pia Mileaf-Patel Rowana Miller Lucille Morel Gina Musumeci Sophie Nadel Aparna Nair-Kanneganti Ariana Nakhla Jake Nelipowitz Yueer Niu Victoria Oakes Keely O’Connor Terri Ogwulumba Maddie Osborne Carry Pak Katherine Pan Abishrant Panday Dahyun Park HeeSoo Park Lauren Park Sangjin Park Laura Patkus Shreya Paul Tatiana Pavlides Ryan Penrose Io Perl-Strahan Sydney Phlegar Jenni Pietromonaco Lily Pisano Ray Posner Alex Pusey Kaitlyn Quach Zayira Ray Hannah Reale Ariana Reichler Jacqueline Richardson Maddy Rideout Mariah Rinaldi Karina Rios Lexi Ryan Erin Sakar Rebecca Sawler Luca Scoppetta-Stern Hennessy Sebastian Marie-Rose Sheinerman Tara Shirazi Samantha Short Lola Simon Penda Smith Maddie Smyth Katherine Snoddy Coleman Snyder Zahavah Sokolow Shannon Sommers Sanaa Sondhi Olivia Spenard David Spencer Cal Stellato Michelle Sung Milla Surjadi Abigail Sylvor Greenberg Annalee Tai Noah Tang Clay Tercek

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

Abigail Tessier Oscar Tirabassi Leevi Toija Athena Traver Max Tunney Kelsey VanFleet Maxwell Vonderhorst Kayley Wagner Lucy Wainger Lily Walker Christina Wang Isabella Wang Maya Wang Selina Wang Peter Wenger Lili-Michal Wilson Michael Wong Elizabeth Wu Ava Xu Sooyoung Yang Eddy Yeston Juliana Yu Alison Zhao Callie Zola North Carolina Megan Barnett Emily Barry Catherine Bernhardt Bhargavi Bhaskar Chloë Black John Boone Julia Briden Lauren Cates Jose Cazares Heather Cheung Sam Claypoole Sadie Cook Hannah DeMaio Newton Ash DiCristofalo Daniel Diehl Ada Evans Hunter Everett Lauren Fletcher Franchesca Gatti Gabriel Goldhagen Abryana Heggins Christian Jegbadai Reilly Jones Jacob Julius Julia Koff David Krein Chloe Lee Isabella Li Katherine McCarthy Therese Mendoza Emily Morgan Kayla Morrison Samhitha Muppana Reagan Murphy Sunghyoun Nam Hayley Owens Rachel Redmond Natalie Rozvadovsky Abigail Scheper Johanna Shain Matigan Simpson Christian Smith Phoebe Son Haewon Song

Lashayla Stephens Hannah Thompson Emma Voorhees Richard Washington Adriana Watkins Deanna Wexler Spencer Witmer Rachel Witzel Nolan Young North Dakota Evin Avery Gabrielle Feather Sophie Glessner Nick Hoidahl Zach Howatt Katie Snyder Heather Talma Megan Vetter Ohio Alexa Abounader Ptah Amissah-aidoo Roxanne Annese Catherine Areklett Amanda Ba McKenna Becker Rekha Bhupatiraju Christian Carranza Ryan Cermak Heidi Cervantes Rachel Chambers Jocelyn Cole Ana Crites Ian Davey Sarah Druhan Emily Elam Johanna Engebrecht Grace Ficke Kori Frooman Stasha Gacpar Amanda Gargac Caitlin Gentry Debolina Ghosh Kacey Gill Rory Gleeson Erica Glosby Sadye Goodman Caitlin Haislip Koreigh Harkless Macala Heffelfinger Karlie Hirter Malia Holubeck Taylor Hoppes Kedi Hu Liam Jenkins Grace Johnson Nyanna Johnson Molly Jorden Hannah Kast Faith Kim Simon Kingston Russell Klein Tzvi Kogan Matthew Lautner Miannah Lawrence Chelsea Lee Eleanor Levine Bri Long Caron Love

