1st Place

Yu-Hau is a junior at Taipei European School in Taiwan. They say, “I've never been one to speak of my emotions, despite feeling them so deeply. In my attempts at dealing with my overwhelming feelings and inability for vulnerability, I have poured this flood into my writing. I hope you enjoy reading them!”

2nd Place

They are currently a junior at James Madison High School, in Vienna, VA, USA. They wrote this poem to express their grief or bittersweet nostalgia from past relationships.

3rd Place

Maddy is a junior at Central Bucks Easy High School in Doylestown, PA, USA. This poem is about a situation at home for them.

Beste is a senior at Robert College in Istanbul in Istanbul, Turkey. They say, “I have a short story in progress about losing a child, told with poetic elements from the perspective of a young mother. I have been writing it for almost five years, and I am yet to conclude it - but, it has inspired me to create more work that is outside my comfort zone, to write not just about personal experiences. My first submission, "half a woman", is an experiment that rooted from the same motivation. The word "placenta" and placenta's differing cultural significance also urged me to use it in a poem, which was another motivation source. I am an 18 year old high school student from Turkey, and there aren't many opportunities in my country for me to get recognition for my work in English. I'm excited to step into a new dimension of my journey by starting submitting my poetry to international contests. Thank you for this chance :) .”

Shana is a sophomore at Newbury Park High School in Camarillo, California, USA.

Sophie is a junior in Neuqua Valley High School. They say, “I took inspiration from dreamless nights, when all I can think about are tainted lotuses and bad music. I took inspiration from all the moments in between life, the ones that are often forgotten too easily with the turning of the day. It's hard to put such feelings into words, but I hope that I at least do them some justice.”

Ashra is a freshman at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Buffalo Grove, Illinois, USA. They say, “I wrote each poem with a different style/emotion in mind - each style was chosen to best represent the memory/feeling I wanted to convey. [...]. For Hope, I was inspired by a song I had listened to, and wanted to explore the idea that the concept of hope is not sweet/delicate, but is rather fierce/strong.”

1st Place

Claire is a junior at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, CA, USA. The people that they see everyday inspired this piece and they thank you for your consideration.

2nd Place

Naomi is a senior at Foothill High School. They drew upon their own life experiences for inspiration.

3rd Place

Grace is a senior at University of Toronto Schools in Toronto. They say, “I had a certain phase a few years back where I was thinking that it would be better for me to be, well... Dead. Since I have always been attached to villain tales, I wrote this on a whim to think about a solution that I at once legitimately pondered: Getting a trained assassin to kill me. Then, of course, what would the assassin think? I share a lot of the self-diagnoses that the main character has (BPD, depression, ADHD), so I found this slightly therapeutic.” Trigger warnings: suicide, self-harm,

Abhirup is a senior at Calcutta Public School in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. They state, “My passion of reading books and creating a world of my own drove and inspired me to create something of my own”

Khiyra is a senior at Cheshire Academy in cheshire ct usa. Love, grief, and their infatuation with stars inspired this work.

1st Place

Wende is a junior at Kinkaid School in Houston, TX, US. They state that their creative writing class helped them produce this work!

2nd Place

Julian is a senior at the William H. Hall High School in West Hartford, Connecticut, USA. They state, “Anime became a big inspiration for my writing. Shonen is my favorite genre which is a lot of action but I also like methodical one's like Death Note.”

3rd Place

Frank is a junior at Century Highschool in ​​Rochester, Minnesota, United States.

1st Place

Dylan is a junior at the Landon School in Bethesda, MD, USA. They say, “My essay is in response to Bram Stoker's Dracula but the rest of my works have less clear creative inspirations. All my work is principally inspired by the lyricism of Neko Case which keeps me breathing, laughing, and smiling, etc, but otherwise, my surroundings inject themselves into my writing– family stories, chats with friends, anecdotes from teachers.”

2nd Place

Cecilia is a junior at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington DC, United States. They say “These pieces were inspired by my worries. When I am concerned, I put my thoughts into writing. I find that writing often presents itself with new solutions and perspectives. These pieces, specifically, have opened my eyes.”

3rd Place

Alex is a junior at Armwood Highschool in Mango, Florida, USA. They say, “[...] the disparity between the compensation and the amount of dedication that teachers have to ensure their students' success inspired me to write the critical essay.”

1st Place

Julian is a freshman at American Heritage School in Delray Beach, Florida, USA. They say that their passion for sports and missing the last year of middle school inspired them.

