award winning essays

2023 GLOBAL WINNING ESSAYS

FIRST PLACE: Isa Oliveira Taranto, Brazil

SECOND PLACE: Lee Sze-Chyi Claire, Singapore

THIRD PLACE: Olivia Zhang, United States

ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNER: Haadiya Sobani

First Place

What quote do you live by?

ISA OLIVEIRA TARANTO, CREATIVE CATEGORY

Part I: The Daughter

Does my sassiness upset you? I dug my nails in the calloused flesh of my hands, my palms bloody – but maybe the crimson shadows I saw were the result of a failing vision. Perhaps, I thought to myself, I should hide my tears and let them take my dignity, my chastity, my power, or whatever else they wanted – who could understand what it was that they lacked? But it does not matter now, my temper is too strong; the fighting in me demands the rumbles that come from deep within my throat. I see my mama in my mind’s eye, cleaning the scratches of a playground fight: “ Meu bem , I can’t take care of you like this no more”. Should I have listened? If I had subsided, would I have cried less, fought less, hurt less, lived more? Instead, I want to scream what I have known forever: I must be one with the Earth, to return to its womb. I must go where womanhood is no threat to survival. Is there such a place?

Deranged laughter burst out of my chest; I felt my rib cage defy every force that held it down. There she is, the faceless, breathless deity that guides me towards something I cannot see but already recognize, for I want to be the land, I want to be the oceans, I want to be Nature – and, don’t be mistaken, Nature is a woman. I kick with the strength She has gifted me, but She could only offer momentary relief and I could not offer myself salvation; there he still was, hovering above me. My mouth received another punch, my teeth wailed as they twisted, my body begged as it hit the ground one last time. After the first laughter – no longer mine – echoed, I heard nothing more than the oppressive silence of the alley of my hands of my blood of myself of myself . I was no longer; no, I was Her, returning to where I belonged, born of fertility and turned into sorrow. I was, in fact, all of us.

Part II: The Mother

Did you want to see me broken? It had indeed been beautiful, that delicacy of newborn love. In their first ethereal Carnaval , there had been the sweat of others mixed with their own, cheap beer and escolas de samba. There had been cathartic dancing with eyes locked. “Don’t let go of my hand!” he had shouted amidst the noise, and she promised to herself, timidly, never to. Now, she wondered what would have happened if she had let him be devoured by the crowd, let herself stand still while he walked away until there were enough bodies between them that she could forever be protected.

So many years later, she tried to evoke the smell of that day, of the piss in the streets; with her eyes closed, she could feel his saliva droplets on her face. She focused on enumerating the colors of that first Carnaval – her blue blouse, the rainbows of ribbons that adorned the streets – until the reason why he screamed today escaped her memory. Was it the clothes she had worn to the market? 

He marched outside of the house and she sighed with relief: a truce, for now. Sitting at the table, the purple in her neck ached, and she allowed herself to slip back into her trance, the recurrent one – the only thing she truly owned, a secret entirely to herself. She had been visited by the woman with no face, reeking of Goddess; she did not know her and yet strangely sensed they had already met, that transparent person who inhabited her daydreams. Whenever she dared to look at that woman, she was struck by her freedom, by the hair that reached her ankles, by the feet that did not quite touch the ground.

The noise outside violently snapped her back to reality and she got up in a moment, late to pick her kid up from school. Reaching for the keys, she said a prayer, under her breath, that her girl had not gotten herself into trouble this time; but the prayer her heart really clamored for was, most of all, that she would never lose that ability to fight for herself. And in the obscure corners of her soul, this mother hoped that, wherever her other daughter was, she was as fierce as her little sister. She stepped out into the havoc, away from the dreams she left behind.

Part III: The Lost Daughter

Does my sexiness upset you? You might have seen her smoking at a bus stop or entering a brothel and driven by with rolled-down windows to yell puta just because you could. You might have felt entitled to put your filthy eyes on her – wasn’t she asking for it, with those clothes?

She might have told you she did not belong to you; she was property only of herself. She might have told you she deserved diamonds in the meeting of her thighs; that it was men like yourself who stomped on her heart, like her father had when he bruised her mama. She might have told you she still saw, she still saw the air that breathed and the waterfalls that clamored and the pulse that quivered in the core of the Earth – who had the curves of a woman – calling for her to stand up, stand up . She might have told you that, most of all, she was a girl who missed her mother. She might have told you, if only had you listened.

Part IV: The Earth

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

“Meu bem, que que aconteceu?”

The blood that dripped – and the silence where there was usually rage – was enough answer. Once their hands clasped, The Mother leading The Daughter, there was a little less darkness; the fear they held of the world subsided at the joining of hands, like two rivers that meander until they find each other. They walked in silence, each subtly clinging to the other as a lifeline. The Mother held her kid closer, folded her into herself; she knew, because she had felt it in her own bones. Now, her soul hurt more than the purple that painted her skin, having been incapable of protection that she knew to be impossible but had still hoped for. Her child had been replaced by a woman. 

“Come on, let’s get you home. Mama will take care of those scratches.”

They passed by a young woman; The Mother’s heart beat furiously because she recognized in that girl, too, a part of herself that had been lost; The Daughter's pulse quickened with saudade . But it was not her , and both their hearts plummeted in their caves, waiting for the next flicker of a dream.

I wish I could have told them I too could not offer salvation. Instead, I hoped they felt Nature shifting to comfort them, enveloping two women it recognized as its own; that they sensed me in the air that hissed and in the flowers that fought to bloom. I hope they knew I would continue visiting them in dreams as they walked away holding hands, holding each other. 

I was them, and I am all of us. 

In 2021, 56,098 women were raped in Brazil, averaging one every ten minutes.

But still, like air, I’ll rise . We’ll rise.

Works cited:

Angelou, Maya. “Still I Rise”. 1978.

“Violência contra as mulheres em 2021”. Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública , 2021. 

second Place

Lee sze-chyi claire, creative category.

‘All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his.’

 - Oscar Wilde

You told me once, that one would never die as long as they lived on in others; immortal insofar as one carved out a space in another’s heart, bare hands prying through muscle and sinew, rupturing detritus-lined vessels to eke out a nook for oneself. How it wasn’t the sudden, violent process of twisting the dagger in the gut, but rather the slow settling of something over one’s shoulders, like it belonged there.

My hands - rich people’s hands, you used to say. Hands that had never known hard labor, or suffering. Before they came to know that, the first thing they knew was pain, swift and cutting, streaking through the grooves of my lifeline. The first time you did it, I was five; the misdemeanor- I do not recall. The motions cycle through in my mind now - the thin strip of bamboo suspended over my empty, exposed palm, then the fusion with my skin: a slash, a lit match. My palm gaping open for all to see. But I remember too, when tenderness held your hand. When you took my defaced hand in yours and slowly cleaned up the torn bits, tried as best you could to make my hand whole. 

Before the slit healed, you would do it again. 

I see you now, in myself: bloodied cuts on my hand a wet echo of the ones on my heart. How your love was much like Sisyphus rolling the stone up the hill, never truly complete. One day, I will take your hand in mine. I promise to go through the motions- clean it, dress it, bandage it up nicely. Because what are we if not a double-edged sword? One always cutting the other, cleaving until only bone is left.

And there you are again, in the fell clutch of time. Your back, hunched over the kitchen countertop;  a universe between your hands - gaping for the world to see. That night, your chopsticks sticky with molasses and soy sauce, dipped into my bowl of rice over and over, bringing sweet offerings of meat and egg. Your bowl: empty, save for the paltry morsels of rice, long washed down by the hunger gnawing away at your core. Then, barely full, you would scrape at the wok in the sink, until nothing was left of it except for the animals that it had drowned at your behest.

That time, when I had the gall to talk back with the tongue that I stole from you. There you were, in the flick of my tongue, and in the taut silence that followed after. Instinctively, you slashed your hand across my cheekbone, a hairline spool of blood uncoiling on my face, the illusion temporarily shattered. You know how the story ends. You and I: tainted reflections of each other, through the ever-dishonest looking glass. What more did I know, of the fault lines that cracked somewhere in between? 

It is then, that the true tragedy is made abundantly clear: the mother cannot absolve the child of the same fate as her. The child, knowing nothing more, will slowly mimic the mother; the monkey made to mimic the zookeeper.  The mother, knowing nothing more, will not stop the child until it is too late. The child’s umbilical cord is severed, and then it learns that it can survive without its mother. The child’s tongue is severed, and it learns that freedom is bought at a high price. 

Another tragedy - they come in droves now. My name, a vessel for what you never could have been. Expectations and wishes, heaped in abundance on a small child, barely tall enough to see over the counter of the cashier. The most beautiful part of my name, I used to think, was the one that you picked out. That is to say, all of it. One syllable: a knock of the tongue on the palate, before smoothening out into an exhale. You picked it because it was easy to remember, but to forget one’s progeny is not an easy thing. I recall now, how you would call me by anything else other than my own name. To grant me my birthright, then, is to remind yourself of what you should have become. To call my by my name, then, is to imbue me with a wish, a hope, for me to be what you might have been. It is understandable now, your selfishness - to save your child from the miserable hope of it all.

In another lifetime, we are happy. We exchange pleasantries, like mothers and daughters do. But how many pleasantries will we need to make up for the past? How many wounds will have to seal themselves closed before we begin the drudgery of reconciliation? In all the lifetimes, you are still my mother, and I am still your daughter - constant as the slow rise of the days. 

In another lifetime, we might be younger, young enough to still believe that our love can be flown on paper airplanes that reach the clouds; that our love can be tucked away in the handwritten note of a school lunchbox; that our love can be released just like the seeds of a mature dandelion breathe in the freedom of the wind, unshackled at last. 

In another lifetime, maybe the play of our life is not a tragedy after all - but a comedy. Perhaps people can find solace in our story, and carve out their own little nook in their hearts for us. You’d never been one for comedy, wincing whenever I put Seinfeld on, fearing the canned laughter of dead people. How you would demand that I turn it off, hands cupping your ears until one could not distinguish hand from ear - both the same shade of red, the kind that could devour entire houses in its wake. 

Sleep catches me by the wrist, or if it were softer, by the round of my shoulders. I close my eyes, the projector of my neurons firing reflected on the inside of my eyelids. The scene is set and fleshed out, me in a white, sterile hallway and you at the end of it. How I would run and run into infinity and you - always slipping through the twist of my hand. If this is heaven, I do not want it. I do not want my temptation, my regret, always evading my clutches like a terrible snap in the mirror, always at one’s disposal, yet always an inch further than my fingers can scrape. 

I’ll leave this story for the maggots to pick at, it should be done now. Your nook in my heart has been cleaned up, sterilized - for you to reside to the pulse of my heart, that betraying muscle. 

Come home; I’ve left a room for you, one you haven’t been in for ages. 

third Place

Olivia zhang, creative category, united states.

“The place where light and dark begin to touch is where miracles arise.” - Robert A. Johnson

Age 7: Birth of a Phoenix

I shifted uncomfortably on the cold, hard classroom floor. The SMARTboard in front of me blinked back big red words: What is depression? What is bipolar disorder?

“Class, listen up! Today, we are discussing a very serious topic,” Ms. Taylor stated firmly, her eyes sweeping over us. She pointed at the SMARTBoard.

“What is depression? What is bipolar disorder?” she asked. “Does anyone have an idea?”

I picked at the hole in my jeans. Scratched a spot behind my ear. Folded and unfolded my hands. The deafening silence was agonizing. I did not want to talk about this. What happened to recess?

“Well, both depression and bipolar disorder are mental illnesses that can often be mixed up with one another. More specifically, bipolar is a mood disorder that includes depression; people usually experience extreme mood swings with depressive lows and manic highs,” our teacher said. “They can also experience hallucinations. That’s when they see things that aren’t real.”

I glanced up from the braid I was making. Hallucinations? I had heard that word before. It had come from the mouth of a man dressed in all white. He smelled like the hospital.

“Is that like, they think they’re living in another world?” someone asked beside me.

“Yes, Brian. Sometimes that is the case.”

I raised my hand and hesitantly asked, “Ms. Taylor, um, are phoenixes real? My mom told me she sees a phoenix in her and me sometimes. Is that a hallucination?”

“That’s a great question, Alexis. I think your mom just means that you have a fiery personality. There’s no need to worry,” Ms. Taylor responded, smiling gently. I flushed and nodded my head.

“If anyone you ever know displays symptoms of these two things we just learned about, you need to come to me, okay? Or any trusted adult. We’re here to help you,” she continued.

“Yes, Ms. Taylor,” we replied in unison.

Age 10: Phoenix Rising

I glanced at my hands. They were tinged purple. I blew on them to warm them up, watching as my breath puffed out like a cloud in front of me. Across the street from my house, a little boy played on a sled with his mom.

“Watch me, Mom, watch me!” he yelled.

“I am, sweetie! You look amazing,” his mom yelled back with a smile.

I turned away, resting my head on my knees. The ice was slowly starting to seep into my leggings, stinging my skin. I drew circles in the snow, passing time until my mom’s eyes turned back to blue.

Age 13: Light 

“My Little Phoenix!” My mom called. I cautiously padded downstairs, peeking at her from behind the stairwell.

“Oh don’t be shy, baby girl. Come! Mommy has a surprise.” Her words stumbled over each other, seemingly competing for speed as they hurled themselves out of her mouth. Her eyes were lit up in the most brilliant blue, her pupils glowing like miniature halos as sunlight flitted across her face. She eagerly gestured to me. “Come, it’s in the garage.” Her cold hand shook as it grasped mine, tugging me after her.

Once we reached the garage, she flung open the door and swept her hand across the room. My mouth dropped open as I took in the piles and piles of shopping bags bursting at the seams. Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Chanel bags flashed their tags.

“Isn’t it amazing?” my mom squealed. “You can pick whatever you want!”

I tentatively smiled. “Wow, Mom, thanks…but are you sure we can afford this?”

My mom’s crooked teeth were on full display as she grinned. “Oh, Little Phoenix. Always Mommy’s caring little girl. Don’t you worry. It’s my gift! Promise me you’ll keep it a secret, though, ok? Daddy shouldn't know about this.” She made a shushing movement, throwing her head back as she laughed delightfully. My smile grew.

“Ok, Mom. I promise.”

Age 14: Dark

I padded down to my mom’s bedroom, eyes on my phone. “Mo-” I started to say, stepping halfway through the door. I glanced up from my screen, stopping mid-phrase. My eyes slowly adjusted to the dimness.

The curtains were drawn and the blinds were completely shut, enveloping the room in darkness. I shivered as my eyes focused on a silhouette sitting at the edge of the bed.

“Mom?” I whispered.

The silhouette ignored me.

“Mom!” I shouted, desperation seeping into my voice.

The silhouette at last jolted, turning around so I could see the beginnings of a face. I shivered as I stared into her unseeing eyes. They were clouded, a misty gray haze settling over the usual ocean blue. My gaze tracked down her pale face and frail body.

“M-mom? Are you ok?” I barely squeaked out.

The silhouette seemed to all of a sudden come back to life. She quickly swiped a hand over her eyes and blinked rapidly, color infusing back into her face. “Oh, hey, Little Phoenix. Did you need something?”

I swallowed the sliver of dread I felt creeping up inside me and pasted on a smile. 

“No, Mom. Never mind.”

Age 15: Flames of a Phoenix

The monsters had come back angrier than before. They shoved through the door with renewed strength, splintering it into pieces. There was nothing my mom could do to stop them. I could see them sometimes in the middle of her episodes. They were drowning her. I saw her gasping for breath, trying to escape them, but they were too strong and too many.

“God, I hate you. That would make you happy, wouldn’t it?” my mom screamed. Her face was red, eyes black as coal. “Well, guess what? I’ll do it right now! I’ll slit my throat and kill myself. That’s what you want, right? Watch me!”

Her words echoed around me. They slammed into me full-force, digging into my skin. 

She lunged forward to grab me, except it wasn’t her I saw. Hundreds of demons shrieking over and over replaced her. The only thing holding her back was my dad.

That night I fled the house, running until it felt like my heart would go up in flames. Each heavy step matched the rapid thumping of my heart. I laughed maniacally as I imagined running fast enough until I was flying, soaring overhead as I took the shape of a phoenix.

Age 16: Light & Dark

She twirled around and around, her white sundress swishing back and forth. Her golden hair shone in the starlight—a stark contrast to the midnight sky. Her laughter echoed in my ears. Her eyes shone blue; they were as clear as day. Angelic.

I was asked to produce a picture for her remembrance at her funeral.

But my image can’t be produced. This memory embodies her: someone who is not light or dark but the mixing of both. How could I communicate that through one picture?

I settled for a picture of a phoenix instead.

I had always wondered why she was drawn to the fiery bird, why it was my nickname. Perhaps she thought dying was the only way she would be able to rise from the ashes like a phoenix, free of all the monsters that plagued her in her past life. Perhaps she believed death would bring her the peace she never found on earth. Perhaps she was somewhere now where her Little Phoenix shopped extravagantly with her, our heads thrown back as our laughter rang in the air, stumbling into each other in a rush to hide all the shiny clothes and bags before Dad got home.

english language learner

The year is 2041. AI has led us astray. What has happened?

Haadiya Sobani, creative category

Kerosene. When I was a child - skittish, agitated, lost - they'd told me kerosene would help relieve my worries. A liquid similar to petrol, yet slow to grasp at a flame and cheaper. Much cheaper. Wide-eyed, I'd watched it seep through jagged cracks in the mechanical monster before me. A flame was tossed at me, flickering midair before diminishing in my palm. Burn it , they whispered, avenge your loved ones. I spent my time learning about the reality of our world. The Movement, it was a new regime; a superior way of living. They'd preached at us, tantalizing the world with the notion of change. We'd be under the protection of science and its revolutionary breakthroughs. Humanity would reform to improve, evolve and prosper. Liars, all of them. We knew that - and we were proven right when they stopped constructing top of the line cities for those unable to fund The Movement. Left with half developed metropolises that became overrun with crime and injustice, the weak were left to fend for themselves. But I found solace in those willing to make a change - willing to act. Citizens mumble our name and the government prohibits acknowledging it. We've proven that everything submits to the wrath of nature; to the wrath of fire. An entire society that found a way to be seen when they weren't heard. A society even those high up the patriarchy cower away from in fear. Dabbling in the art of arson became our slogan, our repertoire. Our form of rebellion against inhumane creations administered to monitor the population. I inhale deeply to take in the strong chemical scent wafting towards me. I fix my eyes on the Convoys surrounding us. Seven of them, armed and aiming their weapons directly at us. Heavy chrome armour adorn their bodies; pink, red and blue lights forming hues on their black uniforms. Uniforms they'd chosen to wear. Slowly, two Convoys shuffle closer, their boots dragging through deep puddles on the ground. The taller one lowers his gun - a Spectre M4 redesigned specially for security. To stun, not kill. He calls out something along the lines of unmask yourself, but I feign ignorance. His partner's grip tightens on her Spectre as she steps closer. Kal nudges me nervously, his elbow making contact with my bruised ribs. I grunt in indignation, my right hand edging towards the hem of my hood. Time slows down, and my heartbeat forms a heavy tempo against my sternum. I drop my Zippo from my sleeve and into my palm, twirling it between my gloved fingers before flicking it open. Five letters slide off my tongue as I lean forward ever so slightly, a blur of orange swaying gently in my hand. " Catch ." Seven Spectres aim at the fallen lighter and we leap off the rooftop, wind hollering in our ears. But it all goes quiet when flames begin their descent through the trail we set within the building. More luminous than any light in the city, more incessant than any artificial intelligence.  --- The sensation of pure, unfiltered adrenaline coursing through my veins is an experience unmatched by any other. From the moment my harness hooks onto the ledge and I lose sight of the rooftop, every ounce of tension in my muscles seem to evaporate. Small tendrils of hair come loose from my braid, delicately fluttering against my skin and an enthralling view of chaos ascends from the city - my city- 'Tor' in toxic plumes of smoke. I crave it, that feeling of fear mixed with false bravado. The thrill.

And perhaps I even enjoy the silence that follows me as I plummet from sixty-seven stories of Red Rooms set ablaze. "Fallon." The brief silence which instantly dissipates as soon as my boots touch

 concrete. "Fallon, hurry up." I stop prodding at my eye with a huff, "If you'd rather leave without properly getting things done, Kal, then by all means - leave ." He pulls his balaclava off, mumbling under his breath. A disapproving frown tugs at my mouth but I don't chide him just yet. He's a newbie. A jumpy, nervous kid. It's why he wore a balaclava instead of a wig like everyone else. It's why I have to be lenient with his immature grumbles. Besides, I'm far too busy fishing out a colored lens from the surface of my eyeball to care about the hysterics of a panicked infant. It's standard practice; wearing gloves, wigs, lenses, masks, et cetera, et cetera, and burning them at the end of each job. We do it in order to maintain anonymity. Even a miniscule glimpse of any of our faces or the shadow of a fingerprint can result in being executed. Publicly executed in the centre of Tor with our corpses displayed in all their putrid, rotten, deteriorating beauty. "That was stupidly uneventful," Kal mutters, referring to our earlier excursion, grabbing me by my collar and hauling me out of my thoughts. We make a left turn that leads us away from the alleyway, the faint scent of petrol lingering on the fabric of our clothes. I hum instead of snapping at him to be grateful nothing of note had occurred. I've upset him enough for a day. He remains silent with his brow furrowed. I do the same. As we step out onto the crowded streets of Central Tor, I watch him take in the sheer amount of people bustling about at night, unbothered by the drones zipping through the marketplace with their radars. Children run about, skinny and frail, clothed in tattered yet brightly colored garments. Women who go about bargaining, a feeble and ineffective method to try and lower prices. It's how people like us live; basic necessities aren't easily obtainable during the day and affording everyday meals is a luxury. I know that, but Kal doesn't. He was born privileged and comfortable in the Capital.

He looks over at me and then at the Convoy near a wine stall close by, a slightly dazed expression glossing over his features, "What now?" I shrug, a small smile forming on my face. My hands slip into my pockets, gaze flicking up at the pink sky, heavy with smog and the promise of rain, "We celebrate." His bewilderment doesn't fade for the next few minutes, even as we both drop onto the edge of my apartment's building. Nearly eight hundred feet above the ground and all we do is bite into identical ice cream sandwiches with nothing to accompany us but the bittersweet essence of freedom. It's comforting and slightly strange how easily I warmed up to the kid in an hour of walking about. We talked about how he'd found himself in Tor looking for its feared Insurgency. He wouldn't tell me how he heard of us but he did say that after the passing of his mother, he had nowhere else to go. He told me he's surprised I'm being nice to him and I haven't already shoved him off the ledge. I told him not to give me any ideas. Then we lapse into a peaceful silence I find myself enjoying.