Gabe Ludke Kurtis Lutz Chance Marks Lucas Marr Alishia McCoy Tyler Merritt Madison Mettey Samantha Mickowski Sydney Miller Madison Monreal Emma Morrissey Sophia Necco Imran Nuri Amalia Petreman Rena Petrucelli Tori Reibenstein Riley Rist Lydia Rogers Daniel Rona Audra Rupp Sierra Searfoss Sophie Shiff Stefanie Shindler Alexandra Spensley Audrey Spensley Kennedy Thomas Brooklynn Thompson Taylor Vence Jaret Waters D’Nae Webb Jessica Wei Jazilee Williams Rylie Wogenstahl Jared Wolfert Laura Wooten Tiya Yempati Hannah Zitzelberger Oklahoma Amanda Adams Elevia Bruce Delaney Burgess Brandon Burnett Ciaran Curtis Rachael Driver Tamra Gould Willow Kirkpatrick Nina Lange Summer Laurick Emmeline Nesser Katie Prior Sara Serrano Tori Sessions Tien Tran Rachel Wenger Oregon Madeleine Adriance Isak Anderson Marvyn Bailly Ava Bayley Sophie Becker Lailani Buchanan Lauren Burns Kirstin Cornell Yunyi Dai Wiley DeWitt Rose Gibian Dennis Giron Eva Harn

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April James Golbon Jazbani Cassie Job Emma Kappel Brooke Kennedy Eui Yeon Kim Emily Klaebe Spencer Larson Emma Lickey Chelsea Lin Jacqueline Lu Olivia Lynch David Marinos Sophia Mautz Sofia McDermott Hazel McDonald Makynzi McGraw Blaise Mcguire Tia McIntosh Isabella Medina Marika Meijer Kaden Morfopoulos Samantha Morley Meghana Mysore Len Nguyen Nghi Nguyen Yubeen Noh Annie Novak Linda Ochoa Brooklyn Ogden Tessa O’Hern Ameya Okamoto Madison Owen Christina Perry Elijah Pilkington Christopher Pleasance Solomon Price-Blaze Joel Radigan Shane Ragland Sierra Rich Logan Richards Zarina Rogers Elijah Roth Kate Samuels Kvetka Sanchez Kezia Setyawan Elizabeth Steinbach Hannah Tenneson Thao Trinh Bailey Volchok Rona Wang Trinity Wang Brennan Watkins Lindsey Williams Sam Willis Erika Wong Megan Wood Changqi (Steven) Yang Pennsylvania Jaya Alagar Desiree Alvarez Alaska Antestenis Vanessa Anthony Thea Applebaum Licht Johanna Bear Amanda Bogusta Maxwell Brenneman Julian Brooks Angie Bu

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Jocelyn Burns Kate Busatto Talyn Buxton Alexandra Calvey Peyton Cassel Sydney Cleveland Anna Congdon Hope Cunningham Lauren Drake Clara Dregalla Thalia Driscoll Kayla Duffy Sierra Englehart Carol Etzel Natasia Foster Margaret Frantz Paul Gensbigler Emily Gerber Jeremy Gipson Christian Grande Husnaa Hashim Andrea Hebel Cora Heitzer Kevin Helock Raven Housley Nicole Huggins Anna Hurd Rachel Jibilian Emily Jordan Aleksei Kaminski Kamryn Kanter Aryaman Khandelwal Emma Kiley Lizzie King Chloe Kline Nia Lartey Sarah Libby Anna Lippert Emily Litsinger Hilary Liu Julia Lombardi Carrion Lover-Lilly Kira Lugo Leonardo Lupidi Ciana Malchione Tatum Mann Madeline Marks Ashley Martindale Zehra Mehdi Madison Melton Kelly Micca Abbie Minard Joshua Moorehead Aislyn Murray Peter Naktin Brynn Orban-Salley Dillon Otto Victoria Pan Morgen Peters Ruthanne Pilarski Alison Pirl Isel Pollock Cassidy Quattro Smitha Ramesh Gabriella Recce Collin Rineer Christopher Rodes Kayla Romanelli Margaret Rothrock Jonathan Shelor

