Since 1923, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards have recognized the vision, ingenuity, and talent of our nation's youth, and provided opportunities for creative teens to be celebrated. Each year, increasing numbers of teens participate in the program—young artists and writers, filmmakers and photographers, poets and sculptors, video game artists and science fiction writers, along with countless educators who support and encourage the creative process. Last year, students submitted nearly 320,000 across 29 different categories of art and writing.
Our seventh grade students entered the category of poetry, each creating an original portfolio of their poetry during the first semester of seventh grade English.
Winners: Lexi Anakalea (Silver Star Medal), Ruby Helmuth (Honorable Mention), Emily Thompson (Honorable Mention), Sofia Howard (Honorable Mention), William Wawner (Honorable Mention), Sydney Chin (Honorable Mention), and Forest McKinney (Honorable Mention)
Students' submissions are blindly adjudicated by some of the foremost leaders in the visual and literary arts. Many Scholastic Awards Alumni have lent their expertise as jurors, including Michael Bierut, Phillip Pearlstein, Edward Sorel, Red Grooms, and Gary Panter. Other luminaries who have served as judges include Langston Hughes, Robert Frost, Judy Blume, Francine Prose, David Sedaris, Lesley Stahl, Nikki Giovanni, Roz Chast, Wangechi Mutu, and Waris Ahluwalia. Jurors look for works that exemplify the Awards' core values: originality, technical skill, and the emergence of personal voice or vision.
Since its founding, the Awards have established an amazing track record for identifying the early promise of our nation's most accomplished and prolific creative leaders. Alumni include artists Andy Warhol, Philip Pearlstein, Cy Twombly, Robert Indiana, Kay WalkingStick, and John Baldessari; writers Sylvia Plath, Truman Capote, Bernard Malamud, Myla Goldberg, and Joyce Carol Oates; photographer Richard Avedon; actors Frances Farmer, Robert Redford, Alan Arkin, Lena Dunham, and John Lithgow; fashion designer Zac Posen; and filmmakers Stan Brakhage, Ken Burns, and Richard Linklater.