"How'd it all happen anyways?" he asks suddenly. I look at him and the sleep evidently weighing down his eyelids. For the first time I truly realise how young he is, still three years away from being an adult. "The Movement?" When he nods, I sigh, propping myself up on my palms, "It happened because there were too many people." Too many people and not enough space, not enough resources to go around. Not enough humanity to go around. Everything was an experiment, a means to an end - a profitable end. The experiments weren't carried out by humans though. They'd created robots that looked nothing like people and yet acted just like them. Robots that killed with no hesitation to extinguish any objections, just as The Manufacturers had programmed them to. Robots that killed the seven world leaders that had begun this new regime . It was chaos and an opportunity for rebellions to break free. Until technocrats had risen and taken complete charge. I spare Kal the details; the horrors I'd been forced to witness when my parents were murdered for protesting after things started going downhill. After the countless promises made to us were broken. I'd watched the discreet massacring of the elderly and orphaned in the name of science and salvation. Children were lined up like lambs for slaughter, because that's what we were to them. Lab rats. One by one, the children I'd known for roughly three months slumped to the floor, lifeless and unmoving. When my turn came, I ran. I ran until my heart threatened to tear past the confines of my ribcage. I ran until the bitter smell of death couldn't trace my steps and find me once again. I ran until I found my home for the next seventeen years. I ran until I found my own salvation.

ARGUMENTATIVE

FIRST PLACE: Nguyen My Hai Ngoc, Vietnam

SECOND PLACE: Emil Shadid, Costa Rica

THIRD PLACE: Arvind Salem, United States

ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNER: Juan Diego Coronel French

It would be a good thing if by the year 2050, half the pregnancies in developed countries occurred through surrogacy. Agree or disagree?

Nguyen My Hai Ngoc, Argumentative

The Market of Maternal Love? - A world of surrogacy and exploitation

“Get ready to go to the hospital, Ngoc.”  This was my final message from my mom before I realized with shock that my mother, LyLy, had to endure the agony of losing her child twice in her life. My heart did indeed have a knot, my blood vessels seemed to have been severed and had ceased to function as I thought of the image of my mother after she lost her children. It led me to wonder, "How do I exist?” My mother’s experience proved to me the impact fertility troubles can have on women. How many individuals can truly sympathize with the despair and pain experienced by women who are having reproductive issues? Surrogacy is a solution for these women - but, as many fear, will the growth of surrogacy only mark a proliferation of a tragic tendency in the exploitation of women 42 years after I was born in 2008?

This piece recognizes the benefits that surrogacy offers in the present day for women, families and children. However, I contend that regardless of these merits, the world this question describes in 2050 is one of the industrialization of maternal love. We can, and should, acknowledge the benefits of surrogacy while seeking to prevent this world emerging. 

Surrogacy in the present day addresses various fertility issues of women, gives a secure life to children in these families, and especially yields happiness to all couples. We have a duty to assist the 39% of women under 35 who have reproductive difficulties  (OASH, 2021) as part of their human right to be treated fairly. Surrogacy is how we can help these women. When the children are born carrying their genes, rather than having to adopt children who they share no biological connection with, surrogacy helps women live the life that they desire and, therefore, allows them more choice and freedom. Furthermore, for many the pinnacle and most reputable status a woman may achieve in life is in parenting. Sharing in God's creative power by giving birth to a human being is a gift that only a mother can properly appreciate. 

Moreover, a Cambridge University study (“Children of Surrogate Mothers”, 2017) found that 86% of surrogates' own children were happy with their mọther’s participation in surrogacy, with a majority of children born through surrogacy having a relationship with both their legal and surrogate mothers. Mitchell Green, who is an English surrogate, has stated “You never think the baby is yours” in heradvocacy for helping couples with fertility issues (The Economist, 2015). Surrogacy brings these children into existence and, handled well, does not entail the splitting up of families.

Furthermore, surrogacy not only supports these families in their troubles conceiving but also protects such couples from breaking up. According to Smart Marriages, in the United States, 66% of couples in 2010 who divorced were childless (EmaxHealth, 2010). The relationship between the absence of children and loneliness in marriages is remarkably significant, a finding which could be explicated by the fact that children are a key motivator to keep families more solid. Divorce is commonly effortless if families do not have children, both legally and monetarily though perhaps not always emotionally. This is because there are no custody disputes or family courts to worry about; all that must be taken into account is who receives what properties and the division of the assets. An empirical study from Wilkinson & Finkbeiner (“Divorce Statistic”, 2022) found that the divorce rate for childfree couples is as much as 40% higher than for those with children. Surrogacy helps these couples to become more sustainable and healthy, helping everyone involved and preventing divorce. These various positives prove that the right to surrogacy should indeed be protected.

However, if 50% of births in the developed world occurred through surrogacy, we must ask whether surrogates would become economic tools commercially and even whether a ‘trade market’ in maternal love would emerge. On this scale, surrogates in the developing world would be exploited brutally, ruthlessly and furiously - as underprivileged and illiterate women attempted to attain ten years worth of their normal salary in a single pregnancy. Remarkably, in 2015, a European Parliament report itself described surrogacy as being “reproductive exploitation” that “undermines the human dignity” of women (“Annual Report on Human Rights”, 2015).

In this new world, we will see greater economic, emotional and physical exploitation of women in the developing world. On economic exploitation, the more supply we have of a service the lower its price will become. Thus, when the sheer number of surrogates increases to this extent the amount each surrogate can earn from a pregnancy is likely to dwindle significantly, making the industry even more exploitative. 

Moreover, the risk of emotional difficulties such as stress and frustration is inevitable because of the hormonal changes during childbearing. A research paper from the National Library of Medicine has indicated that the prevalence of perceived stress amongst pregnant women was 11.6% (NIH, PMC, 2019) while the emotionally destructive surrogacy will place even greater stress on surrogate candidates compared to normal pregnancies when it operates on this industrial scale (Reproductive BioMedicine Online, 2014). A Kashan University of Medical Sciences official publication featured an interview with a 31-year-old surrogate who stated that “I had morning sickness during the entire nine months in my surrogacy. I think I will have to spend all the money earned to treat my problems.” (“The Experience of Surrogate Mothers'', 2020). To cement this point, let’s examine how surrogates' physical health would deteriorate in this world if a study of German women showed that 41% of them suffered reduced physical well-being during pregnancy. (EJNC, 2021). Do we truly want to live in such a world?

Furthermore, in the 27 years until 2050, great cultural and legal problems would emerge as the number of pregnancies occurring through surrogacy rose from 0.2% (NLM, 2022) to 50%. This rise will result in conflict between cultures, as women receive sperm from single men through in vitro fertilization , or in order to carry out surrogacy for recipients such as LGBT couples leading to great legal and cultural conflicts in several nations. Surrogacy in small and controlled numbers to support couples experiencing challenges having children is necessary and fantastic, but due to the effect on society and religion if surrogacy increased so dramatically there would be a tremendous backlash. 

From my family’s history, I am well aware of the value of reproductive technology for helping women. It is undeniable that surrogates enable women with reproductive difficulties to become mothers, while helping society avoid divorce and create families. However, in a world in which 50% of pregnancies occur through surrogacy, would pregnancy continue to retain its powerful link to maternal love or would it simply become a business to abuse women? We should strive to prevent this world from emerging since this society would be worse for women, children and families.

Is gene editing ethical?

Emil Shadid, Argumentative

Knowledge at the service of humanity

What's the point, doctor? I'm dying regardless, aren't I? This was Brian Madeux’s (49) leading dispute with doctors at the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland, California, a few days before getting injected with gene editing tools to treat a metabolic inherited disease called Hunter Syndrome. For decades, he experienced a life filled with despondency and trepidation due to a single defective chromosome that triggered organ failure, brain damage, and developmental delays inside his body. Finally, on November 13th, 2017, CRISPR-Cas9, the world's preeminent genome editing machine, was utilized to implant a vast amount of the corrective gene in the patient, which resulted in a slow yet effective amelioration of his condition. Undoubtedly, this technology is relatively new and is in its experimental stages, but disregarding such futuristic machinery out of fear undervalues the substantial effect on others.

The first sightings of gene editing date back to the late 1900s. In 2009, scientists had a breakthrough with CRISPR-Cas9, which outperformed previous methods in terms of speed, simplicity, cost, and accuracy. Incipiently, this idea was deemed meaningful, but as the research progressed, many were scared of its outcome. Due to ethical concerns, the United States, Japan, Norway, China, and India determined that continuing this trail would be precarious and therefore proclaimed it illegal to perform. In addition, they believed that genome modification amounted to playing God, which relies on the outlook that everything natural is favorable. However, if replicated, we would be unable to use antibiotics, practice medicine, combat famine, or tackle diseases that kill millions of humans yearly; yet, this is all perfectly natural . In other words, why use religion to paint the study as immoral when, in reality, we overlook the possibility of eliminating numerous conditions that cause others unimaginable pain?

Nevertheless, despite the widespread concern for mosaicism and the unknowingness towards genome editing, this is not the first time that society has questioned a medical discovery. In 1847, Idnaz Semmelweis conducted research on puerperal fever. It revealed that when doctors performed autopsies, cadaverous particles would adhere to their skin, thus transmitting the virus. Although he faced criticism, hand hygiene now ranks among the best infection prevention methods. To quote German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, “To live is to suffer; to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” The Bible extends this idea in Philippians 2:4 by stating, “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” As a result, it is unjust to enact legislation prohibiting the discovery of cures to diseases that afflict humans daily when the technology to assist and revolutionize their lives for the better exists.

Gene editing is controversial, but whether it is ethical or not, the answer is a heartfelt yes . From a moral standpoint, it is only righteous to allow others to experience life without suffering and find their meaning. As Socrates once wrote, “There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”

However, is it immoral to disregard the variegated interpretations that ethics possesses and their veracious repercussions? Ever since the dawn of time, human beings have never established a universally accepted definition for such a term. Given that everyone is distinct, there are various justifications for our moral compass, which defines what is virtuously right or wrong. Additionally, our opinions on whether a subject is ethical or unethical are not valued because they develop in a governmental setting where arbitrary and prejudiced evaluations occur, which is beyond our control. For instance, a pregnant woman had heard that her son would most likely be affected by her family's long-term experience with cancer. Afraid of the life he might lead, she decides to undergo the gene-editing procedure, depriving him of a saddening lifestyle. Nevertheless, the young boy, who is now an adult, considers the challenges and issues he faced as having played a role in shaping his identity. The mother in this storyline views the approach as ethical because she understands it would significantly deteriorate her financial situation and mental health if he acquired this disease. On the other hand, her child would not grow up to be the same individual, which debates the unethical side of the concept. If gene editing were legal, regardless of the risks, the mother could go against her hypothetical son's wishes without knowing what could have happened. As a whole, ethicality has always been a two-way street regarding the difficulties millions of humans endure daily. Without a doubt, the lack of a clear meaning of the word ethical leaves us all in doubt that the solutions to many worldwide problems, such as dangerous inherited conditions, are more complex to solve without considering every perspective.

Undoubtedly, ethics have always been a part of history, whether it was to avoid bloodshed in wars or to keep the world balanced and fair, as shown at the conference in Paris that set the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. While arguing over morality, French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas once defined its necessity as a way to save oneself from violence and terror and apply infinite responsibility to others. In other words, it is a way to reflect on specific issues and avoid conflict if necessary. Unfortunately, the intricacy linked to the matter is often undervalued under certain circumstances, which creates a path for citizens to follow politicians or the country's jurisdiction mindlessly and exploitatively while concealing their true objectives. Even though it might not seem accomplishable, genome editing is not far off from being utilized only to benefit certain people recognized by their money and influence over social media. The concept of immortality has been assumed to be unreachable by humans. It is considered impossible due to highly reactive molecules that initiate chemical changes, ultimately leading to death. Nevertheless, what if there was a way to stay alive forever? What if gene modification is the answer to a mystery most of our ancestors fantasized about solving? Realistically, all of these doubts matter, but the most crucial question is: do we want to find out? Not only would wealthy individuals subsidize and eventually misuse the technology, but the outlook that life is not endless inspires others to take risks and follow their dreams. After all, we must establish limitations for this machine to prevent the future of medicine from leading to society's downfall.

Overall, genome editing has one of the best chances of becoming a cure that not only heals but also provides guidance to humans worldwide that need support. There are many people that forget the importance of caring for others and help them achieve happiness since not everyone is born with the same qualities. Without this, the world would become unjust and no one would understand the true meaning of helping others. There should never be a time where we have to choose between the interest of others and what we believe is morally correct. Our time living is not limitless, which means that we should not take every minute that counts for granted. It's better to live, than to die regretting not fighting for a cause. However, we can only focus on the dangers and disadvantages that CRISPR-Cas9 could bring. It is inhuman that we give up and watch as our friends, colleagues, and fellow citizens suffer from the continued prejudice and injustice they did not choose or deserve. More often than not, ethical and unethical describe specific projects or ideas but only partially reflect what they represent. Typically people forget that there is never a black-and-white scenario. We should not let others' mischievous intentions disregard our true objective: to improve the lives of many people around the globe. Through the continued effort and compromisation of citizens and the open-mindedness regarding newer technologies, we shall overcome such unethical arguments and grant other Brians the possibility to step into a future greatly prophesied about and only observed in fiction. 

References:

Wilber, David. “The Messiah’s Preexistence and Divinity in Philippians 2:5-11 — David Wilber.” David Wilber , 18 Jan. 2023, www.davidwilber.com/articles/the-messiahs-preexistence-and-divinity-in-philippians2v5-11 .

“A Human Has Been Injected With Gene-editing Tools to Cure His Disabling Disease. Here’s What You Need to Know.” Science | AAAS , 18 Feb. 2023, www.science.org/content/article/human-has-been-injected-gene-editing-tools-cure-his-disabling-disease-here-s-what-you .

Associated Press. “Second Man Undergoes Gene Editing; Therapy Has No Safety Flags so Far.” VOA , 7 Feb. 2018, 

www.voanews.com/a/second-man-undergoes-gene-editing/4242428.html .

Associated Press. “Newer Methods May Boost Gene Therapy’s Use for More Diseases.” New York Post , 2 June 2021, www.nypost.com/2021/06/02/newer-methods-may-boost-gene-therapys-use-for-more-diseases .

Gyngell, Christopher, et al. “Moral Reasons to Edit the Human Genome: Picking up From the Nuffield Report.” Journal of Medical Ethics , vol. 45, no. 8, BMJ, Aug. 2019, pp. 514–23. https://doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2018-105084 .

Ethical Issues: Germline Gene Editing | ASGCT - American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy | . www.patienteducation.asgct.org/patient-journey/ethical-issues-germline-gene-editing .

Nhgri. “What Are the Ethical Concerns of Genome Editing?” Genome.gov , 13 Mar. 2019, www.genome.gov/about-genomics/policy-issues/Genome-Editing/ethical-concerns .

What Are the Ethical Issues Surrounding Gene Therapy?: MedlinePlus Genetics . www.medlineplus.gov/genetics/understanding/therapy/ethics .

“Pro And Con: Should Gene Editing Be Performed on Human Embryos?” Magazine , 3 May 2021, www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/human-gene-editing-pro-con-opinions .

Bergman, Mary Todd. “Harvard Researchers Share Views on Future, Ethics of Gene Editing.” Harvard Gazette , 8 Nov. 2022, 

www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/01/perspectives-on-gene-editing .

“What Are Some Medical Breakthroughs That Were Initially Ridiculed or Rejected?” Quora , www.quora.com/What-are-some-medical-breakthroughs-that-were-initially-ridiculed-or-rejected .

“Hunter Syndrome: Causes, Symptoms, Diagnosis, Treatment and Outlook.” Cleveland Clinic , www.my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/17932-hunter-syndrome .

“Inherited Metabolic Disorders - Symptoms and Causes - Mayo Clinic.” Mayo Clinic , 12 July 2017, www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/inherited-metabolic-disorders/symptoms-causes/syc-20352590 .

Third Place

Arvind salem, argumentative, united states.

“I felt like someone that sold my child.” These were the words that emotional surrogate mother Tanya Prashad choked out when recounting giving up her surrogate child at birth: a decision that still haunts her a decade later. Years later, on one of her visitations, her child could only muster one question: “Why did you give me away?” The same question haunts hundreds of surrogate children including Brian, who bluntly states "It looks to me like I was bought and sold." 

Tanya’s story is not offered to shun surrogacy in every circumstance: in some instances, surrogacy is necessary, particularly when biological and social considerations leave the prospective parents with no other choice. Surrogacy has blessed many infertile and homosexual couples with children and allowed women to balance motherhood and their career. However, it is clear that surrogacy is fraught with complications. Thus, while surrogacy is necessary in certain cases, its adverse effects on both individuals and society make it undesirable on a large scale. 

Individually, surrogacy adversely affects the birth mother and the child. Due to the sheer number of medicines the mother must take for the embryo to be successfully implanted, any surrogacy is automatically characterized as a high-risk pregnancy, with complications including ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, blood clots, cancer, and even death. Additionally, many mothers, like Tanya, experience emotional trauma when giving up the child they carried. A 2014 study published in the Iranian Journal of Reproductive Medicine concluded that surrogacy was a high-risk emotional experience and recommended that surrogates receive professional counseling throughout the process, with a 2018 study published in the Journal Human Reproduction finding that surrogates have higher levels of depression both during and after their pregnancy. Moreover, surrogacy has an adverse impact on children: a 2017 study published in the American Society for Reproductive Medicine found that children born through surrogacy are at increased risk for low birth weight, hypertension, and placenta previa, and even worse, a 2014 study from the Journal of Perinatology found a 4-5 times increase in stillbirths from pregnancies conducted through assisted reproductive technologies, including those used in surrogacy.  Furthermore, it is widely acknowledged that children born from surrogacy have problems adjusting especially in adolescence.  A 2012 study from the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry found that children born from surrogacies had higher levels of difficulty in adjusting, even beyond levels found in children conceived from gamete donation, indicating that the lack of a gestational connection between mother and child hinders the child's development, with the study's authors noting that mothers are prone to understating their child's psychological adjustment difficulties  so the difficulties are likely greater than those found in this study. Crucially, the results hold for children who are not aware of their origins, although they are weakened, since mothers who hide their children's origin express distress as a result of guilt, which has a negative impact on the child: an effect amplified if the child knows the true reason. 

It follows that since surrogacy is harmful to the individuals involved that it is harmful at a societal level. However, surrogacy's adverse effect on society exceeds its total individual harm. Proponents of surrogacy argue that surrogacy is a societal benefit because it allows more couples to have children. Furthermore, since these parents go through many extra steps to have children, they are likely more loving, endowing the child with an environment conducive to success. For women, surrogacy also represents a happy medium between career and childbirth, allowing women to have the best of both worlds. By extension, women are free to focus on their careers, allowing them to compete with men, enhancing societal productivity, by freeing up women's time when they are at their peak. Thus, surrogacy represents a potent vehicle for social equality and productivity. Yet, the very fact that society requires this many surrogacies is a cause for concern. Societally, the frequency of surrogacy is a barometer to measure the frequency of the constraints that necessitate surrogacy. Thus, a rapid proliferation in surrogacy would mean that society has a high rate of these constraints such as infertility and a continued penalty on career-oriented women, which would ideally wane as society advances, making surrogacy societally undesirable not as a result of what it causes per se, but of what an increase in surrogacy indicates. A much more desirable outcome would be a decrease in infertility and stronger protections for new mothers, allowing them to balance their career and childbirth, not an increase in these conditions that force couples to turn to surrogacy. 

A possibility overlooked in the previous argument is that medical advances could make surrogacy cheaper and more accessible, resulting in an increase in surrogacies without necessarily meaning an increase in the underlying conditions behind surrogacy. However, extending this argument reveals dangerous implications behind the expansion of surrogacy. If half of the pregnancies in the developed world are through surrogacy, demand would increase, driving up prices and restricting access to surrogacy. Eventually, there wouldn't be enough women available to serve as surrogates, making its growth self-limiting. The only way that surrogacy could continue to grow is by introducing a new supply of women to lower the price, counteracting the lack of available women. Since the scenario specifies that surrogacy’s growth would appear in the developed world, the surrogacy industry could outsource the service, by paying women in developing countries to carry the child. Yet, women in developing countries are often ill-equipped to consider this life-altering decision. HBO correspondent Gianna Toboni discovered that surrogacy companies utilize predatory tactics to recruit women in developing countries, specifically in India. Women are routinely recruited from impoverished areas, directed to sign contracts that they cannot read, much less understand, and forced to spend a year away from home in a facility and undergo a painful and risky Cesarean section delivery to maximize the number of births per day even when not medically necessary. Additionally, doctors often implant multiple embryos to increase the chances of the woman successfully becoming pregnant, without notifying the intended parents. Additional children are often sold into the black market to families from wealthier nations. If not, they are sentenced to a life of human trafficking, slavery, sexual exploitation, and forced marriage unbeknownst to the intended parents.  

Moreover, surrogacy’s globalization and profitability mean that women in developing countries focus more on surrogacy rather than living a normal life and bearing their own children. Surrogacy may leave them too physically and emotionally drained to have their own children, which has dangerous implications for the demographics of developing countries. The number of children in future generations will vastly drop, leaving these countries unable to maintain a robust social safety net to care for the elderly and disadvantaged.

Thus, surrogacy’s harm to both individuals and society renders it undesirable on a large scale. Individually, it physically and emotionally harms the birth mother and the child. Societally, the very need for surrogacy highlights structural biological and social problems that prevent traditional pregnancies, while exploiting the developing world. For every surrogacy, there is a Tanya forced to give up their child, a Brian haunted by his very existence, and two parents with no other choice. On the other side of the globe, women are packed into facilities, coerced into carrying someone else's child, and a host of additional children dismissed as collateral damage, sentenced to a life of subjugation and abuse, all in the service of a billion-dollar industry that degrades individuals and destabilizes society.  

What should the ideal age of voting be? 

Juan Diego Coronel French, Argumentative

Lowering Voters’ Age: A Step Towards Youth Empowerment in South America

The year 2012 marked a turning point in Argentina’s history, as its National Congress made a historic decision towards strengthening democracy. Almost unanimously, they lowered the voting age, allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to participate in political processes1. This decision started the path of not just one, but thousands of future political leaders who, from a young age, will have made their voices heard.

Lowering the voting age represents a step forward in the constant search for universalizing the right to vote. At first, this right was reserved for privileged males, however, over the years the requirements were considered precarious and subsequently modified in favor of women, racial minorities, and even young people2. Nowadays, there is a global debate about whether the conventional voting age of 18 years should be labeled as obsolete. While most States are still deliberating, some South American countries have made significant progress in this regard. As mentioned, Argentina, together with Ecuador and Brazil, are among the minority States that have successfully implemented this reform3, while the remaining countries of the region face the consequences of not doing so.

South America has a unique opportunity to expand democracy and set an example for the rest of the world by standardizing a lower voting age. Despite facing challenges associated with its underdevelopment, South America has a strong tradition of youth involvement in politics through protests and activism. By lowering the voting age young people would be empowered to take an active role on political issues, while creating a strong generation of leaders. All sectors of society deserve representation by their rulers, and underage people, excluded from voting, feel disconnected from their governors. This leads to political apathy, a phenomenon seen in today’s world. The development of a future generation active in politics is the only way to combat it, and this can be achieved by giving young people suffrage. It is essential to analyze precedents where voting age was lowered, and where it has not, with emphasis on ensuring young people can re-engage with politics. South America, rather than a place of trial and error, has the potential of being seen as innovative and committed to democracy. 