Kaylee Spitak Mia Stanton Elizabeth Stifel Eliana Swerdlow Samuel Tracton Julia Walton Linda Wen Hannah Westbrook Rosalea Williams Katie Winter Aurora Wise Serena Yan Brady Yohe Rachel Zhang Rhode Island Hunter Corbett Yingzi Guo Yiran Jia Tianlan Jiang Eli Lederberg Molly McGrail Louis Schlaker Regina Vestuti Sydney Welch South Carolina Bailey Abedon Anne Adragna Caroline Blumer Eli Braddock Mary Brown Makenna Christensen Maddie Clevenstine Helen Coats Anna-Belle Corder Nick De Krafft Shabazz Eutsey Caroline Fairey Quinn Filler Aidan Forster Sophie Friis Samuel Gee Annie (Breanna) Gibbs Hannah Godsill Nellie Hildebrandt Isabel Houck Lindsey Hudson Elliot Hueske Malachi Jones Taylor Kahn-Perry Daniel Kalus Kathleen Kittrell Jessica Leiker Roey Leonardi Christina Lewis Allison Li Ethan Lopez Peter Stone Lorris Reese Marcoon Alyssa Mazzoli Molly McConnell Chassee Palmer Mollie Pate Jamison Rankin Alexis Ruz Nicole Sadek Vasantha Sambamurti Caitlin Shelor Anna Sheppard

Lucinda Siegler Paige Swifka Anna Temples Aubrey Tillman Kendall Vorhis Darby Weaver Ella Webster Judith White Clara Wooters South Dakota Anna Koeppe Jenae Porter Tennessee Mathieu Agee Lily Bix-Daw Carmel Buckingham Kathryn Capizzi Danielle Caron Hannah Chen Kate Cunningham Sarah Ding Emma Dowden Del Carmen Drolick Cameron Eubank Paige Glasser Abby Hays Keely Hendricks Henry Hicks Veronica Holmes Terry Johnson Kimberly Kerr Ingrid Komisar Tram Le Bryan Marchena Jena Masler Pauline Mireles Alex Morgan Elizabeth Owen Sadie Paczosa Megan Peel Destiny Phillips Anna Schall Kelly Short Whitney Smith Jalynn Watson Sammi Weiss Madison Wunderlich Solbok Yi Texas Ayo Adereti Nate Allen Maribel Alverson Alicia Amberson Isabelle Andrews Cassandra Awatt Kyleigh Baker Bryn Battani Mia Battle April Boak Walden Booker Matthew Bradford Mary Margaret Burniston Erin Cadenhead Joann Chung Gwendolyn Clary Danielle Close Andrea Conley

Cynthia Coronado Dung Dao Leah Davis Crafton Deal Erin Del Paggio Martin Delgado Elisabetta Diorio Amy Dong Jacob DuPont Gabriella Feuillet Bradlee Few Kennedy Fisher Mia Fitzpatrick Faith Franzwa Ariana Freitag Christina Fu Taylor Gleason Jennifer Good Isabella Goodman Lionel Green Sanders Green Ulam Green Koby Griggs Milinda Guerra Catherine Guo Elizabeth Han Caitlin Hanson Ashton (Unity) Haq Elizabeth Harrison Julia Harter Alyssa Hartis Casey Havlinek Yixin He Aubrey Hemphill Isobel Horlock Bella James Maxwell Keliehor Ashley Kloth Kaegan Knox Judy Labib Anna-Sophia Lagos Grace Lawson Gabrielle Lewis Joelliane Li Sophia Li Yitong Li Delaney Lindsey Koltin Link Andy Liu Campbell Lutz Priscilla Mach Jasmine Mack Christian McClain Matthew McGehee Autumn McMillan Shreya Mehta Grace Meinzer Melanie Menkiti Kyla Nano Annalee Nelson Lan Nguyen Yoonjoo Park Daniel Pastrana Charlsey Pelczar Gopal Raman Mallika Rao Stephanie Rao Grace Reagan Cindy Ren Jae Haeng Rhee

Sadie Robb Zach Roubein Sophia Sagar Veronique Sarosdy Caroline Sasso Ellie Schlesinger Rachel Schlesinger Aleia Sen Naran Shettigar Lauryn Taylor Lilith Tijerina Sarah Tijerina Elise Tisdel Arthur Trickett-Wile Presley Turner Carmen Urban Peyton Vasquez Leo Wall Joseph Wallace Jaelynn Walls Michelle Wang Madison Whiteside Julia Wiecek Jada Wilson Giorgi Woolford Karen Yang Sara Yost Mingyang Yuan Samantha Zepeda Sydney Zhou Utah Rylee Black Leena Maxey Isabella Pahrman Isaac Wilson Vermont Olivia Howe Kevin Huang Tomoki Nomura Virginia Seojin Ahn Mei Baek Akash Bansal Zara Batalvi Tillat Batool Alice Bell Sarah Benson Emma Berry Emma Bilski Lilith Blackwell Amanda Booth Calley Bucka Caroline Buehler Amanda Burton Brendan Camp Bailey Carpenter Annie Castillo Jacob Chang-Rascle Hadley Chittum Min Choe Emma Choi Olivia Cox Caroline Curran Sumayah Derbala Sarah Dickover

