On the Wallkill Valley Rail Trail’s Springtown Road Bridge!

City writers and country scribes, take note! Two worthwhile events beg for your attendance on Saturday, May 18. Bridging the Gap, organized by Scholastic Award Gold Key-winning poet Elijah Santner, is an interactive poetry event on a beautiful bridge just outside New Paltz, NY. At 3 PM, poets will gather to converse, write verse, and more—all to benefit the Hudson Valley Writing Project’s Young Writers Program! Nature Poetry Workshops will be led by Rich Parisio, NYS River of Words Coordinator, and at 5 there’s an open mic for all!

And at 5 PM in Brooklyn, One Teen Story, a literary magazine of young adult fiction, kicks off its teen short story contest! Julie Buntin, author of “Phenomenon,” a future issue of One Teen Story, will read an excerpt from her story. Local teen writers will also be reading from their work. One Teen Story editors will be giving away copies of “Night Swimming,” last year’s contest-winning story along with a handout of short story writing tips.

Scholastic Awards winners from the 1920s!

While this year’s Gold and Silver Medals (and Keys!) are still shiny, and the artists and writers who earned them float on cloud nine, we can be sure of one enduring fact: the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards have delivered this kind of validation to creative teens for 90 amazing years! To celebrate this milestone, we dug into our vast archives and turned to esteemed colleague Bryan Doerries to tell the story that started in 1923 with just 7 submissions and is now the largest, most prestigious awards program in the U.S. Here’s a sneak peek at The Great Encouragement with Bryan as your guide!

How did you come up with the title?
While pouring over anthologies of past Scholastic Award-winning student writing from the 1920s and 30s, I stumbled across an introductory essay written in 1928 by Maurice Robinson, the founder of Scholastic and The Awards. In it, Robinson conveyed the spirit of the program, distilling it to its very essence in just a few words:

Taken from the first page of The Great Encouragement.

In Robinson’s estimation, The Awards were unapologetically a contest, but the ultimate prize wasn’t cash, or scholarships, being published, or the promise of professional success, it was “a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused,” as Wordsworth writes, which can only be acquired through the act of creation. By challenging young people to cultivate “a feeling for beauty,” The Awards have rewarded every student who has risen to the challenge and taken the risk of submitting his or her work to the program.

What did researching about the history of the Scholastic Awards reveal about the history of education in America?
I discovered that in the 1920s, right around the time The Awards came into existence, there was a burgeoning movement within American high school education away from the didactic and dictatorial approach of 19th Century toward a more creative and collaborative approach to learning. The word “creative writing” itself was coined by a progressive educator and author named Hughes Mearns, who introduced the writing of poetry and fiction to the core curriculum at Lincoln High School in New York City. In 1925, he wrote a seminal book called Creative Youth: How a School Environment Set Free the Creative Spirit, which argued that most students were innately poets and artists, but the American education system was designed to destroy their creative impulses and devalue their innate gifts. Rather than teach poetry, Mearns argued that it had to be nurtured in the young poet. ”Poetry,” he wrote, “an outward expression of instinctive insight, must be summoned from the vasty deep of our mysterious selves. Therefore, it cannot be taught; it may only be permitted.”

Calling all creators!: “Talent for tomorrow,” reads this 1946 call for submissions, “is in high school today.”

In the book, there is a beautiful spread of Scholastic catalogs featuring winning work beginning in the 1920s. How well do you think they snapshot each decade?
Yes, the spread of catalog covers does a beautiful job of conveying the progression of The Awards through the decades. In the covers, you can see an evolution of aesthetics that mirrors the history of 20th century art, but you also can sense the timelessness of the creative spirit. To be clear, I take no credit for the beauty of the book. Meg Callery, the graphic designer, did an incredible job, elegantly and thoughtfully bringing the ephemera and history to light. And Jeanette Anderson, in many ways the unsung hero of the publication, doggedly culled and organized the materials that were featured in the publication. They deserve all of the credit.

A spread of past Scholastic catalogs featuring student winning work.