Following Argentina’s case, the “Voto Joven” (Youth Vote) law went into effect for the 2013 legislative elections. However, only 20% of young people participated4, allowing critics to label the initiative as a failure. This situation made the Argentine Government realize that if they wanted to see results in youth turnout, the effort needed to extend beyond a mere law. On one hand, the national Undersecretariat for Political Affairs recognized youth vote as a fundamental human right, partnering with other national and sub-national institutions to promote young people’s interests on public affairs5. The objective was to reduce the participation gap between 16 to 17-year-olds and all other voters. After five electoral processes, a peak of 63% youth turnout was registered, as a result of the aforementioned efforts6. This led, on the other hand, to international organizations supporting the youth vote because of its positive impact. The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), for example, has promoted lowering the voting age on a global scale through dialogue and recommendations to States7. Furthermore, UNICEF has launched campaigns encouraging young Argentines to vote, reinforcing the government’s initiatives8. “Voto Joven” has been successful in lowering the voting age, and other States can learn from this example and implement similar policies to benefit their citizens.

In recent years, South America has seen an increase in protests with socio-political causes, with young people as the main protagonists. In contrast with previous generations, most people have the right to freedom of expression, which they use to voice dissatisfaction with their governments. One of the most known protests was the Chilean Winter in 2011, where students demanded an improvement in public education. They organized strikes, occupied schools and universities, and blocked roads9. Unlike people of voting age, who can express their views through ballots, young Chileans could only protest. Their only option was to stay in the streets until the government responded, at all costs. The government implemented the requested changes and budget increase, however, the damage had already been done. The massive amount of injured caused many young people to become both fearful and unmotivated to participate in protests10. These events distance underaged people from politics, when the opposite should be the case. Young people should be encouraged to participate in democratic processes. Giving them the opportunity to vote is a way to develop their interest in public issues while reducing the risks usually associated with protests. Although more protests in Chile arose many years later with the 2019 social outburst, these were not entirely motivated by students, compared to what happened in 2011. The Chilean Winter is just one of several cases of youth fighting for their interests, and they should be taken seriously.

Despite the reasons outlined above there is opposition to lowering the voting age, based on three main points. Firstly, critics argue that young people lack sufficient academic knowledge and comprehension of the national issues and candidates to make informed decisions when voting. However, this argument is flawed as young people are the main users of social media apps such as Twitter, where 66% of the content consumed is about politics11.  In addition, voting does not require professional qualifications and it is a fundamental right in a democratic society. Secondly, some argue young people are not interested in politics and may be manipulated by adults. Nonetheless, this position ignores the many protests and movements organized by underaged people, such as the Chilean Winter. Moreover, studies have shown young people are capable of forming better-informed opinions than older generations on topics such as human rights and climate change, as they have more access to information12. Critics also argue young people have not experimented political decisions, and therefore do not understand the impact of voting. However, it is important to understand that politics affect everyone, including young people, and they should have a say in shaping their future. With proper education and campaigns, young people can understand the implications of their choices. Finally, critics say lowering voting age would worsen the situation in imperfect democracies. Yet, leaders have started to recognize the importance of youth participation, as recently seen in Chile’s Constitutional Convention debate, where both left and right-leaning groups agreed on the necessity of empowering young people13. “Voto Joven” is a demonstration of how developing countries can seek improvements on their electoral systems to move in this direction.

Lowering the voting age to 16 is a crucial step towards strengthening democracy and promoting the participation of young people in political processes. The benefits of youth voting are clear, as it allows them to participate in decisions that will influence their future in a direct way. While critics argue that young people lack sufficient knowledge, interest, or life experience, these arguments are flawed. In the era of information, young people are the main consumers of the internet, and it is inevitable to be a stranger to the political situation. Underaged people fight for their interests, as seen in the Chilean Winter. Argentina’s success in lowering voters’ age should serve as an example of an integrated strategy that not only focuses on reform but ensures the measures are effective. The support from international organizations is also functional for promoting youth vote throughout the world. By standardizing a lower voting age, South America can set an example for the rest of the world. It is time for governments to recognize the potential of young people and give them a voice in the decisions that will shape their future. 

BBC News. (2012, November 1). Argentina Lowers Voting Age to 16 for National Elections. Retrieved from

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-20164573

Carnegie Corporation of New York (n.d.). Voting Rights Timeline. Corporation of New York. Retrieved from

https://www.carnegie.org/our-work/article/voting-rights-timeline/

Bhatt, S (2021, September 8). Legal Voting Age by Country. WorldAtlas. Retrieved from  

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/legal-voting-age-by-country.html

CIPPEC (2017). El espíritu adolescente: el voto joven en Argentina. Retrieved from https://www.cippec.org/publicacion/espiritu-adolescente-el-voto-joven-en-argentina/

Subsecretaría de Asuntos Políticos (n.d). Voto joven. Gobierno de Argentina. Retrieved from

https://www.argentina.gob.ar/interior/subsecretaria-de-asuntos-politicos/voto-joven

Ministerio del Interior, Obras Públicas y Vivienda (2016). Voto joven: Balance de la primera elección nacional en Argentina con voto a los 16 años. Retrieved from https://www.argentina.gob.ar/sites/default/files/voto_joven_6.7.pdf

UNICEF. (n.d). Free to be young. Retrieved from

https://changingchildhood.unicef.org/stories/free-to-be-young

UNICEF. (2021, August 6). Activistas de UNICEF visitan a jóvenes para hablar de voto joven. Retrieved from

https://www.unicef.org/argentina/comunicados-prensa/activistas-unicef-anmisita-voto-joven-2021

El Soberano. (2019, August 27). Chile: el invierno estudiantil. Retrieved from https://www.elsoca.org/index.php/mundo/internacionales/2096-chle-el-invierno-estudiantil

Ojo Público (2020, November 16). Un memorial a los adolescentes y jóvenes muertos en las protestas. Retrieved from

https://ojo-publico.com/4045/un-memorial-los-adolescentes-y-jovenes-muertos-las-protestas

Twitter (2019, September 5). Twitter es la red donde la información política tiene mayor relevancia en Argentina. Blog. Retrieved from

https://blog.twitter.com/es_es/topics/insights/2019/twitter-es-la-red-donde-la-informacion-politica-tiene-mayor-rele

Lindekilde, L., Togeby , L. (2022). The Great COVID-19 Lockdown Experiment: Voter Responses to Government Performance. Politics and Governance. Retrieved from

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/17461979221097072

Cooperativa Chile (2022). Nueva Constitución: Voto voluntario para jóvenees de 16 y 17 años, obligatorio desde lo 18. Retrieved from

https://cooperativa.cl/noticias/pais/politica/constitucion/nueva-constitucion-voto-voluntario-para-jovenes-de-16-y-17-anos/2022-05-06/185308.html

journalistic

FIRST PLACE: Dominic Craig L. Carpio, The Philippines

SECOND PLACE: Madeline Magielnicki, United States

THIRD PLACE: Daniel Liang, Australia

ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNER: Laura Vasilachi

first place

Modern journalists primarily chase clicks, scandals, bad news, and public take-downs. What impact does this have on our society?

Dominic Craig L. Carpio, journalistic

The philippines.

Blinding Spectacles

“Wherefore, all the accused…are hereby found guilty beyond reasonable doubt of two crimes of kidnapping and serious illegal detention and are hereby sentenced to imprisonment of two reclusiones perpetua (life sentences).”

In the middle of the cramped, hot courtroom, amid the uproar of the court’s decision, the 21-year-old accused Francisco Larrañaga—commonly known as Paco—is embraced by his family as they are drowned in the flashes of cameras. 

Paco is charged, along with six other men, to have abducted, sexually violated, and murdered two sisters in the central Philippine island of Cebu. Paco, the gang’s alleged leader, also belongs to a prominent political family in the country which includes a former president and other local political figures. His privileged upbringing and his Spanish-Filipino descent made him what Filipinos would call a mestizo: a term carried from the Spanish colonial caste to refer to an upper class of mixed heritage. 

The year was 1997: the country was in the infancy of rebuilding from the upper class’s kleptocratic reign. Just a little over a decade ago, the Philippines underwent one of the most fundamentally transformative chapters of its history: a bloodless revolution monikered “People Power” ousted and exiled former dictator President Ferdinand Marcos, Sr. Under his brutal 14-year rule, the freedoms of the press were significantly stifled. Under the presidency that followed, the country with a new constitution created what is described as the “freest press in Asia.” 

The press now unafraid and bold, the country’s insatiable hunger for a big story was sparked. “People think in terms of flashing headlines,” said Sheila Coronel, an investigative journalist. Tabloids in the country’s many languages would prove very popular, and television newscasts that have adopted a tabloid format of reporting have captured as much as 60% of nightly national audiences in their prime. 

And for a country obsessed with headlines on justice: crime stories, corruption scandals, and holding the powerful to account, Paco’s arrest caught the media’s undivided attention. For the sheer gravity of the crime, what left a particularly sour taste in the public’s mouth was the fact that Paco was a mestizo. As political families are pervasive in the Philippines, coming from such a lineage was in itself perceived as corruption. Thereupon, the unfolding saga “was the story that was selling headlines and much more interesting,” said documentary filmmaker Michael Collins. 

“I said, well, good for the justice system. A rich boy is going to jail, I mean, it works... Right? None of [his family’s] power could stop him because that was what I was getting from the newspapers,” said Solita Monsod, a journalist and economist.

His arrest and the baring of the crime’s details caught the country by storm. Graphic pictures of the dead body of one of the sisters ran on papers and television. “Cop describes violated body,” a headline ran. A Filipino journalist doing a piece on the case cupped his two hands together, saying: “This much sperm was found inside the victim’s body.” 

Paco, who the media often described as a “scion” of a prominent family for his lineage, was soon painted by journalists as privileged drug-addict along with his accomplices. A nightly television magazine news program, Assignment, did a piece on Paco’s crime. “The fate of the…sisters shows what drugs can do. These animals were not born drugged. They made themselves into drug addicts,” said the reporter.

Meanwhile, the media also made a spectacle of the daughters’ bereaved parents. The victims’ mother would testify how Paco and his companions pursued her daughters. The parents sat for interviews and would retell how Paco’s group repeatedly threatened the two. “My daughter told me Larrañaga was always trailing her in school. They ruined my children’s future. And I think that I deserve justice,” said the mother of the victims in a televised interview.

Despite months of investigation and a presidential intervention that saw more law enforcement agencies looking into the case, substantial evidence was yet to be found against Paco in what the media now called “the trial of the decade.” 

That was until the 8th member of Paco’s gang surfaced. 

Davidson Rusia turned himself in, saying his conscience was haunted by his victims and immediately confessed. He soon became the star witness for the case and the central basis of the prosecution, outlining exhaustively the gruesome details of their crime. 

“Rusia took the witness stand for several days, and every day it’s like a teleserye (soap opera) that people watch, and people want to know what Rusia had to say. It’s like he has this fan club,” said Suzanne Alueta, a journalist, on his time as a witness.

One need not imagine what a soap opera based off of Rusia’s account would look like. Even before Paco and the defense could present their case, a highly dramatized reenactment of the crime was broadcast across the nation by a prominent television network in an installment of a true crime investigative documentary series. 

Now already two years since the crime took place, the verdict to the case could finally be delivered. A large convoy of government vehicles bringing police and the accused to the court were greeted by crowds of citizens and the media that surrounded the courthouse. The courtroom was visibly packed beyond capacity, with the squeezed crowd dotted by both photographers and television cameramen who brought along their equipment.

Immediately after the court’s conviction, the room erupted into chaos. Cameramen raised their heavy equipment above the heads of people to capture the maelstrom of journalists swarming the victims’ mother who was screaming in distress. “We want death!” she screamed. As if echoing the calls of the victims’ weeping family, the scores of people that surrounded the courthouse shouted “Death!” as they jeered and booed Paco and his accomplices. 

Amid all this spectacular media sensation, one could easily see how this story is an arc of justice: how a “scion” of a wealthy and prominent family was brought to justice when he dared to heinously cross the line.

Indeed, justice saw its way, and the word “death” left people’s mouths and found itself on paper.

The Supreme Court, acting on appeal of the conviction, elevated the sentence of life imprisonment and ordered Paco and his accomplices to death by lethal injection.

It was only by that point when everything unraveled. 

Paco, at the time when the alleged crime occurred, was attending classes in Manila, an entirely different city on an entirely different island, more than 500 miles away. Classmates, teachers, passenger records, and photographic evidence stood irrevocably in his defense.

Despite countless witness testimony and evidence that would otherwise serve as unequivocal facts that supported his alibi, a corrupted justice system deprived him of a fair trial.

“In this fight for justice,” goes a message recorded by Paco in prison, “I have no voice. I need you to be my voice. My hands are shackled. I need you to be my hands.” With the crazed spectacle he has become, his pleas now succumb to the deafening, spectacular “truth.”

An otherwise innocent man with every good reason has been turned into a vile thug by the cyclical hunger for a spectacle. In an overload of graphic pictures and emotional rhapsodies, the “truth” can seemingly materialize itself. However, when we want the story to climax, when the narrative is so convenient, must we allow sensation to speak for the truth?

Perhaps this conviction needed no courtroom—the media’s spectacle was enough for the country to pass its resolute verdict on Paco.

second place

Madeline magielnicki, journalistic.

When Fiction Becomes Fact: Sensationalized Reporting in the Modern World

On November 2nd, 2016, American far-right journalist Alex Jones reported on his website, InfoWars — which attracts 7.7 million unique visitors per month — that Hillary Clinton and other Democratic officials were sexually abusing children in the basement of a Washington, D.C. pizza restaurant. Similar illegitimate platforms like Breitbart and HagmannReport publicized the same claims, effectively penetrating mainstream media. Less than one month later, Edgar Maddison Welch traveled from North Carolina to the nation’s capital with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, a .38 handgun, and a knife, prepared to hold Clinton accountable. He thought his mission to be noble, claiming that it would require “sacrificing the lives of a few for the lives of many,” according to court documents. After firing three shots, Welch was arrested and sentenced to four years in prison. This infamous case became known as Pizzagate, and demonstrates how the endless quest for viewer engagement by journalists like Jones breeds ignorance, thereby increasing societal danger and polarization. 

In his novel, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Showbusiness , Neil Postman describes disinformation as “information that creates the illusion of knowing something but which in fact leads one away from knowing.” Oftentimes, it stems from journalists correlating their success with high audience engagement, resulting in chasing ‘clicks’ or ‘scandals’ that may not always encapsulate the truth or are entirely false. Pizzagate is one of many instances that successfully altered peoples’ perceptions of reality and generated vehement mistrust of opposing viewpoints for virality. Others include an article by the online British Newspaper, The Exposé, which published false statistics about COVID-19 in the United States for the sake of widespread viewership and, consequently, revenue. In November of 2022, the paper claimed that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed 118,000 children and young adults “died suddenly” since the distribution of the Coronavirus vaccines. The piece was republished across various social media platforms like Instagram; one post of the article’s screenshotted headline earned over 15,500 likes as a reward for intimidating gullible readers into risking their health. Together, these instances convey that inaccurate reporting is taking precedence over critical forms of journalism, and degrading the institution as a whole. To prevent this, journalists and society must collectively recognize that the truth is not always the most dramatic event that will generate high revenue. Rather, honest information promotes critical thinking and forces readers to examine a story from various perspectives. 

This proliferation of false news that stems from journalists amassing clicks also has an astounding polarizing effect on our society. A 2020 study conducted by Brown University acknowledged that the increase in political polarization in the United States over the last four decades is directly associated with the rise of 24-hour partisan cable news. Pew Research Center further proved this in a 2016 study; the analysis of 376 million Facebook users’ interactions with over 900 news outlets found that people tend to seek information that aligns with their own biases. This increases negativity, and, in some cases, hostility, towards opposing viewpoints, consequently fostering political polarization. As views become profitable, readers become customers to whom journalists must advertise. Thus, a click is no longer an endeavor into informative news, but instead a political product at the cost of full-breadth discovery and bipartisanship. As John Jost, co-director of the Center for Social and Political Behavior at New York University puts it, partisan news sources are “making money by energizing polarized audiences.”

In addition to these rather concentrated cases, dishonest reporting at the hands of technological metrics is posing dire threats to international politics. In her book, How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future , Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa describes how “impunity online naturally led to impunity offline, destroying existing checks and balances…I began calling it democracy’s ‘death by a thousand cuts.’” She points at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 as an example, arguing that the accumulation of nearly eight years of misinformation and lies issued by incentivized journalists led to the tragic war. When Russia annexed Crimea in May of 2014, the country undertook a massive disinformation campaign to advance President Vladimir Putin’s image and subvert his adversaries. According to Ressa, Russian news networks “viciously attack[ed] facts with its cheap digital army” through various claims, including that Crimea had consented to its annexation, for example. 

These same harmful techniques and narratives continued into 2022 as the war between Russia and Ukraine erupted, with reporters globally promoting ‘bad news’ for attention and polarization. NewsGuard, an acclaimed tool for journalistic credibility, has identified 358 separate Russia-Ukraine disinformation sites that have spread false narratives since the beginning of the war alone. In November of 2022, journalist Tony Cox published an article in the Russian state-controlled news outlet, Russia Today, that inaccurately posited that the Ukrainian military is dominated by neo-Nazi militias. Cox is credited as a “US journalist who has written and edited for Bloomberg and several major daily newspapers” at the end of the article, inferring legitimacy around such ludicrous claims to the untrained consumer. This counter narrative that justified the invasion of Ukraine by Russia through clicks, then, also lent credence to it. Anyone armed with the internet has access to this inaccurate and potentially harmful information, revealing the need for hard legislation in the online realm; American-owned social media conglomerate Meta has amended its content policy six times alone since the inception of the war. These deficiencies, as showcased by the Ukrainian invasion, have the power to place the sovereignty of entire nations at risk. As long as society’s growing engagement with online journalism and social media remains unregulated, all platforms and their constituents hold the ability to construct new realities. 

The threat of disinformation and its ability to alter our perception of the world as we know it evades sociopolitical, medical, and geographic boundaries, making honest and objective journalism more vital than ever. Ultimately, journalists’ power lies in their agency to select the types of content our society consumes. They hold the ability, and, more importantly, the responsibility, to educate their audiences— not reaffirm their beliefs through flashy, superficial writing. As long as these pioneers ignore this core civic mission of journalism, America and our world at large will inevitably trudge along the path toward self-destruction. 

third place

What is an ongoing technological development that is helping society advance?

Daniel Liang, journalistic

Modern Eugenics: “The revolution of our evolution?”

Forty-five years ago, in a research facility in Japan’s prestigious Osaka School of Science, first-year student Yoshizumi Ishino came across a peculiar pattern in the DNA sequence of the E. coli microbe. Confused to its purpose, he simply noted the anomaly. Though unbeknownst to him at the time, Ishino had at that moment discovered a sequence of nucleotides capable of editing any genetic sequence on Earth; and thus, had become a pioneer of modern eugenics.

Eugenics, simply put, is the study of desirable genes. Researchers of this topic, dubbed ‘eugenicists’, for decades had to navigate challenges posed by a controversial past, ethical restraints and technological limitations. However, with the recent advances in the gene-editing technology CRISPR, eugenicists have the chance to not only implement their ideas and advance our society, but to also re-define their field entirely.

CRISPR, or Clustered-Regularly-Interspaced-Short-Palindromic-Repeats, is the flagship piece of technology leading the modern eugenics revolution. Explained by biotechnology engineer Zhang Feng, CRSIPR “acts as a molecular ‘scissor’”, producing enzymes that detect specific genetic patterns within our DNA. This allows it to ‘cut’ unwanted genes out of our genetic sequence. 

But perhaps the most exciting - and contentious - possibilities that CRISPR provides comes from its ability to add to an individual's genetic sequence. Through its ‘Cas9 protein’, CRISPR can ‘copy-and-paste’ specific traits and characteristics into our DNA. From genes for blue eyes and height, to genes for disease immunity and high aerobic capacity, nearly every physical aspect of the human character can be implanted within a person's genetic capacity.

Proponents are quick to point out that this technology has ground-breaking ramifications for today's society. High resilience and immunity to diseases would extend lives by decades, saving perhaps millions of disadvantaged people who might not have ready access to healthcare. Consequently, it would also take a great burden off the global healthcare system, allowing funding to be diverted to other necessary causes. In fact, already, the United States National Institute in Health has used CRISPR to successfully eliminate muscular dystrophy in mice, allowing them to live twice as long.

Moreover, modern eugenics and CRISPR’s main benefit to society may be its ability to promote equality. If everyone has the genetic potential to be faster, stronger, and healthier, then the inherent differences that separate individuals would become minimal. As put by Australian philosopher and bioethicist Julian Savulescu, genome editing would “stop the genetic lottery”, saving those who would have otherwise “drawn the [genetic] short straw”. Though perhaps not capable of creating a perfectly equal society, modern eugenics could partially level the playing field, giving the previously disadvantaged a better shot at success. 

However, in a recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Centre, most participants voted against using CRISPR in medicine. Religious beliefs aside, these results reflect a cultural mistrust of eugenics, most likely rooted in Nazi Germany’s appalling usage of this ideology to justify forced sterilisations of disabled people; and further perpetuated today by its dystopian portrayal within pop culture. Though rooted in events that are decades in the past, the cultural antipathy towards eugenics presents a major obstacle to the progression of the study.

Nevertheless, opponents argue that not all concerns regarding CRISPR are outdated. When considering eugenics and the implementation of gene modification, it is important to understand that certain characteristics and traits would be considered ‘desirable’, while others considered ‘undesirable’. Therefore, if more and more of the next generation possess similar ‘desirable’ genes, the human gene pool would inevitably shrink. In fact, in eliminating ‘undesirable’ genes, we may accidentally create a less genetically diverse species, vulnerable to inbreeding and unknown diseases. Moreover, many ‘undesirable’ genes may have unknown benefits. Take UBE3A: a risk gene for autism. Though UBE3A has been long known to cause this developmental disability, recent study in the early 2000s revealed that the gene also played an essential role in processing information. Thus, removing it would have caused severe unforeseen consequences. As Jim Kozubek, author of Modern Prometheus: Editing the Human Genome puts it, “you don’t get an advantage [in gene editing] without risking a disadvantage.” 

Furthermore, it is also important to consider how CRISPR would be distributed. Currently, the technology is estimated to cost well over two million dollars per patient, a figure that grants it virtually inaccessible to anyone but the super-rich. If only the upper class has the financial ability to purchase this technology, only their children would benefit. Thus, CRISPR would entrench the division between social classes. However, even if CRISPR technology is made commercially available to the general public, there will still be individuals who choose not to use it. The problem arises when genetically ‘superior’ humans occupy all the positions of power in society, while individuals who did not undergo genome editing are pushed to the side. Australian philosopher Matthew MacDonald even goes as far as to draw links with science fiction film ‘Gattaca’, where genetics alone determine an individual's future.

On the other hand, as a wider variety of genomes becomes commercially available, the limits of ‘human’ characteristics and traits may be challenged. Imagine parents of a human embryo, given free rein to modify his or her genetics. Naturally, most typical parents would eliminate genetic diseases and susceptibility to disease. More ambitious parents may even add to their child's genome, perhaps preferring one eye colour over the other. However, a problem may arise when irresponsible parents are given this full authority. From an extra finger to an extra eye, from an extra inch in height to an extra thirty, CRISPR may be abused, significantly affecting the child's future ability to function in society.

