Ayla Belsby received the Honorable Mention award for her poem “Coming out of the Closet.”
Gabby Studen won the Silver Key Award for her poem “Let America Be What it has Never Been: A Sanctuary.”
Several students at Liberty Bell Junior/Senior High School have won honors for written entries submitted to the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards competition, a national program that publishes the works of young artists and writers.
The Liberty Bell students were honored in the competition’s western region. There are three levels of awards: Honorable Mention, Silver Key and Golden Key. Golden Key winners will have their work advanced to New York City and considered for a national prize.
Local winners Ayla Belsby and Gabby Studen submitted poems they wrote during the Methow Arts education residency titled “Justice & the American Dream.” Students in teacher Dani Golden’s freshman English class at Liberty Bell studied the history of the American Dream through the perspective of various leaders and poets and then gave voice to their own poems about a just American Dream.
• Belsby’s poem, titled “Coming out of the Closet,” won an Honorable Mention Award.
• Studen’s poem, titled “Let America Be what it has Never Been: A Sanctuary,” won the Silver Key Award.
The residency was a project of Methow Arts Alliance with funding from Public School Funding Alliance. It was co-taught by activist Darcy Ottey and Methow Arts teaching artist Cindy Williams Gutiérrez.
In Kelly Grayum’s eighth-grade Humanities class, students wrote creative nonfiction pieces based on something that was important to their lives in the Methow.
The class produced two Golden Key winners:
• Clover Thrasher-Frederick earned the top prize for her poem, “The Man in the Silver Truck,”
• Mckenzie Sheppard also earned the top prize for her personal essay, “A Sustainable Way to Farm.”
Thrasher-Frederick and Sheppard are now up for national recognition. If they earn the top prize at nationals, they will be invited to a ceremony in New York City featuring world renowned writers as speakers. Their work will also be published in Scholastic Art and Writing’s publication.
Other winners:
• Malloch DeSalvo earned an Honorable Mention award for his personal essay entitled “That’s Random.”
• Holden Riggs earned an Honorable Mention award for his personal essay entitled “Seattle Seahawks.”
• Cassidy Jones-Mowen earned an Honorable Mention award for her personal essay entitled “A Dog Named Zeus.”
• Sage Schrager earned a Silver Key Award for her personal essay.
• Taro Moore earned a Silver Key Award for her personal essay entitled “Snow.”