We heard that you used to collect Awards artifacts that you’d find while you worked at the Alliance several years ago, prior to the creation of our Archives. How satisfying was it to see our Archives come to life?  
It’s been such a pleasure to see the archive finally come to fruition. One of my chief frustrations when working for the Alliance was never having enough time or resources to properly care for and preserve the rich history of The Awards. It felt like a crime to have all of these files full of ephemera stacked in boxes in my office, or shoved haphazardly into the back of a storage space. These assets should not only be archived, but they should be made accessible to future generations, so that young artists and writers will have a sense of community and solidarity with those who have come before them.

What were some of your favorite ephemera to find (i.e. letters, photos, news clippings, etc.) during the making of The Great Encouragement?
There were so many. I discovered a journal entry by Sylvia Plath in which she describes being notified by the school principal that she won a Scholastic Award. She was both sincerely moved by and slightly cheeky about the honor, in her already inimitable style. I found a newspaper clipping confirming that the filmmaker Ken Burns had won an honorable mention for an essay. Jeanette Anderson, my tireless editorial collaborator, tracked down Andy Warhol’s nephew and talked with him at length about The Awards. We learned that he was also an artist and had become an accomplished children’s book author. Jeanette went to the New York Public Library and pulled high school literary magazines featuring the nascent writing of the young Truman Capote. She also tracked down one of the core source texts we used for the early history, The First Forty Years of Scholastic Magazines, written by Maurice Robinson’s secretary, Thora Larsen, whom he describes in a footnote as “my strong right arm for twenty years.”

Plath won a Scholastic Award for her painting, Portrait of a Man, while a student at Wellesley High in Massachusetts. She also won for Poetry – an early signal of a prolific later career as a poet and author of The Bell Jar.

Tell us about the Hobby King and his impact on the Scholastic Awards.
One of the most influential administrators of The Awards during the 1940s and 50s was a dapper, charismatic jack of all trades named Karl S. Bolander. In addition to running the Awards, and building the regional network that now administers the program locally, Bolander traveled the country delivering motivational speeches about the importance of hobbies. He was known as the “Hobby King,” and claimed to have cultivated 244 personal hobbies! The main argument of his lectures, which he delivered at conventions, and for school assemblies, luncheon clubs, and women’s clubs was that hobbies defined our moral character. How people spent their roughly 2,000 hours of leisure time each year, he asserted, would shape who they were and the course their lives would take. He was a powerful evangelist for “The Great Encouragement” of which Maurice Robinson wrote in 1928.

In 1932, Karl Bolander (in the gray suit) reviews student work. In 1940, after many years as a judge, Bolander joined the Awards staff.

What surprised you the most about delving into the Archives?
One of the greatest surprises was just how closely The Awards were intertwined with the early history of Scholastic. At one point, in the late-1930s, the Awards staff comprised of roughly half of the company. There were 6 people running The Awards out of 15 running Scholastic. This high school art and writing contest that Maurice Robinson first founded to sell magazines, tapped into a need that was so great that it soon overwhelmed Scholastic and threatened to bankrupt the company. He and the company had stumbled upon something so powerful and important that they were willing to risk everything, putting their values before profits, in order to keep it alive. That we are now celebrating the 90th anniversary of The Awards is really a testament to the vision and sacrifice of the Scholastic staff during those first two decades.

We want to know! In celebration of the Scholastic Awards’ 90th anniversary year, we’re asking all of you to tell us why art and writing are important in your life. Give us your opinion here, and you could win a FREE copy of our 90th anniversary book, The Great Encouragement, which provides an in-depth look into the incredible 90-year history of the Awards and the students who have made it what it is today. You can also get a copy of The Great Encouragement by making a donation here to support the work of the Awards.

It’s hard for us to imagine a world without art and writing. They both bring out creativity like few other activities. In fact, Scholastic Awards founder Maurice R. Robinson once said that teens who produce art and writing are “acquiring something infinitely valuable – a feeling for beauty, which will color their entire lives, and the lives of those about them. There lies the great encouragement.” (Foreword to Saplings. Scholastic Publishing Company, 1928, and featured in The Great Encouragement).

We all have individual reasons for expressing ourselves creatively through art and writing, and that’s what makes each act of expression so special and unique. So tell us, why do you create or appreciate?