2nd Place

Alex is a junior at Armwood Highschool in Mango, Florida, USA. They say, “The death of a family member inspired me to write about my experiences in my personal essay.”

3rd Place

Tri is a freshman at Bolsa Grande High School in Garden Grove, CA, USA. They say, “I was inspired to write this after reading about the life and ambitions of Alexander Hamilton and about the innate hunger within everyone to succeed.”

1st Place

Keira is a junior at Wentzville Holt High School in Wentzville, MO, United States. They say, “I am in a Creative Writing program at my school, so each of these works is based off of a loose prompt provided to me by my teacher, Dr. Jimmy Pruitt. "The Curse of Castor River" is a true story written about an event in my life, and "The Raven of the Tree" is a myth I constructed about the Greek God Erebus. Each of these were assigned to me during genre studies (humor and mythology, respectively), but the works themselves are original and I was given no prompt aside from general genre parameters. Then, my story "Timmy and Jerry Forgive" was written during our flash fiction week, and I was given no prompt and 45 minutes to write it. For each of these works, I looked to my personal life, my family, and myself for inspiration, seeking to construct stories that are unique and never before seen! I would just like to say that I have been passoniate about creative writing for many years, even considering an education and career in it, so I thank you for considering my work and giving me an opportunity to pursue my passion!”

2nd Place

Isobel is a junior at Bethlehem College in Tauranga, New Zealand. They say, “The first one was inspired by my own experiences as well as my friends experiences around family pressures surrounding growing up. It's also heavily inspired by my friend who ended up cutting her own mother off and the pressure of doing that.”

3rd Place

Madison is a junior at the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham, AL, USA. They say, “It was in response to a prompt for my creative writing class, well timed with a discussion I'd recently had regarding religion. The prompt was, "Write about a broken family," and I wanted to do something a bit… speculative. This work is in part derived from "Paradise Lost" by John Milton.”

Reagan is a freshman at Prosper High School in Prosper, Texas, USA. They say “Last year, I kept seeing lots of media about Fentanyl and how many people are losing their lives unknowingly. With this, the idea of examining of family who loses their child to this suddenly and tragically, and maybe how that would affect them. Eventually, the story grew to include friends and partners and examine other parts of the characters than just how they react to losing someone.”

2nd Place

Ashlyn is a junior at William Fremd High School in Palatine, Illinois, USA. They say, “A lot of things, but a lot of it was building the characters first and creating a life for them that I would've liked to read”

1st Place

Junhyeok is a junior at South High School (Torrance Unified School District) in Torrance, California, USA. They say, “I happened to learn about the painful history of the Japanese military 'comfort women' while doing volunteer activities in the School, and it was so heartbreaking to see that these precious histories were in danger of being wiped out due to Japan's obstruction operation and the unfair judgment of UNESCO. As a human being who respects peace and human rights, I looked back on how much I was usually interested in the issue of the Japanese military ‘comfort women’ and how I had tried to correct the wrong history. I sincerely hope that "Voices of the Comfort Women", which is in the situation of being canceled as registration as UNESCO Memory of the World, can be registered as Memory of the World, and I eagerly hope that my writing will help even a little.”

2nd Place

Lại Ngân Giang is a senior at Wellspring International Bilingual School in Hanoi, Vietnam. They are inspired by the power of female, aspects of life, and so much more.

3rd Place

Hrishikesh is a junior at Olentangy Orange High School in Lewis Center, Ohio, USA. They say, “I was very intrigued by the exploitation of youth by harmful businesses after reading an article on fast fashion, and how different fashion industries exploit children to advertise their products.”

1st Place

Michelle is a freshman at Westwood High School in Austin, TX, USA. They say, “I was inspired upon learning about my family background to create this work about my mother.”

2nd Place

Naomi is a senior at Foothill High School. They drew upon their own life experiences for inspiration.

3rd Place

Ava is a junior at Nixa High School in Nixa, Missouri, United States. They say, “I always try to encapsulate something that is profoundly true either about the human experience or myself and I have found that, more often than not, it is a combination of both. The inspiration for these submissions are some of these truths I simply wanted to share. I'd like to think there is a piece of me in everything I write and someday, long after I am gone, that piece will live on through someone else who truly needs it.”

