This summer the Creative Writing students' motto has been "No rest for the talented."
Junior Kathleen Maris, senior Kathleen Cole and alumni Kevin Emery, Dylan Combs and Hannah Toke have all had poems accepted by "Polyphony H.S.," a magazine for high-school-age writers based in Chicago.
Junior Ashley Israel spent part of her summer traveling to Gambier, Ohio, to participate in an intensive, two-week-long writing workshop sponsored by Kenyon College and the Kenyon Review. The workshop, one of the more competitive high school summer programs in the nation, is intended for high school students (age 16-18) who are "interested in developing their creative and critical abilities during the years before applying to college." The program has been in existence for more than 19 years and strives to provide a supportive environment where students can "challenge themselves in the company of peers who share their interests." During her time there, Ashley met with other students in daily, five-hour workshops in which she crafted poems, stories and more experimental non-genre pieces in response to prompts and free-writing exercises. In addition the students were expected to use writing to explore, creatively and analytically, short works by established authors and meet with their workshop groups to respond to one another's efforts. While working with and establishing connections to her peers and her instructors, including the writer Hilary Plum, co-director of Clockroot Books, Ashley had the opportunity to attend a series of public readings by visiting poets, fiction writers and essayists, including poet Jake Adam York. In total, the cost of the program (including tuition, accommodations, all meals, and activities) was $2,275. Ashley attended on a full scholarship from Scholastic's ASAP awards, offered only to Gold Key winning students in order to provide them with the opportunity to take part in summer programs.
Senior Kathleen Cole learned last spring that she was the third place winner in the Leonard L. Milberg '53 Secondary School Poetry Prize, sponsored by Princeton University, for her poem "Derivatives." This award comes with a $100 prize and an invitation to visit Princeton University as the guest of their distinguished undergraduate writing program. Over the summer, she also learned that she is the winner of the Princeton University Ten Minute Play Contest, adjudicated by the faculty of the Theatre Program at Princeton. Kathleen won for her one act play, "Thirst," and was awarded $500. In October Kathleen will travel to Princeton, N.J., to meet with the prestigious Princeton faculty, which includes National Book Award winner Joyce Carol Oates, Pulitzer Prize winning poet C.K. Williams, NEA Fellow A.M. Homes, and Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Muldoon, among many others. While there Kathleen will tour the Princeton Undergraduate Writing Program and have the opportunity to discuss her work with the faculty.
In alumni news, Dylan Combs' prose poem, "Destruction Room," was picked for inclusion in Scholastic's "Best Teen Writing 2012" anthology.