Enter to win a copy of The Great Encouragement now.

By Timarie Harrigan, Manager of Development & External Relations

This is a busy time of year for the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, but a good busy. We’re getting ready to celebrate this year’s class of creative teens, our 90th Anniversary Year, and a bright and growing future for the Awards. (Did you know we hit a record number of 230,000 submissions this year?) This year is big, and we’re looking forward to doing it up in a big way at our 90th Anniversary Benefit on May 31.

Here are the basic deets:

90th Anniversary Benefit & Silent Auction
The Edison Ballroom
May 31, 2013

7:00pm – Cocktails & Silent Auction
8:00pm – Dinner & Program
9:30pm – After Party (yay!)

With so many influential, creative Scholastic Awards alums, our Silent Auction will be featuring alumni work exclusively. Fun, right? There will be pieces by alums like John Baldessari, Tom Otterness, Rodney Alan Greenblat, Ed Sorel, Joyce Carol Oates and young alums like Winston Chmielinski, Justin Nissley, and Valerie Crosswhite. It’s going to be pretty fabulous. My fingers will be crossed for a winning bid!

Adam Driver from HBO’s GIRLS will also be giving a special performance of Award-winning student work. I’m a huge fan of his work on Lena Dunham’s (another alum!) GIRLS and can’t wait to see him at The Edison.

We really hope you can make it. So buy your tickets today, whether it’s for the whole night or even just the After Party. Let’s celebrate the work of the Awards together!

PLUS, there’s a special ticket price for alums under 35, so please take advantage of that! And the after party will have sweets and an open bar.

By Alana Benoit, Manager of National Programs

For the first time ever, in celebration of our 90th Anniversary, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards will webcast the 2013 National Awards Ceremony LIVE from Carnegie Hall on May 31 at 6:00 p.m. EST/3:00 p.m. PST. That means YOU can join in! We’re working hard to make this event extra special for everyone, including those who are unable to be at Carnegie Hall. We’re broadcasting this event with all of you in mind!

On May 31, we will be joined by special guests Sarah Jessica Parker and Zac Posen to honor National Awards winners from across the country; recognizing their achievement and the commitment of teachers, friends and supporters that help make the Awards possible. We hope you’ll share this incredible moment with us by watching the Ceremony on our Webcast page.

You can also salute these talented students and engage your community around this one-time only event by hosting a Local Webcast Celebration! We’ve created a toolkit overflowing with fun tips and ideas to make planning a local event a success, no matter how large or small. If you have questions while reviewing this guide or organizing your event, email us at webcast@artandwriting.org. And be sure to tweet about the Awards and our 90th Anniversary Webcast using the hashtag #AWawards!

We’re continually inspired by the work we do and are thrilled to have the opportunity to celebrate the creative talents of young people.

We hope you’ll join us — from New York City with love!

]]> http://blog.artandwriting.org/2013/05/02/for-the-first-time-the-scholastic-art-writing-awards-ceremony-will-be-broadcast-live/feed/ 0 http://blog.artandwriting.org/2013/04/29/six-months-since-hurricane-sandy/ http://blog.artandwriting.org/2013/04/29/six-months-since-hurricane-sandy/#comments Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:08:38 +0000 The Alliance http://blog.artandwriting.org/?p=9266

Caroline Brustowicz. Storm. Grade 12, Age 18. 2011 Silver Key, Painting.

Excerpted from Scholastic’s On Our Minds blog. Click here for the full post by Lia Zneimer.

It’s been six months since Hurricane Sandy struck the East Coast, destroying hundreds of thousands of homes, businesses, and schools, and leaving a devastating path of destruction in its wake. The damage was severe, but from the tragedy also came inspiring stories of courage and resilience. We all respond to tragedies like Sandy in different ways: some volunteer to deliver supplies to those in need; others pledge their time to disaster-relief organizations or donate money to organizations like the Red Cross. And some respond with art or writing that beautifully encapsulates the experience itself.