Before CRISPR progresses any further, it is imperative that eugenicists set firm boundaries to its implementation. We should consider an international moratorium until further research into possible dangers is satisfied. Regulations should be agreed upon and enforced, with a limit to the degree of gene modification and subject consent especially important. Furthermore, we should place sanctions on unscrupulous individuals and corporations to deter abuse and exploitation. What’s more, if CRISPR technology is approved, steps should be taken so that the technology is equally accessible to all socio-economic backgrounds, and not monopolised by just the wealthy. Moreover, we should educate the general public regarding the risks of CRISPR, so that decisions made in the future will be informed and ethically responsible. Finally, with the current progression of CRSIPR into ‘germline’ editing (genes that can be inherited by the subject's offspring), the future of the human gene pool is open to manipulation. Therefore, we should also reach a global consensus concerning our direction as a species before any further steps are taken.

Ultimately, questions that were once the realm of science fiction now need to be seriously debated by governments and professional bodies. In the past unregulated, inaccurate and immoral applications of eugenic science led society to disastrous conclusions. However, with recent advancements, it is becoming clear that this science could be giving humanity control over its future evolution. As the limits to CRISPRs applications in health and science are still relatively unknown, who knows how far the boundaries of our evolution can be pushed? If we are to take this genetic leap as a species, how different will humans and society look, act and function, one, two, or ten generations into the future? While the questions regarding CRISPR are difficult and the answers unclear, they can no longer be ignored.

Agar N. (2019). Why We Should Defend Gene Editing as Eugenics. Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics : CQ : the international journal of healthcare ethics committees, 28(1), 9–19. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963180118000336

Bergman, M. (2022, November 08). Harvard researchers share views on future, ethics of gene editing. Retrieved March 5, 2023, from https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/01/perspectives-on-gene-editing/

CRISPR helps heal mice with muscular dystrophy. (n.d.). Retrieved March 5, 2023, from https://www.science.org/content/article/crispr-helps-heal-mice-muscular-dystrophy

Genome editing pros and cons. (2023, February 27). Retrieved March 4, 2023, from https://www.leopoldina.org/en/topics/genome-editing/genome-editing-pros-and-cons/

Kozubek, J., & Modern Prometheus: Editing the Human Genome with Crispr-Cas9. (2017, January 09). HOW CRISPR and gene editing could ruin human evolution. Retrieved March 4, 2023, from https://time.com/4626571/crispr-gene-modification-evolution/

Sufian, S. (2021, February 16). The Dark Side of CRISPR. Retrieved February 16, 2023, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-dark-side-of-crispr/

Questions and answers about CRISPR. (2023, January 18). Retrieved February 15, 2023, from https://www.broadinstitute.org/what-broad/areas-focus/project-spotlight/questions-and-answers-about-crispr

Watson, B. (2022, June 24). Is there gene therapy for autism? Retrieved March 4, 2023, from https://www.xcode.life/genes-and-health/gene-therapy-for-autism/#:~:text=The%20main%20focus%20of%20gene,spectrum%20of%20disorders%20is%20challenging .

What event had the largest impact on your community in 2022?

Laura Vasilachi, journalistic

Trapped in the Crossfire - Moldovans Endure the Trials of the Russian-Ukraine Conflict as Their Country Faces Unprecedented Challenges

Moldova’s populace voiced great concern regarding their country’s future as Russia, its primary supplier of natural resources, launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, which shattered their hopes for a stable and secure life.

Sharing a border of some 900 km with Ukraine, Moldova has long been considered a vulnerable nation. Despite attaining sovereignty from the USSR more than three decades ago, it continues to rely on the aggressor, Russia - its main distributer of gas, having no choice but to comply with its manipulative tactics.

“The abnormally high prices for natural gas and Russia’s attempts to weaponize gas and oil supplies to Europe have triggered an unprecedented energy crisis,” the president of Moldova, Maia Sandu, said. “We are one of the most vulnerable countries in the face of this crisis.”

Lacking other suppliers, the country was compelled to accept exorbitant gas tariffs, facing staggering inflation, its rate rising to 34.62 percent by October of 2022, half a year after the invasion. 

For its citizens, such news was nothing short of catastrophic. In response to the cost-push inflation, the already existing agitation turned into irrationality – people frantically emptied store shelves, panic buying in fear of prices rising even further. 

Aside from potential food shortages, Moldova got struck by another obstacle – destabilization. “We are facing a wide spectrum of hybrid threats, from disinformation and propaganda to cyber-attacks and energy pressures,” the president added.

Disinformation swiftly became uncontainable as pro-Russian sentiments arose in its separatist region, Transnistria. The pro-Kremlin enclave complied with the superpower’s disruptive plans and became a gateway of threats and propaganda. Moreover, the 1,500 Russian troops settled in the region since 1992, so as to maintain Russian influence, now threaten the sovereignty of Moldova, “increasing the security risks” according to Sandu.

With its EU integration hampered by its Achilles heel – Transnistria, it did not take long for Russia to exploit Moldova’s compromised defense. Starting on 18 September 2022 it orchestrated protests, the demonstrators, chanting “Down with Maia Sandu,” tasked to disseminate its one goal – to weaken the pro-Western government and to deepen the political divide.

Subsequently, the president promulgated a law to counter Russian propaganda by banning all affiliated TV news channels. “I do not see why such a law is needed. It’s probably a move of the current government to show how pro-Western they are,” said the administrator of TV6 , one of such channels, Dumitru Chitoroagă. Other supporters shared his sentiments as Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova denounced this action as “a flagrant violation of the right to freedom of access to information.”

2022 challenged Moldovans’ solidarity like never before, bringing many trials for them to face. Regardless of political stance, however, everyone shares the same fears as missile strikes reverberate throughout the nation, the cities – shrouded in darkness for hours on end. As Maia Sandu put it, “It is a difficult time for everyone, and our task is not only to endure - we must develop, and move forward.” 

Amid overwhelming crises, the immense influx of Ukrainian refugees caught the community off guard. However, people swiftly mobilized and came together in an attempt to alleviate the pain of the unfortunate – despite the ongoing discord between pro-Russian and pro-European factions.  

Regardless of the challenges at hand, Moldovans stayed true to their word, showing nothing but compassion to those in search of safety. Although the migration management capabilities were stretched thin by the influx of fugitives, the country and its citizens remained steadfast in supporting the vulnerable. 

According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, after 10 months from the onset of the war, more than 649,000 Ukrainians have entered Moldova’s territory, of which 87,000 have sought asylum. Border crossing data from July 2022 indicated that the country had received the most refugees per capita among all countries, nearing to 4,000 per 100,000 inhabitants.

Francesca Bonelli, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Representative to Moldova, commended the Government’s swift response to the wave of refugees, and praised its willingness to provide aid and support, despite the setbacks posed by the crisis. “The effort made by the Government during this period is incredible,” she said. “Moldova has become a global example in the management of this crisis.” 

The citizens’ unwavering commitment to accommodating the refugees was highly praised by the Executive, which offered monetary support of 3,900 MDL ($207) per month to the generous host families, intended to cover additional expenses such as housing and food. Overall, the initiative was a success, motivating many to join in and help. 

Additionally, the Government, with the support of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), UNHCR, and NGOs such as Caritas and the Charity Center for Refugees in Moldova, issued various financial aid programs which further ensured that the asylum seekers would meet their basic needs and live comfortably.

Victoria, 32, who fled Ukraine with her children, is among the many beneficiaries of the monthly assistance, which allows her family to carry on. “You must know that I received money on my card, and I used them to buy medicines, fruit, and food for my children. They were so happy, and I was also happy to afford that,” she said, in an interview with UNICEF. 

The European Union's aid also extended to providing employment opportunities for the refugees. With the support of the National Employment Agency, job fairs were conducted in several cities, offering thousands of positions to those looking to join the workforce, including locals, as well as Ukrainians. By November 2022, over 870 Ukrainian citizens found a job, as economic agents became more accepting, willing to hire them, despite being reluctant initially.

Moreover, in light of the humanitarian crisis, Moldova has seen an astounding surge of volunteers, who have stepped up to provide support for these newcomers. Valeria, 18, is one of the many who offered to serve as a host. "We wanted to be in solidarity with the people there,” she said, explaining that even though Moldova is poor, the people are generally welcoming – from what little they have, they want to help those who have no possibilities. In her view, her desire to help refugees represents nothing more than “basic human values” that “everyone should have”. 

While many have opened their hearts and homes to the refugees, others have grown resentful of the perceived burden that the newly-arrived Ukrainians have placed on the economy. Dumitru Udrea, General Secretary of the Government, explained that “instigators of hate” – fuelling negative sentiments to the locals – aim to undermine the strength of the community and succeeded in causing unrest. They are propagating the idea that Moldova has no monetary resources to spare – while in reality, the country is receiving generous international support from the EU and NGOs alike. 

However, as resilient as they may be, while Moldovans continue to cope with the aftermath of the war, an alarming rise in cases of anxiety and depression has been reported – particularly among those living near the conflict zone, where the distant sound of bombs and gunfire can be heard. Furthermore, a significant portion of Moldovans have lived through the Transnistrian war of 1990 – a violent conflict between Moldova and its enclave – which has made them all the more susceptible to the effects of warfare noises, leaving behind a long-lasting impact on their emotional well-being.

Jana Chihai, head of the Department of Mental Health at Moldova’s State University of Medicine, added that, according to the World Health Organization, the effects associated with the COVID-19 pandemic led to a 25% rise in anxiety and depression globally. Therefore, social isolation, strained economic circumstances, and the pervasive fear of illness and death have further compounded the stress and trauma of the invasion, leading to a significant increase in mental health concerns among the population.

Nevertheless, the conflict has also inspired many to change their lifestyles – in order to adapt, they have increased their political engagement, advocating for peace, acceptance and stability in the region. By doing so, they have shown that even in the face of great adversity, the fortitude of the human spirit can prevail.

Throughout it all, the Moldovan community emerged stronger than before. Despite facing opposition aiming to sow discord – to tear them apart – they have only grown closer together, with their unity faltering at times but never breaking. The challenges and the uncertainty were but a testament to their strength – a key factor in the country's ongoing recovery and development.

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Nonfiction Books » Essays

The best essays: the 2021 pen/diamonstein-spielvogel award, recommended by adam gopnik.

WINNER OF the 2021 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay

Had I Known: Collected Essays by Barbara Ehrenreich

Every year, the judges of the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay search out the best book of essays written in the past year and draw attention to the author's entire body of work. Here, Adam Gopnik , writer, journalist and PEN essay prize judge, emphasizes the role of the essay in bearing witness and explains why the five collections that reached the 2021 shortlist are, in their different ways, so important.

Interview by Benedict King

Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader by Vivian Gornick

Nature Matrix: New and Selected Essays by Robert Michael Pyle

Terroir: Love, Out of Place by Natasha Sajé

Maybe the People Would be the Times by Luc Sante

1 Had I Known: Collected Essays by Barbara Ehrenreich

2 unfinished business: notes of a chronic re-reader by vivian gornick, 3 nature matrix: new and selected essays by robert michael pyle, 4 terroir: love, out of place by natasha sajé, 5 maybe the people would be the times by luc sante.

W e’re talking about the books shortlisted for the 2021 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay . As an essayist yourself, or as a reader of essays, what are you looking for? What’s the key to a good essay ?

Let’s turn to the books that made the shortlist of the 2021 PEN Award for the Art of the Essay. The winning book was Had I Known: Collected Essays by Barbara Ehrenreich , whose books have been recommended a number of times on Five Books. Tell me more. 

One of the criteria for this particular prize is that it should be not just for a single book, but for a body of work. One of the things we wanted to honour about Barbara Ehrenreich is that she has produced a remarkable body of work. Although it’s offered in a more specifically political register than some essayists, or that a great many past prize winners have practised, the quiddity of her work is that it remains rooted in personal experience, in the act of bearing witness. She has a passionate political point to make, certainly, a series of them, many seeming all the more relevant now than when she began writing. Nonetheless, her writing still always depends on the intimacy of first-hand knowledge, what people in post-incarceration work call ‘lived experience’ (a term with a distinguished philosophical history). Her book Nickel and Dimed is the classic example of that. She never writes from a distance about working-class life in America. She bears witness to the nature and real texture of working-class life in America.

“One point of giving awards…is to keep passing the small torches of literary tradition”

Next up of the books on the 2021 PEN essay prize shortlist is Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader by Vivian Gornick.

Vivian Gornick is a writer who’s been around for a very long time. Although longevity is not in itself a criterion for excellence—or for this prize, or in the writing life generally—persistence and perseverance are. Writers who keep coming back at us, again and again, with a consistent vision, are surely to be saluted. For her admirers, her appetite to re-read things already read is one of the most attractive parts of her oeuvre , if I can call it that; her appetite not just to read but to read deeply and personally. One of the things that people who love her work love about it is that her readings are never academic, or touched by scholarly hobbyhorsing. They’re readings that involve the fullness of her experience, then applied to literature. Although she reads as a critic, she reads as an essayist reads, rather than as a reviewer reads. And I think that was one of the things that was there to honour in her body of work, as well.

Is she a novelist or journalist, as well?

Let’s move on to the next book which made the 2021 PEN essay shortlist. This is Nature Matrix: New and Selected Essays by Robert Michael Pyle.

I have a special reason for liking this book in particular, and that is that it corresponds to one of the richest and oldest of American genres, now often overlooked, and that’s the naturalist essay. You can track it back to Henry David Thoreau , if not to Ralph Waldo Emerson , this American engagement with nature , the wilderness, not from a narrowly scientific point of view, nor from a purely ecological or environmental point of view—though those things are part of it—but again, from the point of view of lived experience, of personal testimony.

Let’s look at the next book on the shortlist of the 2021 PEN Awards, which is Terroir: Love, Out of Place by Natasha Sajé. Why did these essays appeal?

One of the things that was appealing about this book is that’s it very much about, in every sense, the issues of the day: the idea of place, of where we are, how we are located on any map as individuals by ethnic identity, class, gender—all of those things. But rather than being carried forward in a narrowly argumentative way, again, in the classic manner of the essay, Sajé’s work is ruminative. It walks around these issues from the point of view of someone who’s an expatriate, someone who’s an émigré, someone who’s a world citizen, but who’s also concerned with the idea of ‘terroir’, the one place in the world where we belong. And I think the dialogue in her work between a kind of cosmopolitanism that she has along with her self-critical examination of the problem of localism and where we sit on the world, was inspiring to us.

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Last of the books on the shortlist for the 2021 Pen essay award is Maybe the People Would Be the Times by Luc Sante.

Again, here’s a writer who’s had a distinguished generalised career, writing about lots of places and about lots of subjects. In the past, he’s made his special preoccupation what he calls ‘low life’, but I think more broadly can be called the marginalized or the repressed and abject. He’s also written acute introductions to the literature of ‘low life’, the works of Asbury and David Maurer, for instance.

But I think one of the things that was appealing about what he’s done is the sheer range of his enterprise. He writes about countless subjects. He can write about A-sides and B-sides of popular records—singles—then go on to write about Jacques Rivette’s cinema. He writes from a kind of private inspection of public experience. He has a lovely piece about tabloid headlines and their evolution. And I think that omnivorous range of enthusiasms and passions is a stirring reminder in a time of specialization and compartmentalization of the essayist’s freedom to roam. If Pyle is in the tradition of Thoreau, I suspect Luc Sante would be proud to be put in the tradition of Baudelaire—the flaneur who walks the streets, sees everything, broods on it all and writes about it well.

One point of giving awards, with all their built-in absurdity and inevitable injustice, is to keep alive, or at least to keep passing, the small torches of literary tradition. And just as much as we’re honoring the great tradition of the naturalist essay in the one case, I think we’re honoring the tradition of the Baudelairean flaneur in this one.

April 18, 2021

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Adam Gopnik

Adam Gopnik has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 1986. His many books include A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism . He is a three time winner of the National Magazine Award for Essays & Criticism, and in 2021 was made a chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur by the French Republic.

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PWR Boothe Prize Essay Archive

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Boothe Prize essays for 2023-2024

The 2023-2024 Boothe Prize book will be available in summer 2024.

PWR Winners for 2023-2024

• Miriam Awan (Winner, Spring 2023). “Gender Panic: How the Mainstream News Media Legitimizes Anti-Transgender Political Rhetoric.” Instructor: Chris Kamrath. 
• Zoe Colloredo-Mansfeld (Honorable Mention, Spring 2023). “The Transformational Moves of Art: Exploding Landscapes, Geographies, and Histories Toward Liberation.” Instructor: Selby Wynn Schwartz.

Boothe Prize essays for 2022-2023

The 2022-2023 Boothe Prize book is available as a PDF  here .

PWR Winners for 2022-2023

• Sejoon Chang (Winner, Spring 2022). " Sweet, Sour, and Umami: The Socioeconomics of Pad Thai and Thailand's State-Sponsored Gastrodiplomacy. ” Instructor: Julia Schulte.
• Aya Hilal (Honorable Mention, Spring 2022). “ Palestinian Disability: Ableism and Israel’s Settler-Colonial Strategy. ” Instructor: Lindsey Felt.
• Caeley Woo (Winner, Fall 2022). " Bridging the Divide: Narrative as a Means to Create Empathy in Sexual Assault Cases. " Instructor: Becky Richardson.
• Jaeden Solomon Clark. (Honorable Mention, Fall 2022). “ From the Body, to the Mind, to the Soul: The Dialectical Disfigurement of the Self Colonialism through Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017). ”  Instructor: Mutallip Anwar.
• Zoya Fasihuddin (Winner, Winter 2023). " Did My School Colonize Me? ” Instructor: Lynn Sokei.  
• Hanyi Chen (Honorable Mention, Winter 2023) “ Female Despair, Family Taboo, and Social Shackle: A Glimpse Into the Impact of Chinese Birth Control Policies on Gender Roles Perspectives Through the Stories of Three Generations of Chinese Women. ” Instructor: Mutallip Anwar.

Boothe Prize essays for 2021-2022

The 2021-2022 Boothe Prize book is available as a PDF .

PWR Winners for 2021-2022

• Angélique Charles-Davis (Winner, Spring/Summer 2021). “ America’s Broken Promise: Examining Black Racial Identity in the School Choice Binary. " Instructor: Lisa Swan.
• Jade Araujo (Honorable Mention, Spring/Summer 2021). " A Legacy of Safety: Comprehensive Policy for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. " Instructor: Roberta Wolfson.
• Sofia Gonzalez-Rodriquez (Winner, Fall 2021). " Cuando Colón baje el dedo. " Instructor: Daniel Bush. 
• Parker Kasiewicz (Honorable Mention, Fall 2021). " Automate Checkmate: The Case for Creativity in Computer Chess. " Instructor: Shay Brawn.
• Winner: Zarif Ahsan (Winner, Winter 2022). “ An Archive of Half-Silence: Incorporating Female Sexual Violence Narratives into Public Histories of the 1971 Bangladeshi Genocide. ” Instructor: Efrain Brito.
• Cassidy Dalva (Honorable Mention, Winter 2022). " Syncretism or Disappearance? Understanding the Acculturation of Sephardic Jews. ” Instructor; Sangeeta Mediratta.

Boothe Prize essays for 2020-2021

The 2020-2021 Boothe Prize book is available as a PDF and as an eBook .

PWR Winners for 2020-2021

• Ciara Locker (Winner, Spring 2020). " Building Biosecurity: Examining the Rhetoric of Bioterrorism in Post-9/11 America. " Instructor: Mutallip Anwar.
• Abigal Van Neely (Honorable Mention, Spring 2020).  " The Pedagogy of Values: The Role of Culture and Experience in Education Inequity ." Instructor: Lisa Swan.
• Anonymous. (Winner, Fall 2020). " When Never Again' Becomes 'Yet Again': Advocating for International Cooperation and Multilaterialism to End the Uyghur Genocide ." Instructor: Mutallip Anwar.
• Cole Lee (Honorable Mention, Fall 2020). " Freedom within Bounds: How is Cultural Production Reshaped on Tiktok? " Instructor: Harriett Jernigan.
• Rachel Clinton (Winner, Winter 2021). " Diversity and Exclusion: Exploring the HIgher Education Success Gap between U.S.-Origin and Immigrant-Origin Black Students. " Instructor: Lisa Swan.
• Mia Cano (Honorable Mention, Winter 2021). " Pipe Dreams: A Critical Evaluation of the STEM Pipeline Metaphor ." Instructor: Lisa Swan.

Prize essays for 2019-2020

The 2019-2020 Boothe Prize book is available as a PDF .

PWR Winners for 2019-2020

• Cole Maxwell (Winner, Spring 2019). " Mrs. Stanford in the Nile: The Legacy of the Stanford Family's Collection Practices in Egypt at the Turn of the 20th Century. " Instructor: Gigi Otalvaro.
• Caroline Utz (Honorable Mention, Spring 2019). " Dove, Real Beauty, and Pseudo Social Change: The Consumption, Commodification, and Commercialization of the Body Positive Movement. " Instructor: Yanshuo Zhang.
• Malavika Kannan (Winner, Fall 2019). " Targeting a Generation: How Intersectional Youth Outreach Can Overcome America's Gun Divide. " Instructor: Jennifer Johnson.
• Langston Nashold (Honorable Mention, Fall 2019). " A Climate of Denial: The Cause of and Solution to Republican Skepticism of Climate Science. " Instructor: Mutallip Anwar.
• Madeleine Parker Cassic (Winner, Winter 2020). " The Battle for Public Education. " Instructor: Lisa Swan.
• Ana Ximena Sosa (Honorable Mention, Winter 2020). " Tren Maya: Trail of the Cultures. " Instructor: Irena Yamboliev.

Prize essays for 2018-2019

The 2018-2019 Boothe Prize book is available as a PDF .

PWR Winners for 2018-19

• Esther Omole (Winner, Spring 2018): " Medical Trauma and the Black Female Body: Enacting Clinical Justice for African American Female Victims of Sexual Assault " Instructor: Sarah Peterson Pittock
• Shikha Srinivas (Honorable Mention, Spring 2018): " (Un)settled: Displacement in the Syrian Refugee Crisis and the Social Model of Disability " Instructor: Lindsey D. Felt
• Jackson Parell (Winner, Fall 2018): " Free at Last, Free at Last: Civil War Memory and Civil Rights Rhetoric " Instructor: Andy Hammann
• Ethan A. Chi (Honorable Mention, Fall 2018): " Singlish: Language, Power, and Identity in a Post-Colonial World " Instructor: Jennifer Johnson
• Sierra Wells (Winner, Winter 2019): " De Paisano a Paisano: What a Legendary Mexican Band Has to Say About the Lives of Its Listeners and Why It Matters " Instructor: Sarah Perkins
• Nadav Ziv (Honorable Mention, Winter 2019): " Never Again Means Never Forgetting: The Shoah in Polish Society and Education " Instructor: Samah Elbelazi

Prize essays for 2017-2018

The 2017-2018 Boothe Prize book is available as a PDF .