Aline Dolinh Razan Elbaba Sydney Evans Noah Faaborg Selene Geier Cole Goco Kaitlyn Graham Erin Gurganious Jenni Hall Torrance Hall Mehher Hasnany Angela He Joyce Hong Sophie Hood Bailey Hwa Tamia Jackson Jamie Jeong Megan Jones Sheng Kao Jake Karton Doi Kim Nicole Kim Sun Min Kim Emily Kontos Karolina Lajch Emma Lehman Tiffany Lun Eyerusalem Meaza Rosy Molina Malina Nelson Nicole Orsolini Anna Parnell Savannah Pendino Taylor Petty Kiel Posner Francesca Salas Marriya Schwarz Sahara Sidi Franci Swisher-Gomez Katie Taguchi Harish Tekriwal Marie Ungar Laurel Vaccaro Vera Villanueva Emily Villatoro Samantha Whichard Madelyn Wood Elizabeth Woolford Kayli Wren Isabel Zavada Washington Courtney Allred Nicole Anderson Izabel Babic Grace Bautista Julia Bernard Yoon Jung Choi Mackenzie Colby Braeden Federspiel Maya Flood Max Heim-Salgado Anneke Karreman MinJung Jessica Kim Vera Macabalo Jasmine Mathis Jessica Phung

2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

West Virginia Madelyn McCarthy Wisconsin Emily Anderson Margot Armbruster Andres Baca Jennifer Beasley Jacob Beranek Jack Berroug Emma Bird Christopher Blake Spenser Bower Cierra Brown Abigail Bryson Augusta Byrne Emalee Cramer David Cranberg Lieschen du Plessis Katie Dulle Cole Falkner Alexander Fasseas William Fendt Morgan Florsheim Isaac Hopper Morgan Johnstone Cameron Kelley Jordyn Malnarick Anna Menako Cynthia Monter Evelyn Mullooly Alexander Myers Nae Kyung Noh Sarah Neu Jada Patterson Marissa Robertson Symantha Ryerson Anna-Marie Schnese Isabelle Seifert Lilian Solheim Henry Stollenwerk Anna Stoneman Sophia Sun Franny Tyska Sydney Vanderlinden Lauryn Wagner Anika Washburn Amy Xiao Chenyi Xu Sam Zanowski Wyoming Samantha Becker Syler Peralta-Ramos Canada Leeza Belkina Kira Bentley Eva Bonjour Hana Brath Celeste Cares Viona Charles Tansi Chen Minji Cho Harriet Chorney Diwya De Silva Dana Demchuk Ryland Dinneen Monacco Dunn Meghan Farbridge

Adam Gowan Julianna Ham Amber Han Ella Hough Maggie Keogh So Yeon Kim Austen Li Djordje Lukic Georgia Mackay Emma Mills Kailey Moulson Carol Nguyen Max Perone James Perry Shaun Rogers Antonia Soldovieri Jialin Sun Tavii Toronitz Francesca Uy Teo Von Baeyer Tiffany Wang Lily Watson Malachi Wilson Rozalyn Wilson I Keng Wu Jerry Xu Ava Young Jessica Zhu Dominican Republic Alexander McQuilling Hong Kong Anthea Lovett Serena Tam People’s Republic of China Angie Fan Qiqi Zhou Philippines Weenter Eberhardt Seo Woo Kim Siyeon Elizabeth Song Adam Zhou Singapore Priyanka Aiyer Natalie Weinrauch Nicole Weinrauch South Korea Janice Hahn Andrew Ham Eunjee Kim Jung Hyeon Kim Seowon Kim Yoon Young Kim Si Won Lee Grace Park Samantha Pyo Taiwan Seamus Boyle Stephanie Chen Rebecca Tseng Alvin Wang

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Sponsors AND Supporters The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, relies on the generous support of its supporters and donors to carry out programs that encourage and recognize creative young artists and writers, primarily through the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Their generosity is key to the success of our programs and we are most grateful to them. To join us in fulfilling our important mission of supporting creative teens by providing scholarships, free workshops, and skill development, visit artandwriting.org/donate to make a tax-deductible contribution online. Special thanks to the major sponsors of the 2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.