This year, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, received dozens of submissions that dealt with Sandy and its aftermath. One such piece was by 12-year-old Leigh Brooks from Brooklin, ME, who received a Gold Key for Poetry. As National Poetry Month draws to a close, we thought it’d be a perfect time to share Leigh’s poem:

Hurricane Sandy

Hurricane Sandy
A behemoth of a storm
Travels her slow path across the Gulf of Mexico
Intent on the juicy prize: the New England coast

Cities lie far away in the distance,
She tires of water,
She hungers for the feast of buildings
The crunchy cold concrete, the white-washed walls

She makes her way
onto the coast’s edge,
Until finally, she can reach her goal:
The tantalizing stew of human colonization

Many mouths
On long necks
Sprout from her mass and down toward the land.
Where they sink their teeth deep into the great cities

She lingers for days,
Feasting on human suffering
She pours their tears back down to them
And whips their miserable cries through their darkened streets

She leaves at last
Gorged to bursting
Full of sadness and greed
The only food left for a hungry storm

Emotion is food only for a time
Soon it will blow her apart
She leaves the ocean completely and travels inland, where humans rule
And they pour the last of their misery into her

It is too much,
She cannot hold it all,
So she crumbles to pieces in the place
Where the graves of her brethren lie

She is no more
The mighty storm
Is yet another flicker
In the short memories of humans.

Do you use poetry to cope with tragedy? Be sure to share your thoughts in the comments below.

Yeonsu Oh. Sound Letters. Grade 12, Age 18. 2012 Silver Medal, Art Portfolio.

Leslie Asked:

Hello Mr. Vizzini! I’m writing a story, but a lot of it takes place between messages online. So I am wonder how exactly do I go about that? It’s based on a true story, and it took place first with wall posts, to messages, then to Skype etc. I’ve never written something like this. Any advice on how to go about it? Thanks!

Ned Answered:

Hi Leslie, What you are writing is an epistolary story – that is, a story presented as a series of letters. This kind of story has a long history. The 18th century novel The Dangerous Liaisons, which you might know as the basis for that 1999 movie Cruel Intentions, was written as a series of letters. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, more recently, is structured as a series of letters addressed to an unnamed friend.

Stories written this way have a certain realism and intimacy that’s very appealing to readers. It’s one thing to open a book and be plunged into a main character’s life; it’s another thing to be plunged into that main character’s writing. By discovering the main character through his or her writing, you feel as if you are discovering a real person.

In the last decade, many books have tried to take the principles of the epistolary novel and apply them to the digital age. A few that you should read are Lauren Myracle’s Internet Girls series (ttyl, ttfn, l8r, gr8r), which tell compelling stories entirely in text-message format, and Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story, which alternates between the personal narrative of one character and the Facebook-like posts of another.

These books will help show you how to structure your own story. In general, when you write, don’t be afraid to read what other people have done with your idea. Then you can take those wall posts, messages, and Skype chats you have and arrange them in a way that is close to what the professionals are doing, but also uniquely your own.

Good luck!
Ned

* * *

Ned Vizzini is the New York Times bestselling author of young-adult books The Other Normals, It’s Kind of a Funny Story (also a major motion picture), Be More Chill, and Teen Angst? Naaah…. In television, he has written for ABC’s Last Resort and MTV’s Teen Wolf. His essays and criticism have appeared in the New York Times, the Daily Beast, and Salon. He is the co-author, with Chris Columbus, of the fantasy-adventure series House of Secrets. His work has been translated into ten languages. He lives in Los Angeles. E-mail your questions to askned@artandwriting.org.

The Black Cloth #2 by Brannon Dorsey (Photography)

Teen writers! The Adroit Journal, founded by multiple Scholastic Awards winner Peter LaBerge, has a great opportunity for you to have your work published! Learn about their 2013 Adroit Prizes in Fiction and Verse below from Peter himself. But act fast – the deadline to submit your writing is Wednesday, May 1!

Hi! My name is Peter LaBerge. When I am not writing, I am evaluating writing—for The Adroit Journal, the print charitable literary publication that I founded in November of my sophomore year. At its foundation, The Adroit Journal offers young writers from around the world the unique opportunity not only to submit work for publication alongside established writers, but also to participate in the evaluation process themselves, as part of the journal’s staff of 52 readers and editors.