PWR Winners for 2017-18

• Alexis Lefft (Winner, Spring 2017): " 'If Black Lives Matter, they deserve to be in paintings:' Kehinde Wiley's Lamentation as Ontological Resurrection " Instructor: Jamie O'Keeffe
• Jasmine Liu (Honorable Mention, Spring 2017): " From E Pluribus Unum to E Pluribus Plures: Examining Assimilationist and Nationalist Narratives in American History Textbooks " Instructor: John Peterson
• Sydney Westley (Winner, Fall 2017): " Conversing with Silence: Destabilizing Understandings of the Linguistic Reverberations of the Japanese Internment Camps " Instructor: Tesla Schaeffer
• Lucas Sato (Honorable Mention, Fall 2017): " Not with a Bang but a Computer: An Investigation in Promoting Safe AI Research Based on Lessons Learned from the History of Nuclear Technology Development " Instructor: Jennifer Johnson
• Roxy Bonafont (Winner, Winter 2018): " Push Factors: The Complicity of Traditional News Organizations in the Age of Ambient Media " Instructor: Chris Kamrath
• Rishabh Kapoor (Honorable Mention, Winter 2018): " 'For My Old Kentucky Home, Far Away:' A Case for the Psycho-Sociological Dimension of Rural Brain Drain " Instructor: Lisa Swan

Prize essays for 2016-2017

The 2016-2017 Boothe Prize book is available as a PDF .

PWR Winners for 2016-17

• Julia Sakowitz (Winner, Spring 2016): " 'We're A Lot More Than Gospel Singing:' Small Tourism Businesses in Harlem and Policy Proposals for the UMEZ. " Instructor: Irena Yamboliev
• Alex Maben (Honorable Mention, Spring 2016): " Crafting CRISPR Fantasies: Flaws in Current Metaphors of Gene-Modifying Technology. " Instructor: Jennifer Johnson
• Xinlan Emily Hu (Winner, Fall 2016): " Endangered Languages: Rescuing the World's Invisible Libraries. " Instructor: Irena Yamboliev
• Vienna G. Kuhn (Honorable Mention, Fall 2016): " Fighting for Choice. " Instructor: Lindsey Felt
• Nicholas Branigan (Winner, Winter 2017): " Michelle K. Lee v. Simon Shiao Tam. " Instructor: Paul Bator
• Veronica Kim (Honorable Mention, Winter 2017): " 'It's My Mom's Recipe, and She Got It From a Video: How Food Videos are Changing Home Cooking Culture " Instructor: Brian Kim

Prize essays for 2015-2016

The 2015-2016 Boothe Prize book is available as a PDF .

PWR Winners for 2015-16

• John Sholar (Winner, Spring 2015): " Bitcoin as Currency and Catalyst or Why Bitcoin Will Fail, Why You Shouldn’t Care, and What We’re Missing " Instructor: Eric  vandal  Bussche
• Eleonora Pinto (Honorable Mention, Spring 2015) :  “ Demythologizing the TransMilenio: Why the Bus Rapid Transit System in Bogotá, Colombia has Underserved the Urban Poor ” Instructor: Luke Parker
• Ho Kyung Sung (Winner, Fall 2015): “ Declaring Amnesty on Prostitution: A Marxist Feminist Defense of Amnesty International’s Call for Decriminalization of Sex Work ” Instructor: Ben Wiebracht
• Wyatt Mullen (Honorable Mention, Fall 2015): “ Imagining the Infinite: The Evolution of Space in the American Visual Imagination ” Instructor: Meg Formato
• Joan Creus-Costa (Winner, Winter 2016): “ Beating a Dead-And-Alive Cat: Perspectives of Quantum Mechanics in Popular Science ” Instructor: Jennifer Johnson

Claudia Hanley (Honorable Mention, Winter 2016): “ Eight Hands Up: Re-Evaluating the Meritocratic Nature of College Admissions ” Instructor: Becky Richardson

Prize essays for 2014-2015

The 2014-2015 Boothe Prize book is available as a PDF .

PWR Winners for 2014-15

• Gloria Chua (Winner, Spring 2014): " Salvaging the Self: The Selfie’s Reclamation of the Unified Self in a Postmodern World " Instructor: Wendy Goldberg
• Diego Hernandez (Honorable Mention, Spring 2014): " Humanization and Dialogue in El Sistema and American Adaptations: Socially Minded Music Education through a Freirian Lens " Instructor: Hillary Miller
• Victoria White (Winner, Fall 2014): " Changing the Brothers: Constructions of Masculinity, Sexual Assault, and How to Fix the Frats " Instructor: Karli Cerankowski
• Grace Klein (Honorable Mention, Fall 2014): " Queer Christina of Sweden: How Evolving Accounts of a Long Dead Queen’s Sexuality Reflect More Upon Us Than He "  Instructor: Robert Stephan
• Elisa Vidales (Winner, Winter 2015): " Time to Welcome Chaos: The Intersection of the Trickster, Creativity, and the Math Classroom "  Instructor: Hillary Miller
• Antariksh Mahajan (Honorable Mention, Winter 2015): " The Emergence of Konfrontasi in Singapore’s National Narrative " Instructor: Magdalena H. Gross

Prize essays for 2013-2014

The 2013-2014 Boothe Prize book is available as a PDF .

PWR Winners for 2013-14

• Brian Do (Winner, Spring 2013): " Immediate Healthcare Interventions: A Path to Prosperity in Sub-Saharan Africa "  Instructor: Jennifer Stonaker
• Brian Hie (Honorable Mention, Spring 2013): " Gene Transfer to Remix: A Search for Copyright Reform in a Digital World "  Instructor: Chris Gerben
• Ruizhe (Thomas) Zhao (Winner, Fall 2013): " Word for Word: Culture's Impact on the Localization of Japanese Video Games "  Instructor: Christine Alfano
• Virginia Rose La Puma (Winner, Winter 2014): " On the Brain and Accountability: The Role of the Neuroscience in the Courtroom "  Instructor: Kathleen Tarr
• Sam Kurland (Honorable Mention, Winter 2014): " "Red Lines" and the Syrian Civil War: The Power of a President "  Instructor: John Lee

Boothe Prize essays for 2012-2013

The 2012-2013 Boothe Prize book is available as a PDF .

PWR Winners for 2012-13

• Kirstin Wagner (Winner, Spring 2012): " Managing the Mean Girl:  California's Incomplete State Policy on Social Aggression " Instructor: Sarah Peterson Pittock
• Charlotte Geaghan-Breiner (Honorable Mention, Spring 2012): " Where the Wild Things Should Be:  Healing Nature Deficit Disorder through the Schoolyard " Instructor: Sarah Peterson Pittock
• Kat Gregory (Winner, Fall 2012): " Wanted in Every Sense of the Word:  Deconstructing the Romanticized Outlaw Hero " Instructor: Donna Hunter
• Kaitlyn Williams (Honorable Mention, Fall 2012): " When Gaming Goes Bad:  An Exploration of Videogame Harassment Towards Female Gamers " Instructor: Christine Alfano
• Amy Bearman (Winner, Winter 2013): " The Soul of a New Machine: The Social Psychological Aspects of Human-Computer Interaction " Instructor: Ryan Zurowski
• Ansh Shukla (Honorable Mention, Winter 2013): " The Four-Year Plan: A Reframing of Contemporary Debate Regarding the "Death" of American Undergraduate Liberal Education " Instructor: Mark Taylor

Boothe Prize essays for 2011-2012

Pwr winners for 2011-2012.

• Tina Roh (Winner, Spring 2011): " Gaming Through Glitches: How Glitches Open New Experiences to Players "  Instructor: Christine Alfano
• Kima Uche (Kevin U. Imah) (Honorable Mention, Spring 2011): " Yaoi and Male Homosexuality in Modern Japan: Identity, Divergence, and Discourse " Instructor:  Rhiannon Lewis
• Adam Perelman (Winner, Fall 2011): " Child's Play: Historical Agency and the New York City Playground Movement "  Instructor: Sarah Pittock
• Emma Dohner (Honorable Mention, Fall 2011): " Putting a Price on Nature " Instructor: Erik Ellis
• Jake Sonnenberg (Winner, Spring 2012): " Legend and Legacy: A Rhetorical History of Lewis and Clark " Instructor: Gabrielle Moyer
• Oriekose Idah (Honorable Mention, Spring 2012): " BB Me Najia: The 'Forgotten Nigerian Man' and the Blackberry Phone " Instructor: Sohui Lee

Boothe Prize essays for 2010-2011

The 2010-2011 Boothe Prize book is available as a  PDF .

PWR Winners for 2010-2011

• Clarice Nguyen (Winner, Spring 2010): “ Advertising Antidepressants: The Rhetoric of Pharmaceutical Marketing ”
• David Wu (Honorable Mention, Spring 2010): “ Virtual Property or Virtual Service? ”
• Patricia Ho (Winner, Fall 2010): “ Citizen Journalism: Locally Grown, Community-Owned ”
• Tonya Yu (Honorable Mention, Fall 2010): " One Laptop per Child: A Need to Help Teachers Help Students "
• Gillie Collins (Winner, Winter 2011): “ The Neo-Taliban’s Neo-History: Re-Cognition and Resurgence ”
• Kurt Chirbas (Honorable Mention, Winter 2011): “ The Social Divide: David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin as Counterpoints in the Dialogue over the Internet ”

IHUM Winners for 2010-2011

• Jake Zeller (Winner, Spring 2010): “ The Idol of Prescriptive Normativity "
• Lucy Richards (Honorable Mention, Spring 2010): “ The Importance of Developing a More Inclusive Role for Archeology in Jerusalem and Ayodhya "
• Kristian Davis Bailey (Winner, Fall 2010): “ Empathy vs. Emptiness: An Investigation of Human and Divine Responses to Pain ”
• Tyler Haddow (Honorable Mention, Fall 2010): “ Art as the Key to an Intellectual Conscience ”
• Tiffany Dharma ( Winner, Winter 2011): “ And Then There Was Money: The Godliness and Godlessness of Acquisitive Economy ”
• Maya Krishnan (Winner, Winter 2011): “ Launch out on the story, Muse ”
• Gabriele Carotti-Sha (Honorable Mention, Winter 2011): “ Caught in the Causal Net: A Reflection on Fichte’s Lecture on Man’s Vocation in Society ”

Boothe Prize essays for 2009-2010

The 2009-2010 Boothe Prize book is available as a  PDF .

PWR Winners for 2009-2010

• Fannie Watkinson (Spring 2009 Winner): " The Role of Aesthetics: Green Skyscrapers in the 21st Century "
• Karen Shen (Fall 2009 Winner): " The Paradox of Public Support for 'Quality-of-Life' Policing "
• Lauren YoungSmith (Fall 2009 Honorable Mention): " Communication Beyond Loss: Lorca's Triangular Rhetoric "
• Kris Sankaran (Winter 2010 Winner): " Theater Between Borders: Navigating Cultures in an Interconnected World "
• Alex Ryan (Winter 2010 Honorable Mention): " MMORPGs: A Medium for Utopian and Experimental Genesis "

IHUM Winners for 2009-2010

• Fiona Hinze (Winner, Spring 2009): "An Encounter with Angel Island"
• Mia Newman (Honorable Mention, Spring 2009): "Under the Yoke: The Institution of Marriage in Middlemarch"
• Alex Hertz (Winner, Fall 2009): "A Challenging Invitation to Faith"
• Ben Pittenger (Honorable Mention, Fall 2009): "Trains, Pains, and Automobiles: The Liminal Trek beyond Survival in The Piano Lesson and Maus I"
• Kelly Vicars (Winner, Winter 2010): "Intertwining Art"
• Evan Storms (Honorable Mention, Winter 2010): "Antigone and the Social Contract Theory of the Crito"

Boothe Prize essays for 2008-2009

The 2008-2009 Boothe Prize book is available as a  PDF .

PWR Winners for 2008-2009

• Anna Grummon (Winner, Spring 2008): " In Defense of Human Agency: Protection of Self-Image in the Milgram Obedience Experiments "
• Kyie Tuosto (Honorable Mention, Spring 2008): " The 'Grunt Truth' of Embedded Journalism "
• Jacob Stern (Winner, Fall 2008): " If You Give an Artist an Apron "
• Katherine Disenhof (Honorable Mention, Fall 2008): " Sweet Surprise: Visual Rhetoric and the Flawed Message of the Corn Refiners Association's Sweet Surprise Campaign "
• Rachel Kolb (Winner, Winter 2009): " A Journey into the Heart of Silence: The Rhetoric of Expression, Gesture, and Thought "
• Caitlin Colgrove (Honorable Mention, Winter 2009): " Fugue in A minor for Carbon and Silicon "

IHUM Winners for 2008-2009

• Sarrah Nomanbhoy (Winner, Spring 2008): "Embracing Ambiguity in 'Bartleby the Scrivener'"
• Nicole Gordon (Honorable Mention, Spring 2008): "When a Silent Killer Confronts a Silent Society: Stanford University's Response to the HIV/AIDS Epidemic from 1980-1989"
• Adam Adler (Winner, Fall 2008): "Wisconsin v. Yoder: Maximizing Religious Choice"
• Rachel Kolb (Winner, Winter 2009): "Thought Aids Acting, Not Action: Laurence Olivier's and Franco Zeffirelli's Versions of Hamlet"
• Jacob Vandermeer (Honorable Mention, Winter 2009): "Identity Manipulation in Candide andThe Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano as Model for the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World"

Boothe Prize essays for 2007-2008

The 2007-2008 Boothe Prize book is available as a  PDF .

PWR Winners for 2007-2008

• Justin Solomon (Winner, Spring 2007): " Programmers, Professors, and Parasites: Credit and Co-Authorship in Computer Science "
• Keith Schwarz (Honorable Mention, Spring 2007): " Eminent Domain and Anti-Trust: A Proposal to Remedy Kelo's Excess "
• Sophie Theis (Winner, Fall 2007): " Imitation vs. Internationalization: The Rhetoric of Teen Travel-Program Advertising for College-Bound Youth "
• Dixon Bross (Honorable Mention, Fall 2007): " How Interesting: Interest and the Quotidian in Art Cinema "
• Eric Slessarev (Winner, Winter 2008): " Nature Takes New York: A Secret Rebellion "
• Sasha Engelmann (Honorable Mention, Winter 2008): " Breaking the Frame: Olaf Eliasson's Art, Merleu Ponty's Phenomenology, and the Rhetoric of Eco-Activism "

Boothe Prize essays for 2006-2007

The 2006-2007 Boothe Prize book is available as a  PDF .

PWR Winners for 2006-2007

• Leslie Georgatos (Winner, Spring 2006): " Brand America: Exploring the Appropriate Role of Marketing Strategies in Public Diplomacy "
• Christine Chung (Honorable Mention, Spring 2006): "' Hello Kitty Noodles' and Ramen Culture in the 21st Century "
• Jessica Galant (Winner, Fall 2006): " Keeping Tableaux Vivants Alive "
• Anne Datesh (Honorable Mention, Fall 2006): "  The Decision to Drop the Bomb: Where Hindsight is Not 20/20 "
• Jocelyn Jiao (Winner, Winter 2007): " Madama Butterfly Gave Birth to a Monster: Exploring the Internalization of Racial Stereotypes within Asian American Women " 
• Annelise Blum (Honorable Mention, Winter 2007): " Hugo Chávez’s Debut: Rhetoric and Petro–Politics in the World Theater A Dramatic Essay in Three Acts "

Boothe Prize essays for 2005-2006

The 2005-2006 Boothe Prize book is available as a  PDF .

PWR Winners for 2005-2006

• Kimber Lockhart (Winner, Spring 2005): " Women in Computer Science: A Skill-Specific Analysis "
• Nick Parker (Honorable Mention, Spring 2005): " The Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell: Mistakes Worth Fixing "
• Jennifer Chin (Winner, Fall 2005): " Reaffirming, Not Redefining: A Look at Rem Koolhass' New Seattle Central Library "
• Matthew Gribble (Honorable Mention, Fall 2005): " Gender, Art, and the Nursing Shortage: The Effect of Gendered Visual Rhetoric on the American Healthcare System "
• Cecilia Yang (Winner, Winter 2006): " The Memorial Hall for the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre: Rhetoric in the Face of Tragedy "
• Aaron Quiggle (Honorable Mention, Winter 2006): " In Search of an Anorexic Rhetoric: A Theory of Language, Meaning, Society, and Mental Illness "

IHUM Winners for 2005-2006

• Jessica Lee (Winner, Spring 2005): "Death of the Faces of God"
• Julie Byren (Honorable Mention, Spring 2005): "If You're Lost Enough to Find Yourself: Unveiling Nature's Secrets in Robert Frost's 'October' and 'Directive'"
• Patrick Leahy (Winner, Fall 2005): "The Three Furies of Dublin"
• Nathan Pflueger (Honorable Mention, Fall 2005): "Hamlet's Imagined Filial Love"
• Sarah Johnson (Winner, Winter 2006): "Breaking the Watch Along With the Wedding Glass: Conceptions of Time in the Transition from Biblical to Rabbinic Judaism" 
• Jason Dunford (Honorable Mention, Winter 2006): "Empowering the Oppressed: The Role of Language in the Struggle Against Apartheid in South Africa"

Boothe Prize essays for 2004-2005

The 2004-2005 Boothe Prize book is available as a  PDF .

PWR Winners for 2004-2005

• Ali Batouli (Winner, Spring 2004): “ The Free Internet: An Instrument of Control ”
• Shannon Donahue (Honorable Mention, Spring 2004): “ How Clean Are Green Ads? Evaluating Environmental Advertising in Contemporary Media ”
• Shivaram Lingamneni (Winner, Fall 2004): “ Predicting the Future of Internet Advertising ”
• Emily Dalton (Honorable Mention, Fall 2004): “ William Tyndale’s Biblical ‘Translation "
• Eyal Ophir (Winner, Winter 2005): “ Kick Ass Culture: Ads Mirror an Anti-Dialogue American Discourse ”
• Molly Cunningham (Honorable Mention, Winter 2005): “ Colonial Echoes in Kenyan Education: A First Person Account ”

IHUM Winners for 2004-2005

• Wendy Hagenmaier (Winner, Spring 2004): “‘To render it:’ Acts of Structural Passion in Levertov’s ‘An English Field in the Nuclear Age’.”
• Lia Hardin (Honorable Mention, Spring 2004): “Hear the Thunder: Isolation and Emotional Power in Kafka and Eliot.”
• Salvatore Bonaccorso (Winner, Fall 2004): “Self-Discovery through Language in Omeros andWalden.”
• Anne Wyman (Honorable Mention, Fall 2004): “Art Refracts Life.”
• Yun Chu (Winner, Winter 2005): “The Analysis of Rational Violence in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and Goethe’s Faust across Three Mediums: Literature, Music, and Art.”
• Emily Dalton (Honorable Mention, Winter 2005): “Poetic Justice, Memory As A Moral Force."

Boothe Prize essays for 2003-2004

The 2003-2004 Boothe Prize book is available as a  PDF .

PWR Winners for 2003-2004

• Joshua Smith (Winner, Spring 2003), "Conflict Diamonds: Resolving Africa's Worst Resource Wars"
• Jennifer Cribbs (Honorable Mention, Spring 2003), "Darkness in the Vicious Kitchen: An Analysis of Feminist Themes and Suicidal Imagery in Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath's Poetry"
• Rui Xiong Kee (Winner, Fall 2003), "Exploring the 'Communist' in the Communist Insurrection in Malaya"
• Jasmine Hanifi (Honorable Mention, Fall 2003), "Belonging to America: Rhetoric of the Second Generation"
• Andrew Leifer (Winner, Winter 2004), "Harry Potter and the Battle of International Copyright Law"
• Hammad Ahmed (Honorable Mention, Winter 2004), "Grafting Cuba Onto the American Body Politic: The Intersection of Natural Science and Foreign Policy in the Annexationist Era"

IHUM Winners for 2003-2004

• Steph Abegg (Winner, Spring 2003), "Rome: The City of Gods"
• Gloria Nguyen (Honorable Mention, Spring 2003), "In Search of the Perfect Love"
• Anne Kalt (Winner, Fall 2003), "Perspectives on the Human Good"
• Bob Hough (Honorable Mention, Fall 2003), "Faith in Death"
• Patrick R. Callier (Winner, Winter 2004), "Matter, Systems, and Alternatives from the Americas by Borges"
• Annie Kalt (Honorable Mention, Winter 2004), "Male and Female Love Worlds: Inherently Separate Landscapes?"

Boothe Prize essays for 2002-2003

Pwr winners for 2002-2003.

• Mari Hayman (Winner, Spring 2002), “Adoption Issues in Latin America: Behind the Silence and the Secrets”
• Jennifer Kong (Honorable Mention, Spring 2002), “Fulfilling Stanford's Commitment to Diversity: Eliminating Gender Bias and Increasing the Number of Tenured Women Faculty”
• Prabhu Balasubramanian (Winner, Fall 2002), “Pharmaceutical Patents: Life Savers or Profit Makers?"
• Andre de Alencar Lyon (Honorable Mention, Fall 2002), “The Question of Textual Ideology in Changing Lanes”
• Eric Adamson (Winner, Winter 2003), “Malleability, Misrepresentation, Manipulation: The Rhetoric of Images in Economic Forecasting”
• David Craig (Honorable Mention, Winter 2003),“Instant Messaging: The Language of YouthLiteracy”

IHUM Winners for 2002-2003

• Heather MacKintosh Sims (Winner, Spring 2002), "Reflections of an Empire: The British Celts as Indicators of Roman Self-Perception"
• Jason Glick (Honorable Mention, Spring 2002), "Trading Land for Cultural Power: Anazaldua's and Cardenal's (Re)constructions of Mestiza Identity" 
• Andre de Alencar Lyon (Winner, Fall 2002), “Traversing the Gap Between Reality and the Individual in Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse”
• Liang Dong (Honorable Mention, Fall 2002), “State and Empire: (De)Construction of the National Identity”
• Luke Lindley (Winner, Winter 2003), “A Heap of Broken Images: Conflicting Narratives of Nature in Milton's 'Lycidas'”
• Brian Caliando (Honorable Mention, Winter 2003) “Don't Spazz: It's Not Rational and It's Not Moral”

Boothe Prize essays for 2001-2002

• Boothe Prize essays for 2001-2002  (complete book - PDF)

Boothe Prize essays for 2000-2001

• Boothe Prize essays for 2000-2001  (complete book - PDF)

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The Winners of Our 2nd Annual Personal Narrative Contest

A parent’s illness. A first love. A new friend. Seven short, powerful essays from teenagers about meaningful life moments.

By The Learning Network

In October, we invited students to submit short, powerful stories about meaningful life experiences for our second annual personal narrative writing contest . Three months, 60 judges and nearly 9,000 entries later, we have selected seven winners, as well as 130 additional finalists, that stood out for their superb storytelling, moving messages and artistic use of language.

These 600-word essays offer us a peek into the lives of teenagers and the moments that have shaped them: a meal from a mother’s home country; a father’s terminal illness; a sexual assault; an unexpected first love.

And while these essays struck us because of their uniqueness, underneath they were stories that almost anyone, anywhere could relate to — stories about family and belonging, about claiming one’s identity, about seeing the world (and oneself) anew, about cherishing life in the face of death.