Board of Directors Gregory R. Miller, Chairman Greenhill & Co. Dr. William Walker Robinson, Vice Chairman Fogg Art Museum Steven Merson, Treasurer Command Web Offset Co. Howard J. Rothman, Secretary Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP Michael Bell Miami Writes Alison Benson Pretty Matches Productions Charles C. Bergman The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Inc. Thomas K. Carley The New York Times Company, retired Bryan L. Doerries Outside the Wire Dr. Ernest B. Fleishman Scholastic Inc. Hugh J. Freund Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP Nora Halpern Americans for the Arts Craig Hatkoff Tribeca Film Festival Dwight Lee Gagnon Securities Dr. David C. Levy Cambridge Information Group Andrew I. Merson Command Web Offset Co. Anne Morrill The Maurice R. Robinson Fund

For the National Student Poets Program:

Sincerest thanks to the Empire State Building for recognizing the 2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards’ National Medalists through a special lighting of the building on June 2, 2016.

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Suzanne Randolph Suzanne Randolph Fine Arts

AFFILIATE ADVISORY COUNCIL Michael Bell, Chair Miami Writes

National Staff Virginia McEnerney Executive Director

Tom Berger Cleveland Institute of Art

Beth Harrison Assistant Executive Director, Development & External Relations

Scott Chatfield New Hampshire Art Educators’ Association

Debra Samdperil Assistant Executive Director, Programs

Lisa Davis Northwestern State University Writing Project

Meg Callery Director, Design

Jacque Dawson The Nevada Museum of Art Angie Fischer Omaha Public Schools Jan Warren The Connie Belin & Jacqueline N. Blank International Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development University of Iowa

Monica Johnson Director, Exhibitions Dominic Matar Director, Web & Information Technology Sazia Afrin Assistant Manager, Programs Travon Anderson Coordinator, Projects Ashley Bass Manager, Exhibitions Jean-Paul Bass Associate Manager, Communications Courtney Buckland Associate Manager, Affiliate Services Thomas de Yampert Assistant, Desktop Publishing & Programs Daniel Embree Manager, National Programs Timarie Harrigan Senior Manager, Development & External Relations Hannah Jones Coordinator, National Student Poets Program Tendo Mutanda Manager, Programs

Dr. Hugh Roome Scholastic Inc.

Laura Petrucci Coordinator, Development & External Relations

Rebecca Shapiro Shore Fire Media

Antonio Pulgarin Manager, Adjudication

Gaynor Strachan-Chun George Greenstein Institute

Jessica Schein Bookkeeper

Sandra Wijnberg Aquiline Holdings

Catalog Credits Copy editor: Ingrid Accardi Photographer: Kristine Larsen

Hannah Yang The New York Times Company 2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

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“Every year we have great young people who take this pledge and go on to do some wonderful things. This is the beginning of something phenomenal for each and every one of you. And I am so excited for you. . . There is nothing you can’t do.” First Lady Michelle Obama Honorary Chairman The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities

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National Student Poets Program Five outstanding poets are chosen from Scholastic Art & Writing Awards National Poetry Medalists to serve as U.S. National Student Poets, the nation’s highest honor for youth poets presenting original work. These poets, whose work exhibits exceptional creativity, dedication to craft, and promise, serve for a year as youth poetry ambassadors, leading in readings and workshops at diverse locations and carrying out intensive community service projects. This program is a partnership between the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers. National Student Poets are selected by an esteemed jury of literary luminaries and leaders in education and the arts, and are appointed at the White House by First Lady Michelle Obama. For more information, go to artandwriting.org/NSPP. (above) First Lady Michelle Obama hosts a poetry reading in honor of the 2015 National Student Poets (from left: Anna Lance, David Xiang, De’John Hardges, Chasity Hale, and Eileen Huang) in the Blue Room of the White House, October 8, 2015. (Photo by Patrick G. Ryan for the National Student Poets Program.)

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