The journal has received over 4,500 submissions of writing and art for consideration, and has produced 6 issues of work from emerging and established writers alike (check out the latest issue here!). One way through which we continue to support the literary development of emerging writers is through the 2013 Adroit Prizes in Fiction and Verse, which are awarded to 2 students of secondary or undergraduate status or age (early graduation is acceptable) whose fiction or poetry ‘inspires the masses to believe beyond the feeling of the work.’

This year, the 2013 Adroit Prize in Verse will be selected by Garth Greenwell, and the 2013 Adroit Prize in Fiction will be selected by Marlin Barton! Last year, we received over 400 submissions and recognized 10 submissions with recipient, runner-up, and honorable mention recognition status—many of whom found us through the Scholastic Awards! We hope to run another successful year of the prizes year this year.

Here’s where you come in: Submit to the prizes by visiting our website or our submission manager for more info. All prize submissions should be made through the 2013 Adroit Prize in Verse – Poetry and 2013 Adroit Prize in Fiction – Fiction categories. Please also consider liking us on Facebook or following us on Tumblr!

Important Pre-Submission Notes (FAQ):

-All submissions from writers of high school and college age will be considered for the awards, regardless of institutional status (or lack thereof)–as long as submitted according to the guidelines.
-Submissions of poetry and fiction, if there are multiple from the same young author, should be submitted individually. Please put the title of each individual poem in the “Title” text box.
-You can submit poetry, fiction, art/photography, and “other” writing to us simultaneously, but please keep in mind that there are limits with respect to each genre (i.e. please don’t send us 3,219 poems in one sitting!).
-We are A-OK with considering work that has been posted on writing sites such as Figment and Movellas, and/or that has been recognized nationally or regionally in the past by the Scholastic Awards.
-Once you hear from us with an editorial decision on the work you submitted, you can then resubmit up to six works of poetry, one short story, one piece of “other” writing, etc.

Thank you for your support and interest.  We look forward to considering your work!

Alexandra Huey. Woodland Creature (a detail). Grade 8, Age 13. 2012 Gold Medal, Digital Art. Listen to Alexandra discuss her winning work here.

Happy Earth Day! April’s Writing of the Month comes from Elijah Santner, Age 15, of New Paltz, NY, who won a Gold Key this year for his poem that celebrates the very ground we walk on, “I Believe in Dirt”. You can watch Elijah read his winning poem aloud on YouTube. Enjoy!

I was thirteen years old,
when my science teacher told me that dirt was a bad thing.
She claimed that if it were a good thing, we would call it “soil”
I was always upset about that.

What gave her the right
to label one kind of Earthly matter better than another?
I would walk into class,
My shoes heavy with mud
That felt warm and bright under my
Discount rack sneakers
and she would say
“Elijah, you can’t come in here with all that dirt.”
And I wanted to say
If only you knew
What it meant to run with
Bare feet through soft fields in the early morning,
With the earth still damp
From the dew of the dawn.
I wanted to say
If you only knew what it felt like,
To skid your shoes in the dry cracked earth
And watch the dust
Float up like storm clouds.

If you had been born in the earthy decomposing leaves time and again
Creating yourself as a new person
Every day,
If you had carved out your friendships
in the soft ground, and
Marched back home bearing the battle stains
of a thousand fights we imagined we fought…
And god knows we weren’t playing in soil.

Soil is what worms shit out when they have finished eating the dead;
Dirt is the stuff that you dig in searching for diamonds and crystals.
Soil is a thing chocked full of preservatives and fertilizers, something that you don’t step on for fear of killing the carrots.
Dirt is something you roll in; hiding from soldiers you dream up and dream away.
Soil is something you get on your hands,
but dirt is something you get in your mind.
Dirt is something you build a fortress out of, something you love in, something you live in, and it is the stuff that we die in.