Below, we are publishing the seven winning narratives in full. We hope that, like our judges, you’ll admire the way they capture the reader’s attention with vivid details and voice and how they teach us something not only about the teenagers who wrote them, but also about the moments, big and small, that bring meaning to our lives.

Scroll to the bottom of this post to see the names of all the students we are honoring — seven winners, 13 runners-up, 22 honorable mentions and 95 more Round 4 finalists. Congratulations to all of our finalists, and thank you to everyone who participated!

(Note to students: We have published the names, ages and schools of students from whom we have received permission to do so. If you would like yours published, please write to us at [email protected] .)

Student Narrative Contest Winners

The winning narratives, honorable mentions, round 4 finalists.

“Contraband” by Yana Johnson age 14, Heathwood Hall Episcopal School, Columbia, S.C.

Seated in opposing rows, we faced each other like child soldiers, armed only with well-prepared notes and hastily scribbled marginalia. I recalled my teacher’s debate tips: no straw man arguments, no logical fallacies. Mrs. Hutchinson’s gray acrylics drummed the metal of her Yeti as she gave instructions that hardly anyone heard.

“Be respectful, don’t go over your time. As you all know, the topic is immigration …”

With determination like ours, there was no chance of defeat. At least, that’s the mantra my team lived by; I was less certain.

A boy who barely stood four feet tall spoke first, using words bigger than his body. Statistically speaking … hypothetically … nevertheless. Staring into an imaginary camera above Mrs. Hutchinson’s bun, he held his hands over his stomach with the feigned grandeur of a TV anchor.

Soon after his opening argument, I took the floor. Although my opponent smiled as she shook my hand, her parting palm squeeze felt vaguely threatening. Brushing it off, I banished all fear of embarrassment and spoke. I was a pied piper, enticing listeners with a melody of facts and statistics.

“Emma, your response?” Mrs. Hutchinson prompted.

“Look.” She clenched and unclenched her hands before finally holding them behind her back. “We can argue about this forever, but America is for Americans. There can be good immigrants, but they’re the exception, not the rule.”

Her words were a blanket of thorns. Worse than her words was the absolute conviction she spoke with; not a drop of uncertainty, nor an ounce of regret. I had never spoken with such certitude in my life.

“You have 20 seconds for a response,” Mrs. Hutchinson reminded me, leaning in with anticipation as if expecting me to lunge at Emma in a burst of outrage.

As a first-generation American, what Emma said simply wasn’t true. I wanted to make her re-evaluate her understanding of “American” because my Kittitian family members were just as American as my Southern family. I just wanted to say something. Anything. But that would have been an act of desperation, inviting a fate worse than death — humiliation.

I had spent my life dissociating myself from my lineage whenever convenient. With friends and peers, I blended in as an all-American Southerner who liked sweet tea and Chick-fil-A. With family, I pretended to understand sentences spoken through incomprehensible Caribbean accents and dug my nails into my palms trying not to cough up ginger beer. A cultural chameleon, I lived by way of camouflaging myself to my environment. But when one of my masquerades came under attack, which hat did I wear to speak? Would I even speak at all?

Being first-generation was something I was proud of, but as I returned to my seat having said nothing in my defense, I realized that was just a lie I told myself. I treated my heritage like contraband, to be hidden and hopefully never revealed at the wrong moment. For that, I was ashamed not of my identity, but of myself.

Buried beneath self-pity, I didn’t hear Mrs. Hutchinson declare my team the winner, and was only alerted by my teammates shaking my shoulders and chanting in celebration. Deepening my state of melancholy, I realized no one else was thinking what I was. To them, Emma’s words were a decent, albeit forgettable, argument. To me, they were salt in a wound.

We stepped in front of the desks to shake the hands of the other team. My opponent shook my hand for the second time that afternoon, just as energetically as before.

“Fun, right?” She smiled.

Wryly, I smiled back.

“Peach Pie” by Elisabeth Stewart age 15, College Station High School, College Station, Tex.

When the phone finally stopped ringing and the house lay still with grief, I filled my home with the aroma of flaky pie crust and sweet peaches to mask the scent of worry that still lingered.

The weekend after the diagnosis, Mom had copied and pasted the same text to each concerned relative, old friend and college roommate: Jay was diagnosed with a type of early-onset dementia in April. We had an appointment with a neurologist in Houston last week. His condition is called Pick’s disease. We are going back in a few weeks for more information.

Then Mom put down the phone, rubbed her forehead, and suggested that we go for a drive.

I grabbed my newly-minted learner’s permit and started the Nissan Pathfinder we bought from our neighbors after Dad’s company confiscated his truck. On the interstate, we passed a fluttering banner with bold red letters: “Fredericksburg peaches, the best fruit you can find in Central Texas.” Mom slipped on a medical mask and went to negotiate with the vendor.

Now in our kitchen, peach juice seeped through the cardboard box onto the counter. I rinsed a ripe peach under the sink and lifted the fruit to my lips. Juice dribbled down my chin to my arm. The sweet smell diffused into the living room and pulled Dad away from the football reruns on TV.

“Oh! You got peaches?” His large stomach pressed into the counter as he eyed the fruit with childish glee.

“Here,” I handed him a green serrated knife. “We’re making peach cobbler.”

I showed him how to peel the skin off the fleshy fruit, run the blade around the seed, and loosen the peach halves to cut the juicy fruit. As I made pie dough, he asked questions: How long does it take to bake? How much sugar? Are you adding almond extract? How many peaches? What should I do with the seeds? I combined our efforts with a lattice topping over the bed of peaches, and then signaled Dad to open the oven.

Standing there at the counter, showing him how to slice and measure and mix in a calm, firm voice, I suddenly felt grown up. The summer had reversed our roles; now, I was the adult, wincing as the blade neared his fingers. Mom worked through quarantine, so I stayed home and cooked his dinner, washed his T-shirts and helped him make phone calls. When Dad asked the same question every night — “Are we eating inside or outside?” — I always gave him the same answer, unless the August heat decided to scorch the patio. I stayed up late thinking about him and anxiously monitored him like an overbearing caretaker.

That same day, long before the afternoon drive and peach cobbler, I had held my tears as I read the prognosis for Pick’s disease: four to 10 years, depending on how fast the damaged proteins overpower Dad’s brain. I decided then that I would be grateful for just four more years with Dad, enough for him to see me become an adult for real.

Once the pie crust shone golden through the tinted oven door, we gathered on the patio to eat and watch the birds. I savored the moment and the warm dessert before either of us aged further: silver spoons clinking in fiesta bowls, vanilla ice cream melting over the cobbler, both warm and cold and perfectly sweet, a memory to cherish in the coming weeks when we wouldn’t have the time for baking or long evening drives.

“The Bottom of a Swimming Pool” by Annie Johnson age 15, Dublin Coffman High School, Dublin, Ohio

There’s solace in the bottom of a swimming pool, that’s what I used to believe. To me, there was nothing better than feeling the water fill my ears and fold over my head until my feet scraped the concrete bottom. The feeling of disappearing.

Through the lenses of my pink-tinted goggles, underwater was magical. The cracks in the tiling lining the walls, the disembodied legs kicking for stable ground, the sun overhead reduced to a few weak rays barely shattering the water’s surface — it all created such a sublime kind of picture. When it got dark, the lights on the sides of the pool would turn on, dim yellow circles to guide swimmers to the walls. They always reminded me of the glowing eyes of deadly sea dragons, able to devour anyone (even grown-up fourth-grade teachers) in one bite.

Even better, though, was the sound. In the open air, sound was too insistent. The noises of the pool all demanded your attention: the lifeguard’s shrill whistle, the smacking of tiny feet across the ground, the hundreds of voices demanding different things. “Can I get a —” “Owww! Quit —” “Stop splashing!” It reminded me of the school cafeteria, packed full of vicious kids: no rhyme, no reason, too loud to read a book in. But beneath the surface, things were quiet. The sounds that used to overwhelm me lost all their power, garbled and muffled. They intermingled with the sloshing of the water and the gentle blub-blub of air bubbles escaping my nose. It was not random, all the noises worked together to create a symphony. Harmony.

Perhaps the best thing about the bottom of a swimming pool, though, was that at the bottom of a swimming pool, I was alone. I didn’t have to worry about anyone splashing or kicking or shoving me aside. I didn’t have to worry about anyone making fun of my dumb bathing suit or my bug-eyed goggles. I didn’t have to worry about Mrs. Mills pretending not to see me when my hand was raised, or Sasha Grey’s friends giggling when I was the first to finish my times tables. They were all far, far away up on the surface. It was only me. Just me.

I used to wish I could live underwater. Mermaids didn’t have to go to school. Mermaids didn’t call other mermaids nerds or freaks.

But once, when I came up for air, I spotted a girl my age at the other side of the pool. We locked eyes before I went back under, just for a second. I didn’t think anything of it — girls like her usually didn’t want to be seen around me — until I felt a soft tug on my ankle, and I spied her next to me. She actually wanted to talk to me. She wanted to be friends.

So we talked. And I found out that she liked Pokémon and Warrior Cats just like I did. And we begged out parents to give us $3 so we could buy Popsicles, and we competed to see who could make the biggest splash, and when it got dark and the lights came on, we explored the depths of the pool together. She never once mentioned the scabs on my knees or the gaps between my teeth. She just laughed and said that she liked spending time with me. I liked spending time with her, too. I really did.

I didn’t spend so much time at the bottom of a swimming pool after that. How could I when there was so much waiting for me on the surface?

“Pink Paper Gowns” by Katin Sarner age 18, Palos Verdes Peninsula High School, Rolling Hills Estates, Calif.

I grasp my underwear and pull them down, watching the white fabric land around my feet. I am naked; exposed. I look across the room at the Pink Paper Gown, walk over, and unfold its perfect symmetry. I wrap it around my cold body and tie the plastic string around my waist. I sit on the side of the chair with two stirrups extending from the end, my feet resting on the cold wooden floor. For a moment, I wonder: How many other women have had to wear the Pink Paper Gown?

The short, kind doctor comes in and asks me to lay down. Though hesitant, I follow her directions; she is, in fact, the first person I ever saw in this world. She delivered me 17 years before. The last time she saw me, I was pure, innocent, unaware; my blue, childish eyes never having seen the harsh truths of this world. Now, I am her patient, for reasons I am horrified to admit.

The doctor walks to the end of the chair. One blue glove at a time, she prepares. My feet are in the stirrups, but I remain with my knees together. I know she is safe. I know she is just doing her job, but still, I don’t want to spread them.

“I’m just going to check around and make sure everything is OK. Just spread your legs …”

She lifts the Pink Paper Gown. I am scared; not of her, but of the memories I know will flood my mind when the blue gloves land on my skin. However, I do as she says. For the first time since Him, I am being touched. I know she is a doctor. I know she is safe. The Woman in the Blue Chair and I talked about this. Yet, I can’t stand it. I close my eyes, tight. The memories come, and I lay there, trying not to cry. All I picture in my mind is Him. His terrifying brown eyes, His grotesque pink sweatshirt, His dangerous hands. I look down to remind myself that it is the doctor down there, not Him.

“I have to insert one of my fingers to feel for any tearing, OK?”

She feels around. I want to cry. I might throw up. I can’t do this.

I see him on top of me … my head banging against the side of the car … my hands on his chest …

I try to remember what The Woman in The Blue Chair would tell me to do. Breathe in for five, hold for five, exhale for five. This isn’t working …

Right as I feel as if I can’t handle it any longer, she is done. She said He probably tore some things, but it’s been long enough for the damage to heal. Even my own body fails to provide evidence to prove that I’m the real victim, not Him. My body may have fixed itself, but my mind cannot repair on its own. I should have come six months ago. I should have told my mom back in May about the spots of blood I kept finding in my underwear all month long.

We talked more about what happened.

“And you still go to school with Him?”

She says that she should do an STD test just in case.

I lay back down. I put my feet back up. I spread my knees. The cotton swab enters. I hold my breath once more.

Again, I wonder: How many other women have had to wear the Pink Paper Gown?

“A Friday Afternoon in Spring” by Madeleine Luntley age 17, Webber Academy, Calgary, Alberta

We went to see a movie one Friday afternoon. It was spring; there was no snow on the ground, but I was still cold. I don’t remember many other details. Whether the movie was good or bad, whether the theater was crowded or not, I couldn’t say — I only remember that it was a Friday because we had a half-day at school, and we only ever get half-days on Fridays.

When I’m nervous, unlike most people, my hands don’t get sweaty; they just get cold, clammy, and a chill spreads throughout my entire body until I can scarcely draw a breath, engulfed in frigid paralysis. We were walking a knife’s edge that day, on either side of the knife unspoken emotions, the air between us tense with timorous anticipation. One wrong word, one misstep, and we were liable to tumble into the vast unknown. I was freezing.

I don’t remember the movie because I was focused on a hand, inches from mine, occasionally moving to dip into the popcorn we were sharing, salt and butter coating pale fingertips. I longed to take that hand in my own, but I didn’t; I kept rubbing my palms against my dark-wash jeans, trying to heat up my hands, my arms, my chest, with some small morsel of friction.

We sat in the car a while after the movie. The late day sun fell through the windshield, striking her skin and bathing it in white-wine light, and she was radiant. An old ballad filtered through the speakers, a fifties star singing about a woman in a velvet voice existing in stark dichotomy to what was happening between us.

In the end, it was her who grabbed my hand and jumped off that precarious edge we had been tiptoeing along for what felt like an eternity, throwing caution into Zephyrus’s hands. With those juvenile words everyone longs to hear in their melodramatic adolescence, when they are an insecure, doe-eyed high-school student, we fell.

“I like you.”

She whispered it like one would whisper a secret under the cover of darkness, tenebrous night making the speaker confident. The words fell heavy onto my ears, the weight of their implication pressing onto my chest, combining with the ice in my body, stealing the air from my lungs.

I was terrified.

I was terrified because I was abnormal, because no one really told me as a kid that girls can like girls and boys can like boys, and because my first kiss was followed with a slap to the face after the girl realized that I wasn’t joking, and God, what were people going to say? What would my parents say? I was terrified, so I didn’t reply. We sat in silence, listening to that balladeer croon about being rejected once again. I got out of her car after the song finished and went home.

Whenever I spoke to her after that, my hands were cold.

Her vulnerability that day was a double-edged sword, and we both ended up bloody. Leaving her words unacknowledged felt like leaving an open wound to fester. Neither of us, however, were willing to speak. We acted like nothing had happened at all, making snide remarks about everyday happenings, gossiping innocently about school goings-on. But, it was a kind of breathless normalcy — we were just waiting, waiting for a time when we were old enough, brave enough, to meet her confession head-on.

If she were a boy, I might have kissed her that spring Friday in her car. My hands might have been warm as I drove home.

“Perfectly Pan-Fried Tofu” by Charis June Lee age 16, West Springfield High School, Springfield, Va.

The familiar smell of garlic, soy sauce, and onion permeated through the air as I opened my lunch bag to see what my mom had packed for me. On any other occasion, I would have been delighted to eat my mom’s braised pan-fried tofu: a Korean dish that I often ate for dinner. But not today, the day a nice girl had invited me, the new girl at school, to sit with her friends during lunch.

“Charis, over here!” My new friend was waving her arms, trying to get my attention.

As I prepared to walk over to the table, memories of elementary and middle school lunch times resurfaced. I remembered my embarrassment as my friends would hold their noses, or not-so-subtly scoot away from me when I brought homemade Korean food. I remembered how my embarrassment shifted to anger when I complained about the smell to my mom.

I had argued with my mom that I wanted “normal” food for lunch. I remembered the look on my mom’s face, a mix between disappointment and confusion. But I was adamant and she relented because she worried about my making new friends every time we moved. So for the remainder of middle school, my mom packed odorless, non-Korean fare like ham and cheese sandwiches. However, that day, she was in a rush to get to her new job and packed me leftovers from dinner.

As soon as I got to my new lunch table, I tried to sneak my bright lunch bag down under my seat before anyone noticed the strong smell. I looked up to see the other girls at the table, opening their normal American lunches. I sat meekly, trying not to be noticed when Katrina, a new acquaintance, asked where my food was.

“I’m not really hungry,” I replied in an insecure voice. But Katrina had already seen me carry my lunch so she spurted out, “Then, I’ll eat it!” The other girls laughed — apparently Katrina was known to be the lunch scavenger.

I didn’t want to be rude to a potentially new friend, so I reluctantly dragged out my lunch bag and unzipped it. The moment I partially lifted the lid, I could practically taste the garlic and soy sauce. The girls, piqued by the smell wafting through the air, all curiously peered at the oval-shaped Pyrex container. I expected an “Ew” or a “What is that?”

I expected them to turn away — and turn me away. What I did not expect was for Katrina to instantly grab a small piece of tofu and eat it ravenously. And I most certainly did not expect for her to encourage the rest of the table to try my lunch.

It took me a second to recognize that my foreign, Korean food was not being rejected; in fact, it had become a source of personal pride. My new friends were going on about how lucky I was that my mom took the time to prepare a cooked meal for me. They were enchanted by the fact that tofu could actually taste good. While I didn’t get to eat any of my mom’s pan-fried tofu, I was full — of pride and gratitude.

When I arrived home, my mom asked how my day went. Answering with a simple “Good,” I pulled out my Pyrex container from my lunch bag.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t have time to buy bread or ham yesterday.” But when she noticed that the container was empty, she hesitated before asking, “How was the food?”

I paused a moment before I replied, “Perfect.”

“Love at First Offhand Compliment” by Leah Gomez age 17, Saint Mary’s Hall, San Antonio, Tex.

When I turned 16, I cut off all my hair. Those long, spiraling locks whose crispy ends fell to my hips represented the days when I hid my face behind a curtain of curls, the days when I had social anxiety (how embarrassing!), something I had decided not to have anymore. My cosmetic transformation proved to be a righteous decision. I arrived at school a changed woman, and that day, the heavens split wide open as an angelic chorus descended from swirling clouds and God Himself smiled on me with the warmth of a thousand suns.

That day, a boy told me he liked my hair.

I immediately understood this boy to be The One. He flirted with me more than he flirted with other girls, and sometimes even looked at me while I spoke. I wrote him love letters in the form of homework questions that could easily have been answered by any sentient rock, and my affections were reciprocated in late night Snapchats of his forehead, or, if he was being particularly bold, his forehead and one eye. Our playful back-and-forth persisted in this manner and maybe even developed into a friendship. Ultimately, I learned that if you ruin your sleep schedule in order to text a boy at night for 10 solid months, he may just ask you out.

In the shimmering light of the summer evening sky, I ate a few bites of overpriced ramen across a tiny table from a real live guy who had actually asked me out on a date. When he reached for the bill to signify that it was, in fact, a date, his hand briefly grazed mine, and I felt my cheeks flush with the distinct rosy tinge of heteronormativity. As we left the restaurant, it began to rain, and we took refuge in an ice cream shop where he once more paid for me to pretend to eat while dutifully sucking in my stomach. Summoning all my skills of seduction, I flaunted sophistication in my sultriest tone:

“This ice cream is so good that I’m, like, literally having an aneurysm,” I observed.

“Actually, I think it’s ‘burst’ an aneurysm,” he said.

My heart fluttered. He had such a way with words.

Based on every movie I had ever seen in my life, I anticipated that our intense flirtation would culminate in a kiss good night before I sped away in my dad’s visibly deteriorating 2001 Honda Civic. In our final moments together, I stared deeply into his gleaming, enigmatic gaze and, as I leaned one shoulder toward him, received a one-armed side hug and a “Bye, Leah!” that lingered uncomfortably in the air. Whether the unease in my gut stemmed from this disappointing departure or my severe IBS, I could never know. But one thing was for sure — I had done everything right. Right?

A true gentleman, he ended things a few weeks later in a two-sentence Snapchat. In a response riddled with exclamation points, I let my concern for his feelings eclipse my own. Painfully embarrassed, I dismissed myself as idiotic for believing a boy could ever like me. I knew I was to blame for equating the slightest amount of male approval with the highest standard of human decency.

I couldn’t remember where I learned to do that.

Stuck between guilt and confusion, I once again took scissors to the braid that reached halfway down my back. It’s strange; even though I consider feminism to be the most essential tenet of my existence, the whispers of the patriarchy are sometimes so soft that they sound like my own thoughts.

In alphabetical order by the writer’s last name.

“Mourning Dirt” by Yuan Gao age 17, Nanjing Foreign Language School, Nanjing, China

“Crows by the Beach” by Huda Haque age 17, Panther Creek High School, Cary, N.C.

“Potato Salad” by Connie Jiang age 15, Palo Alto High School, Palo Alto, Calif.

“Trembling Confidence” by Aarti Kalamangalam age 16, Eastside High School, Gainesville, Fla.

“What’s My Name?” by Yeheun Kim age 17, Penn Foster High School, Scranton, Penn.

“Fish Eyes” by Naomi Ling age 15, River Hill High School, Clarksville, Md.

“Abigail Adams: The Second First Lady of America and the First Lady of My Heart” by Elly Pickette age 17, Winsor School, Boston

“That’s the Thing — I Don’t Remember” by Anna Popnikolova age 13, Nantucket High School, Nantucket, Mass.

“Self-Reliance” by K.R. age 17, Mount Desert Island High School, Mount Desert, Me.

“Homecoming” by Charlotte Rediker age 16, Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass.

“Blame It on Me” by Daphne Wang age 14, Dougherty Valley High School, San Ramon, Calif.

“BLOOM” by Paxton Woodard age 15, Jasper Place High School, Edmonton, Alberta

“Don’t Apologize”

“شكرا — Thank You” by Sarah Alamir age 16, Hinsdale Central High School, Hinsdale, Ill.

“Authentically Korean” by Lucy Alejandro age 17, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, Alexandria, Va.

“Cows and Bullets” by Aylin Miranda age 17, Granite Hills High School, El Cajon, Calif.

“Autumn in New York” by Emeline Blohm age 17, Brooklyn Technical High School, New York, N.Y.

“ The New Normal” by Peyton Burton age 16, Windermere High School, Windermere, Fla.

“Three Strikes And You’re Out” by Hannah Chen Age 16, Singapore American School, Singapore

“Connection Found” by Sonia Cherian Age 15, Castilleja School, Palo Alto, Calif.

“Child’s Play” by Maggie Craig Age 16, South Forsyth High School, Cumming, Ga.

“My New Shoes” by Said El Kadi Age 16, American Community School At Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon

“Roadkill” by Isabella Fan Age 17, Montgomery Blair High School, Silver Spring, Md.

“How to Eat Lunch at School (Except You Have No Friends)” by Finley

“A Funeral to Remember” by Korbin Kane age 17, Northern Utah Academy for Math, Engineering and Science, Layton, Utah

“I Just Wanted Some Tea” by Sujin Kim age 16, Loomis Chaffee School, Windsor, Conn.

“Chocolate Towers” by Niko Malouf age 15, Grover Cleveland Charter High School, Reseda, Calif.

“Growth” by Asher Mehr age 16, de Toledo High School, Los Angeles

“Do Not Underestimate a Jellyfish” by Eleanor Mills age 18, Pioneer High School, Ann Arbor, Mich.