Jasmin is a junior at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Maryland, USA. They say, “ When trying to cope with the immense loss I felt in my heart, I wrote. I wrote down everything and anything. With tears in my eyes, I wrote about moments. All I had left of my grandma were moments, moments sparkling with the subtle beauty that life had to proudly offer, imperfections and all. My grandma showed me what beauty was, how it could be crayon masterpieces, clumsy origami, or pottery mutants. It could be youtiao—fried dough sticks that wielded like baguettes—or sheng jian bao—doughy dumplings that stuck to our teeth, making us giggle through pursed lips. It could also be people, the little girl that picked up my grandma’s scarf when she dropped it, or our not-so-grumpy-after-all grumpy neighbor who brought mushroom soup when my grandma was sick. Anxiety and depression have been old, loyal friends to me, invited by my other dear, old friend, perfectionism. If something wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t good enough to me. I sought perfection in all aspects of my life, and I demanded it from myself the most. Imperfection made things ugly, and I saw myself as the ugliest. The day I started writing this piece was a rainy day, and I was taking a walk outside, feeling poetically melancholy. Raindrops traced paths self-pitying tears had already begun to make on my cheeks. On this particular day, I was wallowing in the misery of catastrophically losing a tennis match, a match that just so happened to have been attended by my middle school crush. After tiring of sulking in self-inflicted hardship, I moped my way home. When I opened the door, a familiar smell embraced me. Dumplings. They were pork dumplings, but nonetheless, they brought me back to that day in the rain at the chicken dumpling shop. My grandma was to take me to my first dragon boat race in the suburbs, but I was running late. I had left my favorite, absolutely-necessary hairbow back at the apartment, the pink one she had bought for my birthday. After returning home to retrieve it, we became stuck in traffic. She saw how desperate I was to make it in time, so we took another road to try to find a way to bypass the traffic. Forty-five minutes later, we were late and lost. That’s when we admitted defeat with growling stomachs and parked in front of an unassuming chicken dumpling shop. The dumplings were the best we ever had, and we ordered twelve plates. My grandma used the “dumpling incident” didactically to try to curb my obsession with everything going right. At the time, I always huffed and rolled my eyes, but now I faithfully clutch onto the memory. When she passed, it seemed like the world had slammed shut right in front of my face. How was I supposed to feel happy now, without her there to create beauty for me? Who would pull me out from under tides of pessimism and hate? My grandma had told me that it had to be me. I was so caught up in what I was losing. Every time she recognized me, I wondered if it would be the last time. I asked her if she felt fear about inevitably forgetting herself. She told me that she didn’t feel fear, but peace instead. In her mind, having dementia made her appreciate the present more because she never knew when she would forget it all. If she could love life even in her state, couldn’t I? I’ve begun to volunteer at a senior living home near my school that offers memory care to residents with dementia. I want to provide the love and care that my grandma gave me to others. I want to pass on her strength and youth in how she saw beauty in the mundane, human world. I don’t want others to give up on hope and life like I almost had before. Writing this piece has helped me let go. I’ve always felt bitter about my grandma’s passing and about why it had to be her. Reminiscing on all those moments has helped me realize that the reason why it had to be her is not important. We are all only on this earth for only a blip in the perpetuity of eternity. It’s a small difference regarding when and how we leave this world. What matters is what we do during our time here, and I’ve decided to stop wasting that time trying to seek perfection that only blinds me to what I already have right in front of me. Life is imperfect. Happiness comes when you choose to love it despite that.”

Yoonsuh is a freshman at Trinity School in New York, NY, USA. They say, “I wanted to share my experience in finding myself with my fellow students at Trinity School.” They are a well established author and poet in New York.

Ava is a junior at Nixa High School in Nixa, Missouri, United States. They say, “I always try to encapsulate something that is profoundly true either about the human experience or myself and I have found that, more often than not, it is a combination of both. The inspiration for these submissions are some of these truths I simply wanted to share. I'd like to think there is a piece of me in everything I write and someday, long after I am gone, that piece will live on through someone else who truly needs it.”

1st Place

Galen is a junior who is duel-enrolled between homeschooling and GCC in Plainfield, Massachusetts, USA. They were inspired by the antics of my cats and how quickly they act like they're starving to death.

2nd Place

Julian is a freshman at American Heritage School in Delray Beach, Florida, USA. They say that their passion for sports and missing the last year of middle school inspired them.

3rd Place

Kate is a senior at North Gwinnett High School in Suwanee, Georgia, USA. They say, “My friend and I came up with the concept while joking around.”