So when you ask me why I’m not a scientist,
I say, “Because I believe in a world of dirt.”
Because I believe in the first layer of the world being a place to play in,
not a resource to be studied and mutated.
I believe in a world,
Where no one will tell my children
not to get their feet muddy because it would stain the rug.
I don’t want to be clean;
I want my fingernails black with the product of the ground,
not smelling of the over-ripe soap that sits next to a high pressure sink in a lab room.
I believe that if there is a god
He does not live in the sky,
but lives in the rich earth, just below the roots of the trees
and the subways and the sewers.

I believe in the stains and the grit of the ground.
In the power of mud and
The beauty of dust.
I believe!
I believe in dirt.

Breanne Pereira. Under the Sea Driveway. Grade 12, Age 17. 2011 Silver Medal, Photography.

Today is Poem In Your Pocket Day, and we’re celebrating it with Scholastic Award-winning poems from this year! Check them out, add them to your pockets, and share them with others throughout the day. To learn more about Poem in Your Pocket and how you can get involved, visit http://www.nyc.gov/poem.

Destination
The car stops, and you leap out
without waiting for me,
too eager to begin our lifelong tradition
of running down the driveway,
tree branches snatching at our faces,
soft moss on bare feet.
And I run, gasping, sprinting,
stumbling after you, until, at last
I reach the cabin, far behind you,
and, at last, we sprint down the rough-hewn
wooden stairs and onto the beach
of hard stones and sharp, dry seaweed—
a counterpoint to fine moss—
and we sift through pebbles
worn smooth by pounding surf
and twelve-foot seas in the winter,
and we search for elusive seaglass,
brother and sister left with memories
of days spent lounging in the sun, sitting on the rocks,
beachcombing on the way to Parker’s Point,
and I will treasure them all.

– Parker Elkins, Grade 7, Edgecomb, ME
Center for Teaching & Learning
2013 Gold Medal

I Was Given the Moon
On the day I was born, I was given the moon,
All milky white and sprinkled with powder.
Its unblemished glow lit my way,
Cutting through the dark like a flashlight.

With time’s passage, the moon’s dusting rubbed off,
Exposing deep crevices and shadows.
It faded into blackness, a sliver at a time,
Robbing my world of light.

I gave up on my hopes and dreams and
Withdrew into the night,
Little knowing that the moon would come back,
Even brighter than before.

– Elise Garner, Grade 8, Wilmington, DE
P.S. Dupont Middle School
2013 Silver Medal

Ode to Paint
Paint is a blanket
That wraps a beginning,
A magician
That conjures up sunsets,
Or perhaps a field
Where jackalopes and horned lions can graze

Paint is the cover
Of a brand new novel
With endless beginnings
And infinite ends

Paint is a fire
Able to warm hands but
Also able to spread
And destroy what took years to create

Paint is a liar
A medium
Through which the largest of hoaxes
Can be conceived

Paint is a menu
With too many choices
And not enough time

Paint is the question:
“Can you really see?”

– Alexander Gimeno, Grade 8, Indianapolis, IN
Park Tudor School
2013 Gold Medal

Bookworm
When I opened a volume of poetry, I was surprised to find a worm.
Nested between the faded pages, it gnawed on a comma.
Has this worm found hope in Emily’s musings?
I’m jealous of this little bookworm
Who tasted ink as it burrowed under comforting pages.

– Julian Iralu, Grade 10, Gallup, NM
Homeschooled
2013 Silver Medal

Bronx Rooftop Song
On the mansard roof, girls stick like flies
to the sloping shingles. Little buggers
with Lucy’s kaleidoscope eyes,
omniscient in the pinkening sky.

One-two: the neighbors shut their windows tight
to steep in inner dimming light. The dishes
stack up sweetly on the countertop.
Behind their curtains, couples fight

while girls sing love songs to the sky.
Their skirts flutter about their unlotioned thighs.
Their breath catches in their wreathing hair;
their ankles flex in the gutter where

their toes strain against dead leaves & silt
with a Balanchine air. One-two:
they let their stockings slip and fall
like burnt and blackened embers to the ground.

The boys below file by like sheep.
The girls’ throats test a reveille.
One-two: the neighbors shut their eyes;
they might have heard a lullaby.

– Gabriella Gonzales, Grade 11, New York, NY
Bard High School Early College
2013 Gold Medal