“June” by Jacqueline Munis age 17, Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, Penn.

“Jump Roping” by Cloris Shi age 13, Jeffrey Trail Middle School, Irvine, Calif.

“Up There in the Sky” by Olivia Theaker age 16, Arroyo Grande High School, Arroyo Grande, Calif.

“The Young Boy And The Sea” by Gabriel Thomas age 14, Brookline High School, Brookline, Mass.

“Perpetual Worry and Other Afflictions” by Sakshi Umrotkar age 16, Mission San Jose High School, Fremont, Calif.

“Flash” by Qi Wu age 18, Nanjing Foreign Language School, Nanjing, China

A PDF of all the winners and 95 more great narratives that made it to Round 4.

Thank you to all of our contest judges!

Eria Ayisi, Edward Bohan, Elda Cantú, Julia Carmel, Elaine Chen, Nancy Coleman, Nicole Daniels, Sarah Deming, Shannon Doyne, Alexandra Eaton, Jeremy Engle, Tracy Evans, Arden Evers, Kyelee Fitts, Vivian Giang, Caroline Crosson Gilpin, Michael Gonchar, Emma Grillo, Jenny Gross, Kari Haskell, Julia Heavey, Michaella Heavey, Kimberly Hintz, Callie Holterman, Sharilyn Hufford, Jeremy Hyler, Lauren Jackson, Susan Josephs, Sophia June, Shira Katz, Megan Leder, Miya Lee, Lisa Letostak, Alice Liang, Emmett Lindner, Kathleen Massara, Keith Meatto, Sue Mermelstein, Claire Miller, Tara Murphy, Amelia Nierenberg, John Otis, Rene Panozzo, Tara Parker-Pope, Ken Paul, Anna Pendleton, Raegen Pietrucha, Natalie Proulx, Steven Rocker, Kristina Samulewski, Juliettte Seive, Jesica Severson, Josh Smith, Matt Twomey, Matt Vigil, Tanya Wadhwani, Jacqueline Weitzman, Kim Wiedmeyer, Sara Wortinger and Stephanie Yemm

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The Philosophical Quarterly Essay Prize: Winning Articles

Since 1995, the editors of The Philosophical Quarterly have awarded an essay prize to the best paper on a chosen theme. Browse the full list of previous prize winners in this free Virtual Issue. Click the links below to start reading!

De Minimis Normativism: a New Theory of Full Aptness J Adam Carter (2019)

On Parfit’s Wide Dual Person-Affecting Principle Michal Masny (2018)

The Essential Indexicality of Intentional Action Matthew Babb (2015)

Analysing Animality: A Critical Approach Jason Wyckoff (2014)

The Identity of a Material Thing and its Matter Mahrad Almotahari (2013)

Unethical Acts Tzachi Zamir (2012)

Refuting The Whole System? Hume's Attack on Popular Religion in The Natural History of Religion Jennifer Smalligan Maruši? (2011)

Love as a Reactive Emotion Kate Abramson and Adam Leite (2010)

Autonomy and Plurality Larry Krasnoff (2009)

Creativity Naturalized Maria E. Kronfeldner (2008)

A New Defence of Anselmian Theism Yujin Nagasawa (2007) 

The Regress of Pure Powers? Alexander Bird (2006)

A New Argument for Evidentialism Nishi Shah (2005)

Poverty and Rights James W. Nickel (2004)

The Attractions and Delights of Goodness Jyl Gentzler (2003)

Future Contingents and Relative Truth John MacFarlane (2002)

Reid and Epistemic Naturalism Patrick Rysiew (2001) 

Is ‘Normal Grief’ a Mental Disorder? Stephen Wilkinson (1999)

The Limits of Human Nature Keith Horton (1998)

Emergence: Non-Deducibility or Downwards Causation? Jürgen Schröder (1997)

Art Media and the Sense Modalities: Tactile Pictures Dominic Lopes (1996)

An Unconnected Heap of Duties? David McNaughton (1995)

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Winning Essays

The Harvard GlobalWE Board members and essay contest managers read over all submissions and vote on the winning essay by year and school or region. In its selection criteria, Harvard GlobalWE does not advocate a specific ideology or agenda.

Harvard GlobalWE has published 99 winning essays from our Essay Contest from the past five years in a coffee table book. We are excited to announce that a limited number of books are available to share with individuals who donate $99 or more (for 99 essays!) to Harvard GlobalWE. Donate today to receive a copy of the book. Take a look at the essay contest book here . Please visit our Donate page to make a contribution and receive a copy of the book.

Congratulations, 2023 Winners!

Please read the 2023 Winning Essays here .

Congratulations, 2022 Winners!

Please read the 2022 Winning Essays here .

In a world where only the most tangible things can be characterised as real, as existing, we often forget that challenges can also come from within, from places which we easily ignore. In China, the greatest challenge that women and girls face is the language formed through the ancestral ideology: 「三從四德」1.

“You are the dancing queen. Young and sweet. Only seventeen.”

Amidst the cacophony of off-key singing and crackling party poppers, I gently blew a gust of air towards the enormous cake, snuffing out the flickering candle in an instant. A great eruption of applause filled the room as beloved friends and family flooded towards me to exchange their congratulations. It was another momentous day for me — I finally became a dancing queen.

It was a normal day after school, and she had gone to the train station with her friends. 5 girls in a circle, they were just casually waiting for the train to arrive, and chatting about how one of them had been followed several times while heading home and what self-protection measures they should adopt if the situation calls for it. Ironically, during that conversation, a man approached from behind her. She had not realised what he was doing, until her friend chased after him and told her that he had been filming her under the dress.

My family and I are always exhilarated whenever the Olympics play on television, gluing our eyes to the screen no matter what we are doing - brushing our teeth, eating lunch, playing card games, etc. Squeezed onto our too-small sofa, my family and I anticipated the next contestant - Gong Lijiao, China’s Olympic shot putter, with an impressive track record to step up to the plate. My sister’s eyes sparkled looking at Gong’s well built and muscular body, as she aspires to become a great athlete just like her. That day we witnessed Gong throw her best shot yet, 20.58m (China's shot putter Gong Lijiao wins her first Olympic gold at Tokyo 2020, 2021), winning gold in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

Without a question, humanity has made staggering social progress. We have entered an era where women’s rights have made it to the spotlight, and gender equality is an issue people are both willing and eager to discuss. Yet what is happening here in China tell us that women and girls in the country still face obstacles when voicing out any “feministic” views or simply sharing their experiences regarding issues like sexism or sexual harassment. This, I would say, is the biggest challenge women and girls in the country face as of today.

As the title says, I will be explaining what the biggest challenge women and girls face in my home country – Nepal. The Himalayan country is known for its summits and is also the birthplace of the founder of Buddhism, Gautama Buddha. But behind this façade is an underlying horror of mistreatment of women and girls in Nepal. I will be looking into the biggest challenge Nepali women and girls face from the perspective of gender discrimination, gender-based violence with an example of a deadly custom.

A modern fusion of western diversity and Chinese traditions, Hong Kong is known as one of the most progressive cities in the world. As "Asia's World City", Hong Kong prides itself in the significant advancements made toward creating a diverse and accepting society. However, beneath the acclaimed surface of statistics, the unconscious solipsism that led to age-old prejudices such as gender preferences continue to plague Hong Kong's society today.

Known as a city with a multitude of languages, Hong Kong houses 7+ million citizens of diverse cultures. Home to a treasure trove of traditions, our city has always been proud of its status as ‘Asia’s World City’— a place of sustainability, prosperity and advancement. Yet, discrimination and marginalisation of queer women persist; no matter in the field of education, institution, representation or legislation. Women in the LGBT community, irrespective of age, continue to be stigmatized for what they believe in. Then why, if this city proclaims to be progressive, prevails its silence on the injustice queer people carry on to face to this very day?

To this day, I remember.

I remember when the world was pure and white, when I would hold dear to my parents’ hand -- colossal, warm and sturdy -- to walk the streets of hawker food stalls, go out for Dim Sum and pay Chinese New Year visits. I remember the praising gazes and compliments I was met with, about how beautiful I looked in flowery dresses, stylish shorts and fitting attires, which made me so fond of dressing up -- once.

“What in the world are you thinking?”

My mother began her tirade.

“There is a reason I never let you cut your hair short—it accentuates your round face and brings out your unattractive features. Looks are important, especially for women! You’re lucky you don’t have any interviews for universities at the moment—I can’t imagine how you can face others with an appearance like this.”

‘Mom, where are you?’ I was sobbing since I was witnessing my classmates leaving the kindergarten one by one. At that time, I was merely five years old and I was the last kid leaving the kindergarten. ‘Why couldn’t you come pick me up earlier? What caused the delay?’ When I finally saw my mother, I questioned her anxiously. ‘It’s all because of work. You should know I have to work hard to make a living. I have been occupied since I was back in the office this morning so I came late.’ Mom stared at me and said tiredly. ‘If so, why didn't dad come instead?’ I asked perplexingly. ‘That’s because your dad is a man. Men are born to focus on building their careers instead of taking care of household chores.’ Mom said involuntarily. Looking at my exhausted mother who is obviously drained by her work and roles as a working mother, I cannot help but to reflect upon women’s status in society. The seed was sprouted in my heart - why are men allowed to be career-oriented but not women?

What is your first impression of Hong Kong ladies? Astute? Sober? Dogged? Elegant? Or amiable? Seems like females in Hong Kong are so glamorous and exquisite. Incontrovertibly, they have a higher quality of life in Hong Kong compared to others megalopolis, but they still face a myriad of predicaments nevertheless. In this article, the deplorable situations that females need to defy will be stated out in three dimensions: Society, Kith and Kin, Individual.

As soon as my eyes landed on the topic of this essay, I was fraught with uncertainty and hesitation. If truth be told, I seem to have never experienced sexism and gender inequality that bothered me. Being a student in a single-sex school, I see girls of my age dominating the sports ground and triumphing in a host of competitions, taking up leadership positions on campus. We have had our first female Chief Executive after 20 years since the handover, ridding us of the stereotype that the female sex is the weaker sex. I feel fortunate to be a girl living in Hong Kong in this day and age, and yet, I am asked to probe into the difficulties that females in Hong Kong encounter today. I therefore scrutinize my life and observations, and I uncovered that such a sense of satisfaction could be the biggest challenge. Are we authentically content with what we have now, or is there still an immense curb on women?

In China, one of the major challenges and issues women or girls face is patriarchy. Sadly, bias in family status and discrimination in the workplace are still common in our society.

“Becoming yourself is really hard and confusing, and it’s a process. It’s often not cool to be the person who puts themselves out there.” - Emma Watson

It is indeed true that society cares too much about unnecessary conventions for women, and we, as females, care too much about society’s perception of us.

Women and girls in the United States struggle with many issues, from misogyny to sexual assault to domestic abuse and so much more. But now that the U.S. Supreme Court might possibly overturn the case “Roe v. Wade , ” the threat to the right to abortion is the single biggest challenge facing women and girls in my country. When it comes to legislating women’s reproductive healthcare, it genuinely terrifies me how one human being can believe they have jurisdiction over the body of another human being. What’s equally terrifying is that the government abdicates responsibility for its life once a child is born. And while the father should remain accountable, it’s often the mother who is entirely in charge of her offspring. She’s probably the one who will have to find a way to feed them, bathe them, and earn money to take care of their every need. For a variety of reasons, I understand why women, including teenage girls, undergo the process of abortion.

Roadmen. Lads. Chavs. Birds. Britain is home to our own dictionary of descriptors for teenagers, ways to describe both females and males that categorise and label people into narrow confinements, used daily in secondary schools nationally without a second thought. Seemingly harmless to outsiders, this lingo holds more weight than its appearance on the surface, and ingrains a culture in the UK; a culture of toxic masculinity, of female belittlement and of strict, rigid gender definitions.

February 17, 2022, social media users would open their phones, check their messages, then go on Instagram. Below the various stories of users they follow, they face a disturbing post from 19 hours ago. The post would contain the photo of a smiling girl with a horrendous text overshadowing half of the photo, translating to '16-year-old girl murdered cruelly by having her throat slit by Hüseyin Can Gökçek. Upon reading about her story on news sources, the users would soon realize that she was a teen bride and coerced into marriage by a man five years older. Sadly, the post explained why Sıla no longer lives with us in this earthly realm. We, as women, no longer want to fear going outside, or to have 155 on speed dial; we no longer want to fear for our lives in our own homes and our trusty neighborhoods, or to fear our fathers, brothers, husbands, coworkers, and teachers. We no longer want to hope to give birth to boys, so we won’t have to fear for their safety every time they leave or meet up with their friends. The anxiety Turkish women experience is a core component of everyday situations we navigate, and this fear has reached its apex.

Imagine living in a country, where nearly five-hundred women become the victims of femicide each year. Every time you sit before the TV, a gut-wrenching feeling rises from your body; a feeling you are well acquainted with. You know what’s about to come, and you give rein to your foolish hopes; maybe not today. You turn on the TV and encounter a picture of her on the big screen. She looks content and peaceful, juxtaposing the somber reporter standing right before her picture. He looks at the camera, and says “She was only sixteen.” Her friends and family do not seem to be astonished by the frightening news. They say it was her dress, her smile, her failure to be a loyal and obedient wife. It was her fate. No one deems it a necessity to acknowledge her parents who forced their young daughter to marry a grown adult, the police officer who disregarded her desperate cries for help, and the man who stole away her hopes, her dreams, and eventually her life.

‘Woman’s hand chopped of by estranged husband in Busia.’ This was the headline of a Kenyan newspaper this month. During this season, there have been several depressing headlines highlighting abuse of women. Statistics from the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey show that 41% of women reported having experienced physical or sexual abuse aggravated by economic hardship, health concerns and increased stress occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many women in Kenya are disenfranchised and seem to have few options when they are the victims of abuse.

United States Institute of Peace

Winning essays, 2013 national winning essays.

First Place: Molly Nemer of Henry Sibley High School in Mendota Heights, MN

• Grounded in Peace: Why Gender Matters

Second Place: Anna Mitchell of Plymouth, MI (Homeschool)

• Up and Out: Women’s Peacebuilding from the Ground Up in Liberia and Afghanistan

Third Place: Bo Yeon Jang of the International School Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

• Womanhood in Peacemaking: Taking Advantage of Unity through Cultural Roles for a Successful Gendered Approach in Conflict Resolution

2012 national winning essay, “ Awakening Witness and Empowering Engagement: Leveraging New Media for Human Connections ,” by Emily Fox-Penner of the Maret School in Washington, D.C., addressed the essay topic of new media and peacebuilding by examining its role in Egypt in 2011 and Kenya in 2007  (link is the same as it is now from last year)

2011 national winning essay, "Mimes for Good Governance: The Importance of Culture and Morality in the Fight Against Corruption," by Kathryn Botto from the Liberal Arts and Science Academy in Austin, Texas discusses the role of society and culture in dealing with curruption, using Colombia and Kyrgyzstan as case studies.

2010 national winning essay, " Fighting for Local publications in a Globalized World: Unity, Strategy, and Government Support " , by Margaret E. Hardy from Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco, California, discusses necessary conditions for nonviolent movement to successfully control local publications.

2009 national winning essay, "Responding to Crimes against Humanity: Prevention, Deployment, and Localization" , by Sophia Sanchez from Ladue Horton Watkins High School in Saint Louis, Missouri, discusses the role of international actors in protecting civilians from crimes against humanity.

2008 national winning essay , "Resolving Water Conflicts Through the Establishment of Water Authorities, " by Callie Smith from Girls Preparatory School in Chatanooga, Tennessee, discusses how natural publications can be managed to build peace, using case studies from Central Asia and Yemen.

2007 national winning essay , " Reintegrating Children, Building Peace: Interaction, Education, and Youth Participation ," by Wendy Cai from Corona Del Sol High School in Tempe, Arizona, discusses the reintegration of child soldiers into society, using Sierra Leone and Uganda as case studies.

2006 national winning essay , " Defusing Nuclear Tensions Through Internationally Supported Bilateral Collaborations ," by Kona Shen from The Northwest School in Seattle, Washington, compares the decision of Argentina and Brazil to forego nuclear arms development with the nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan.

2005 national winning essay , " Finding Peace: Japan and Cambodia ," by Jessica Perrigan from the Duchesne Academy in Omaha, Nebraska, explores how education is the key to democracy.

2004 national winning essay , " Establishing Peaceful and Stable Postwar Societies Through Effective Rebuilding Strategy ," by Vivek Viswanathan from Herricks High School in New Hyde Park, New York explores the lessons of the Marshall Plan and international efforts in Somalia in an examination of the challenges of post-conflict reconstruction.

2003 national winning essay , " Kuwait and Kosovo: The Harm Principle and Humanitarian War ," by Kevin Kiley from Granite Bay High School in Granite Bay, California, examines the 1990 Gulf War and NATO's intervention in Kosovo to see how they measure up against the criteria of just war.

2002 national winning essay , " Safeguarding Human Rights and Preventing Conflict through U.S. Peacekeeping ," by David Epstein from Pikesville High School in Baltimore, Maryland, cites several examples of appropriate use of American power aimed at putting a stop to crimes against humanity and ending conflict.

2001 national winning essay , " Somalia and Sudan: Sovereignty and Humanitarianism ," by Stefanie Nelson from Bountiful High School in Bountiful, Utah, examines the dynamics of the competing philosophies of sovereignty and humanitarianism in third-party intervention found in civil conflicts in the Sudan and Somalia.

2000 national winning essay , " Promoting Global and Regional Security in the Post-Cold War World ," by Elspeth Simpson from Pulaski Academy in Little Rock, Arkansas, looks at the U.S. policies that led to intervention in Colombia and North Korea and considers the effectiveness of actions based on humanitarian assistance and national and global security.

1999 national winning essay , " Preventive Diplomacy in the Iraq-Kuwait Dispute and in the Venezuela Border Dispute ," by Jean Marie Hicks of St. Thomas More High School in Rapid City, South Dakota, explores the cases of preventive diplomacy seen in disputes between Iraq and Kuwait and in border disputes involving Venezuela.

1998 national winning essay , " How Should Nations be Reconciled ," by Tim Shenk from Eastern Mennonite High School in Harrisonburg, Virginia, uses South Africa and Bosnia as examples to examine the manner in which war crimes should be accounted for to ensure stable and lasting peace.

1997 national winning essay , " A Just and Lasting Peace ," by Joseph Bernabucci from St. Alban's School in Washington, D.C., examines the steps that can be taken to support successful implementation of a peace agreements and addresses causes of the conflicts by exploring what can be done to discourage renewed violence.

1996 national winning essay , " America and the New World Order ," by Richard Lee from Irmo High School in Columbia, South Carolina, defines U.S. national security interests and gives his criteria for U.S. intervention by examining past cases of intervention.

• Grades 6-12
• School Leaders

50 Fun Earth Day Crafts and Activities 🌎!

10 Winning Scholarship Essay Examples From Real Students

Make your application shine.

Writing a scholarship essay can be intimidating. The competition is fierce and the stakes are high, so students are bound to feel the pressure. It may be helpful, therefore, to look at essays that were successful. What did those students do to impress the committee? These scholarship essay examples will give you a better idea of how to make an application shine! 

Tips for Writing a Scholarship Essay

We’ve put together a whole guide for how to write a scholarship essay , so if you haven’t read it already, definitely give it a look! In addition, here are some quick tips to help students get started. 

Carefully read the rules

The last thing you need is to be disqualified from winning a scholarship because you didn’t do the right thing. 

Start early

Don’t wait until the last minute to start researching and applying for scholarships. Give yourself plenty of time to work through the process. 

Get to know the provider

Think of the scholarship provider as your target audience. You want to tailor your essay to impress them, so do your research. What kinds of candidates are they looking for? What causes do they support? Dig deep for the information you need!

Think about who you are, what you want to say, and how to appeal to the scholarship committee. Write everything down and then choose the best ideas. 

The scholarship committee will be reviewing many applications. How can you make yours unforgettable? Highlight your strongest assets, share hard lessons if they showcase your growth as a person and/or student, and be honest. Never lie in a scholarship essay!

Be professional

Consider this the most important academic paper you’ve ever written. Don’t use slang or casual language. Submit a properly formatted essay that’s been well-edited and proofread by multiple people.

One last tip

Don’t reuse scholarship essays! Yes, it’s time-consuming, but students need to put the same effort into every application. Use the same process and it will get faster and easier every time!

Scholarship Essay Examples

Afc visionary scholarship essay by nicole kuznetsov.

Award Amount: $5,000

Essay prompt: Why do you want to go to college? Why is it important to you?

Why it was successful: The  beauty of this essay is that it’s well-organized and simple. Nicole Kuznetsov chose to outline her story by using chronology and provided a clean, concise story following a linear path.

North Coast Section Foundation Scholarship Essay by Christine Fung

Award Amount: $1,000

Why it was successful: Christine Fung masterfully shared how her upbringing instilled strong values, a love for education, and a passion for medicine .

The Bill Browning Scholarship Essay by Gabby DeMott

Award Amount: $10,000

Essay prompt: Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.

Why it was successful: Gabby DeMott shared her experiences with personal growth and overcoming fears in Germany. She also appealed to the very human feeling of wanting to belong in a way that was inspiring. 

Life Happens Scholarship Essay by Emily Trader

Award Amount: $15,000

Essay prompt: How has the death of a parent or guardian impacted your life financially and emotionally? Be sure to describe how the loss of your parent/guardian impacted your college plans, and explain how the lack of adequate (or any) life insurance coverage has impacted your family’s financial situation.

Why it was successful: Emily Trader fully addressed the prompt in honest, beautiful detail. She knew her audience and tailored her essay to appeal to them while telling her compelling story. 

Change a Life Foundation Scholarship Essay by Isabella Mendez-Figueroa

Essay prompt: Please explain how your experience volunteering and participating in community service has shaped your perspective on humanity. Elaborate on how these experiences have influenced your future ambitions and career choice.

Why it was successful: Isabella Mendez-Figueroa shared an empowering story about her parents overcoming financial adversity so that she and her sister could be the first in their family to go to college. 

Giva Scholarship Essay by Joseph Lee

Essay prompt: Who is (or what makes) a good doctor?

Why it was successful: Joseph Lee offered a captivating , personal story that was essentially a list of things that make someone a good doctor without it feeling boring or calculated. 

New York University College of Arts and Science Scholarship by Ana

Award amount: $39,500 

Essay prompt: Explain something that made a big impact in your life.

Why it was successful: Ana discussed how early experiences w ith learning difficult things has contributed to her passion for teaching and supporting students. 

The Fund for Education Abroad Rainbow Scholarship Essay  by Steven Fisher

Award amount: $7,500

Essay prompt: The Fund for Education Abroad is committed to diversifying education abroad by providing funding to students who are typically under-represented in study abroad. Please describe how you and/or your plans for study abroad could be viewed as under-represented.

Why it was successful: Steven Fisher’s powerful essay   connected his realizations about his own sexual identity with embracing the beautiful diversity found all around the world. 

Women’s World Banking Founder’s Scholarship Essay by Rosaisha Ozoria

Essay prompt: Write about your hopes for the future of women and girls worldwide.

Why it was successful: Rosaisha Ozoria   focused on a very specific topic , financial literacy for Hispanic women, and emphasized its importance and relevance to her own life. 

The Millennium Gates Last Dollar Scholarship Essay by Famyrah Lafortune

Award amount: $3,500

Essay prompt: Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” —Nelson Mandela Describe a change you would like to make in the world. Tell us about how you would plan to make that change, and what obstacles you might encounter along the way.

Why it was successful: Famyrah Lafortune starts with a strong statement about ending racial inequality and then details the steps she’ll take to make it happen. 

Do you have any great scholarship essay examples? Share them below!

Plus, check out  the ultimate guide to college scholarships, want more suggestions be sure to subscribe to our newsletters ..

You Might Also Like

60+ College Essay Prompts From Actual 2023-2024 Applications

Ideas to inspire every college applicant. Continue Reading

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World Historian Student Essay Competition

Congratulations to Joshua Hangartner of La Jolla Country Day School, the winner of the 2023 World Historian Student Essay Competition for his essay, "World History: A Vehicle for Understanding Ourselves."

2023 World Historian Student Essay Competition Winner: Joshua Hangartner (La Jolla Country Day School)

• The WHA is pleased to announce that Joshua Hangartner of La Jolla Country Day School (La Jolla, CA) is the winner of the 2023 World Historian Essay Competition for his outstanding essay, "World History: A Vehicle for Understanding Ourselves." Focusing on its broad and deep complexities, Mr. Hangartner ably demonstrates how World History's vast and complex scope connects us personally to the sweeping historical themes that shaped the present day and serves as a "uniquely powerful tool" that allows us to discover ourselves in an incredibly complicated world. Congratulations, Joshua!

The World Historian Student Essay Competition is an international competition open to students enrolled in grades  K–12 in public, private, and parochial schools, and those in home-study programs. Membership in the World History Association is not a requirement for submission. Past winners may not compete in the same category again.  Finalist essays will be checked against AI internet components and will be automatically disqualified should stock answers be detected.

The World History Association established this $500 prize to recognize young scholars. A one-year membership in the WHA will also be included with each prize.

Each competitor will submit an essay that addresses one of the following topics and discuss how it relates to you personally and to World History:  Your view of a family story related to a historical event or your personal family cultural background, or an issue of personal relevance or specific regional history/knowledge, such as "My ancestor walked with Abraham Lincoln from Illinois to fight in the Black Hawk War of 1832." 

The committee will judge papers according to the following criteria:

• clear thesis;
• elaboration on the thesis with specific, concrete, personal example(s);
• evidence of critical-thinking, such as synthesis and evaluation, when reflecting on the essay question;
• organization and fluency; and
• overall effectiveness of the student’s ability to communicate his or her personal connection with the study of world history—in other words, how well has the student described the experience of being changed by a better understanding of world history?

To view some of our past winning essays, please click on the links below.

2023 Paper Prize Winner

2019 Paper Prize Winner

2018 Paper Prize Winner

2017 Paper Prize Winner

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Length & format.

Length:  Submissions for the  K–12  World Historian Award should be approximately 1,000 words.

Formatting:  Number all pages except for the title page. All pages are to be double-spaced. Use 12-point Times New Roman Font. Margins are to be 1 inch left and right, and top and bottom.

Submissions must be composed in Microsoft Word.

The author’s identity is to appear nowhere on the paper.

A separate, unattached page should accompany the paper, identifying the author, title of paper, home address, telephone number, e-mail address, and name of school.

Papers that do not adhere to these guidelines will be disqualified.

Entries must be emailed or postmarked by the annual deadline of 1 May.

Winning papers will be announced during the summer.

The  WHA  reserves the right to publish in the  World History Bulletin  any essay (or portion thereof) submitted to the competition. It will do so solely at its discretion, but full acknowledgment of authorship will be given. If someone’s essay is published in whole or in part, the author will receive three (3) copies of the  Bulletin.

E-mail submission

Send the following materials as separate attachments (formatted in  MS  Word) in the same e-mail, with the subject line  World Historian Student Essay :

• the paper, and
• a page with identifying information (author, title of paper, home address, telephone number, e-mail address, and name of school).

E-mail to:  Susan Smith <[email protected]> .

Postal submission

Send five copies of the paper and five copies of the page with identifying information. In the lower left hand corner on the front of the envelope write:  World Historian Student Essay.

Susan Smith Maple Grove Senior High 9800 Fernbrook Lane  N. Maple Grove,  MN  55369-9747

WORLD HISTORIAN STUDENT ESSAY COMPETITION COMMITTEE:

• Susan Smith, chair
• Paul Richgruber

PAST WINNERS

• Joshua Hangartner, La Jolla Country Day School (La Jolla, CA) "World History: A Vehicle for Understanding Ourselves"
• Amanda Zhao, Pacific Ridge School (Carlsbad, CA) “History: An Ode to the Bricks of Progress”
• Akram Elkouraichi, Yonkers Middle High School (Yonkers, NY) “The Realization of Impermanence: Ephemerality in World History as a Conceptual Framework”
• Steven Chen, Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School (Vancouver, BC, Canada) “A Human Story: World History as an Optimist”
• Juliana Boerema, Cary Christian School (Cary, North Carolina) “Brilliant Painting: How the Study of World History Changes Perspective”
• Ahmad Aamir, Lahore Grammar School (Lahore, Pakistan) “Learning from History: Cooperation, Belief, Scholarship, & Words”
• Vivian Liu, International School of Beijing (Beijing, China) “History: Bread of the World”
• Vanessa Yan, Saint Stephen’s Episcopal School (Bradenton, Florida) “World History: The Great Macroscope”
• Rachel Hughes, Webber Academy (Calgary, Canada), “Fostering a Universal Understanding of World History is the Key to a Brighter Tomorrow”
• Campbell Munson, The Episcopal School of Dallas, “How History Has Affected My Worldview: Economies, Migration, Causality and Disease”
• Jacob Cooper, North Oconee High School (Bogart, Georgia), “World History: The Basis for Self-Determination, Democracy, and Religion“
• Luke J. Hamilton, Sword Academy (Bridgeport, Nebraska), “The Present: Living History”
• David Kim, Wydown Middle School ( St.  Louis), “History: The Shadow of the World”
• Elizabeth Mello, Dartmouth High School (Dartmouth, Massachusetts), “Out of Many Threads, One Cloth”

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Fourteen Scholarship Essay Examples That Won Thousands 2024

Winning a big scholarship can be life-changing, particularly for those with financial need.

BUT people often forget that winning lots of small scholarship applications can be life-changing too. The scholarship essay examples (and our strategy) below can take you from planning your college plans and career goals to living them.

A common problem soon-to-be college students face: Paying for college. They qualify for many scholarships but are daunted by the task of writing five to ten to fifteen (or more) essays. It can be a struggle to even start writing, particularly for those “why I deserve the scholarship” prompts.

One solution for how to write a scholarship essay for many topics at once: Pick topics that have overlapping subject matter and write an essay or two that fit lots of these essays at once. Below, we’ve given some more information about how to successfully earn scholarship opportunities with this technique and how to end a scholarship essay.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Kang Foundation and Legal Scholarship
• New York University Scholarship
• North Coast Section Foundation Scholarship
• Fund for Education Abroad Scholarship 1
• Questbridge Scholarship
• Change a Life Foundation
• Millennium Gates Last Dollar Scholarship 1
• Millennium Gates Last Dollar Scholarship 2
• Millennium Gates Last Dollar Scholarship 3
• Millennium Gates Last Dollar Scholarship 4
• National Association of University Women Scholarship 1
• National Association of University Women Scholarship 2
• Fund for Education Abroad Scholarship 2
• Local School District Scholarship

What Makes These Examples So Great

These scholarship winners earned thousands in financial aid from writing these essays.

The key to many of these essays is that they describe a story or an aspect of the student’s life in a way that is dynamic: It reflects many of their values, strengths, interests, volunteer work, and life experiences. 

Many of these essays also demonstrate vulnerability. Scholarship committees reading your responses will want to know who this money will benefit and why it’s important that you receive this money. In other words, they want to better understand how your values, qualities, and skills will flourish in college--and how good your writing skills are. In fact, we’ve written a guide to what colleges look for that can help you skillfully write vulnerable scholarship essays.

Whether it’s a scholarship essay about yourself , a creative writing scholarship, or an essay about why you deserve the scholarship, the sample scholarship essays below can help you better understand what can result from following a scholarship essay format or applying tips for how to write a scholarship essay. 

But first! If you’re an international student (not from the United States) applying to scholarships, don’t forget to consider some common mistakes international students make when applying to college .

How to Save Time By Combining Essays

Want to save a lot of time during the process?

Write a great college essay and re-use it when writing scholarship essays for similar prompts. Why? Combining essay prompts will not only save you time, it’ll actually result in a better essay.

We sometimes like to call these “Super Essays” because the added benefit of writing a multi-purpose essay is that it makes the essay stronger overall. We have a whole guide for how to do that here . 

This makes scholarship essays similar to supplemental essays because many supplemental essays also overlap. We know many students will be writing both types of essays at once! To help, we’ve put together a supplemental essays course on how to tackle the daunting supplemental essays, including many skills that help with writing those “Super” scholarship essays too.

Scholarship Essay Example #1

Kang Foundation Scholarship ($1000), Kingdom Dreamer Scholarship Fund Scholarship through Sarang Church ($2000), and the national contest from the Lamber Goodnow legal team ($1000) by Peter Kang.

Prompt: Open topic.

Fedora? Check. Apron? Check. Tires pumped? Check. Biking the thirty-five minutes each evening to the cafe and back to work a six-hour shift was exhausting, but my family’s encouragement and gratitude for the extra income was worth it. A few years earlier, my family of nine had been evicted from the home we had been living in for the past ten years. With nowhere else to go, we moved into our church’s back room for three months, where I shamefully tried to hide our toothbrushes and extra shoes from other church members. Right then I made a commitment to my family to contribute financially in whatever way I could. My sacrifice translated to a closer bond with my siblings and deeper conversations with my parents, helping me understand the true meaning of a unified family and the valuable part I play in that. With the financial stability that my part-time jobs provided my mother could stay home to raise seven children, my learning-disabled older sister could attend college, my younger sister could go on a mission trip to Korea, and my twin siblings could compete in national math competitions. I’ve seen that even as a high school student, I have so much potential to impact my family and beyond -- how one small act can go a long way. Through the successes of my efforts, I also realized that poverty was just a societal limitation. I was low-income, not poor. I was still flourishing in school, leading faith-based activities and taking an active role in community service. My low-income status was not a barrier but a launching pad to motivate and propel my success. To additionally earn more money as a young teen, I began flipping bicycles for profit on craigslist. Small adjustments in the brake and gears, plus a wash, could be the difference between a $50 piece of trash and a $200 steal. Seeing how a single inch could disarrange the lining of gears not only taught me the importance of detail but also sparked my fascination with fixing things. When I was sixteen I moved on to a larger project: my clunker of a car. I had purchased my 2002 Elantra with my own savings, but it was long past its prime. With some instruction from a mechanic, I began to learn the components of an engine motor and the engineering behind it. I repaired my brake light, replaced my battery, and made adjustments to the power-steering hose. Engineering was no longer just a nerdy pursuit of robotics kids; it was a medium to a solution. It could be a way to a career, doing the things I love. I was inspired to learn more. Last summer, to continue exploring my interest in engineering, I interned at Boeing. Although I spent long hours researching and working in the lab for the inertial navigation of submarines, I learned most from the little things. From the way my mentors and I began working two hours earlier than required to meet deadlines, I learned that engineering is the commitment of long hours. From the respect and humility embodied within our team, I learned the value of unity at the workplace. Like my own family at home, our unity and communal commitment to working led to excellent results for everyone and a closer connection within the group. What most intrigues me about engineering is not just the math or the technology, but the practical application. It is through engineering that I can fix up my car... and facilitate submarine navigation. Engineering, in fact, is a lifestyle --  instead of lingering over hardships, I work to solve them and learn from them. Whether the challenge is naval defense or family finances or even just a flat tire on my bike before another night shift, I will be solving these problems and will always be looking to keep rolling on.   Success is triumphing over hardships -- willing yourself over anything and everything to achieve the best for yourself and your family. With this scholarship, I will use it to continue focusing on my studies in math and engineering, instead of worrying about making money and sending more back home. It will be an investment into myself for my family.

Scholarship Essay Example #2

New York University College of Arts and Science $39,500 Scholarship by Ana

Prompt: Explain something that made a big impact in your life.

“If you can’t live off of it, it is useless.” My parents were talking about ice skating: my passion. I started skating as a ten-year-old in Spain, admiring how difficulty and grace intertwine to create beautiful programs, but no one imagined I would still be on the ice seven years and one country later. Even more unimaginable was the thought that ice skating might become one of the most useful parts of my life. I was born in Mexico to two Spanish speakers; thus, Spanish was my first language. We then moved to Spain when I was six, before finally arriving in California around my thirteenth birthday. Each change introduced countless challenges, but the hardest part of moving to America, for me, was learning English. Laminated index cards, color-coded and full of vocabulary, became part of my daily life. As someone who loves to engage in a conversation, it was very hard to feel as if my tongue was cut off. Only at the ice rink could I be myself; the feeling of the cold rink breeze embracing me, the ripping sound of blades touching the ice, even the occasional ice burning my skin as I fell—these were my few constants. I did not need to worry about mispronouncing “axel” as “aksal.” Rather, I just needed to glide and deliver the jump. From its good-natured bruise-counting competitions to its culture of hard work and perseverance, ice skating provided the nurturing environment that made my other challenges worthwhile. Knowing that each moment on the ice represented a financial sacrifice for my family, I cherished every second I got. Often this meant waking up every morning at 4 a.m. to practice what I had learned in my few precious minutes of coaching. It meant assisting in group lessons to earn extra skating time and taking my conditioning off-ice by joining my high school varsity running teams. Even as I began to make friends and lose my fear of speaking, the rink was my sanctuary. Eventually, however, the only way to keep improving was to pay for more coaching, which my family could not afford. And so I started tutoring Spanish. Now, the biggest passion of my life is supported by my most natural ability. I have had over thirty Spanish students, ranging in age from three to forty and spanning many ethnic backgrounds. I currently work with fifteen students each week, each with different needs and ways of learning. Drawing on my own experiences as both a second language-learner and a figure skater, I assign personal, interactive exercises, make jokes to keep my students’ mindset positive, and never give away right answers. When I first started learning my axel jump, my coach told me I would have to fall at least 500 times (about a year of falls!) in order to land it. Likewise, I have my students embrace every detail of a mistake until they can begin to recognize new errors when they see them. I encourage them to expand their horizons and take pride in preparing them for new interactions and opportunities. Although I agree that I will never live off of ice skating, the education and skills I have gained from it have opened countless doors. Ice skating has given me the resilience, work ethic, and inspiration to develop as a teacher and an English speaker. It has improved my academic performance by teaching me rhythm, health, and routine. It also reminds me that a passion does not have to produce money in order for it to hold immense value. Ceramics, for instance, challenges me to experiment with the messy and unexpected. While painting reminds me to be adventurous and patient with my forms of self-expression. I don’t know yet what I will live off of from day to day as I mature; however, the skills my passions have provided me are life-long and irreplaceable.

ARE YOU A STUDENT FROM A LOW-INCOME HOUSEHOLD, HAVE A GOOD GPA, and are looking for free college essay and application coaching?

Learn more about the matchlighters scholars program & apply today..

Scholarship Essay Example #3

North Coast Section Foundation Scholarship for $1000 by Christine Fung

As a child of immigrant parents, I learned to take responsibilities for my family and myself at a very young age. Although my parents spoke English, they constantly worked in order to financially support my little brother and I. Meanwhile, my grandparents barely knew English so I became their translator for medical appointments and in every single interaction with English speakers. Even until now, I still translate for them and I teach my grandparents conversational English. The more involved I became with my family, the more I knew what I wanted to be in the future. Since I was five, my parents pushed me to value education because they were born in Vietnam and had limited education. Because of this disadvantage, I learned to take everything I do seriously and to put in all of my effort to complete tasks such as becoming the founder of my school’s Badminton Club in my sophomore year and Red Cross Club this year. Before creating these clubs, I created a vision for these clubs so I can organize my responsibilities better as a leader. The more involved I became, the more I learned as a leader and as a person. As a leader, I carried the same behavior I portrayed towards my younger cousins and sibling. My family members stressed the importance of being a good influence; as I adapted this behavior, I utilized this in my leadership positions. I learned to become a good role model by teaching my younger family members proper manners and guiding them in their academics so that they can do well. In school, I guide my peers in organizing team uniform designs and in networking with a nonprofit organization for service events. Asides from my values, I’m truly passionate in the medical field. I always wanted to be a pediatrician since I was fourteen. My strong interest in the medical field allowed me to open up my shell in certain situations— when I became sociable to patients in the hospital as a volunteer, when I became friendly and approachable to children in my job at Kumon Math and Reading Center, and when I portrayed compassion and empathy towards my teammates in the badminton team. However, when I participated in the 2017 Kaiser Summer Volunteer Program at Richmond Medical Center, I realized that I didn’t only want to be a pediatrician. This program opened my eye to numerous opportunities in different fields of medicine and in different approaches in working in the medicine industry. While I may have a strong love for the medical field, my interest in business immensely grew as I soon discovered that I didn’t only have to take the practical approach in the medical field. With this interest, I plan to also become a part of a medical facility management team. In the future, I hope to pursue my dream of becoming a doctor by attaining an MD, and to double major in Managerial Economics. I intend to study at UC Davis as a Biological Sciences major, where I anticipate to become extremely involved with the student community. After graduation, I plan to develop a strong network relationship with Kaiser Permanente as I’ve started last year in my internship. By developing a network with them, I hope to work in one of their facilities some day. Based on my values, interests, and planned future, I’m applying for the NCS Foundation scholarship because not only will it financially help me, but it can give motivation for me to academically push myself. I hope to use this scholarship in applying for a study abroad program, where I can learn about other cultures’ customs while conducting research there.  

Scholarship Essay Example #4

Fund for Education Abroad Rainbow Scholarship $7,500 by Steven Fisher

Prompt: The Fund for Education Abroad is committed to diversifying education abroad by providing funding to students who are typically under-represented in study abroad. Please describe how you and/or your plans for study abroad could be viewed as under-represented.

“Oh well look at that one,” my uncle leans over and says about my brother-in-law in the living room wearing a dress. “I’d always had my suspicions about him,” he jokes with a disapproving sneer and leans back in his chair, a plate of Southern-style Christmas dinner in his hand. I was hurt. Why would my own uncle say that like it’s such a terrible thing that my brother-in-law is wearing a dress? That it was the worst thing in the world if my brother-in-law were gay or effeminite. “I think he looks beautiful,” my oldest brother Ethan chimes in. At that moment, I wish I could have hugged Ethan. No, not because he was defending my brother-in-law (who actually isn’t gay, as my uncle was suggesting), but because Ethan was defending me. My uncle has no idea that I recognized earlier this past year that heterosexuality wasn’t meeting all of my needs for intimacy with other people and that I’ve come to define myself as queer. It all started when I took a hard look at how my upbringing in Miami had taught me that the only way that boys are supposed to connect with others is by having sex with “beautiful” girls – that intimacy with other guys or “ugly” girls isn’t as meaningful. After freeing up that block in my brain that told me that I shouldn’t look at guys in a certain way, I could embraced the fact that I’m attracted to men (and people in general) in a lot of different, new ways. My growth as a person was exponential. I rewrote so many areas of my life where I didn’t do things I wanted because of social conditioning. Within two months, my world expanded to include polyamory. I looked back on my past relationship with my girlfriend and realized that I wasn’t jealous (angry, yes. hurt, yes. But not jealous) when she cheated on me. I realized that people’s needs — whether they are for sex, someone to talk to, someone to engage intellectually — don’t necessarily all have to be met with one person. It can be easier sometimes with one person, absolutely. But that’s not the only way. As someone who is both polyamorus and queer, I feel like parts of my family and large parts of my community marginalize me for being different because society has told them to. I want to change that. Since I will be studying for an entire year in Prague, I will have the opportunity to attend the annual Mezipatra, an international film festival in November that screens around a hundred top-ranking films on lesbian, bisexual, transsexual and queer themes. I feel really connected to going to this event because I crave being in an environment of like-minded people who strive to do that same thing I want to: balance the images of people typically portrayed through cliché and stereotype. When I came out to my sister-in-law, she told me that people who are really set in their ways are more likely to be tolerant to different kinds of people after having relationships with these people. If my uncle can learn to love me, to learn to love one queer/poly person, he can learn to love them all. If I can be an example to my family, I can be an example to my classmates. If I can get the opportunity to travel abroad, I can be an example to the world. Not just through my relationships, but through my art. Give me a camera and a screen and I will carry the message of tolerance from the audiences of Mezipatra in Prague to my parent’s living room. Fade in: Two men with thick beards kiss – maybe for once they aren’t wearing colorful flamboyant clothing. Fade in: A woman leaves her house to go to her male best friend’s house and her husband honestly tells her to enjoy herself. Fade in: A college student wanting to study abroad tells his conservative parents the truth…

Working on your scholarship essay or personal statement?

Get help from my free guide, scholarship essay example #5.

Questbridge Finalist essay earning $3,000 in application waivers plus $3000 in local scholarships by Jordan Sanchez

Prompt: Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

Recall the most cherished memory with your father figure. For some it may be when he taught you how to ride a bike, for others it may be memories of him taking you out for pizza when mom said the family has to eat healthy, for others it’s the ability to confide in somebody that won’t judge or stop loving you because of the mistakes you have made. When a child is born, he or she is given a birth certificate, which provides information such as name, date and place of birth, but most importantly it provides the names of the parents of the child. On my birth certificate I have the name the name of my beloved mother Lurvin, but right above her name is an empty space where my father’s name should be. As a child I would often compare my life to my peers; I would often go through all of these hypothetical scenarios in my mind thinking, “If my dad were around I could be like all of the other boys.” As the years went by I always had a sense of optimism that one day I would meet him and he would tell me “I love you and I’ll never leave your side again.” But when the time came and I met him on January 2014 I learned that a man can reject his only son not once, but twice. My father left when I was one year old and I will soon be turning 17; I did the math and found that for about 5900 days he has neglected me. He was able to sleep 5900 nights without knowing whether or not I was dead or alive. Even though he’s been gone for 5900 days,  my life did not get put on hold. In those 5900 days I learned how to walk, talk, and I became a strong young man without the provider of my Y Chromosome because he is nothing more to me than that. In the past I believed that my father was necessary to rise but instead I found that false hope was an unnecessary accessory and now I refuse to let the fact that I am fatherless define the limits of the great things that I can accomplish. It’s said that boys learn to be a man from their fathers, that they learn what it means to be a man that has values and can stand up for what’s right. I, however, have found that grit can come from anywhere. When I was in middle school I was overweight and many other boys would call me names, and even after going to administration several times nothing changed and for several years I kept myself at bay because if I had done anything in return I would be no better than those guys who bullied me. I previously had this perception that somebody else would come to my rescue, that somebody else would provide the mental strength to combat the hardships that were sent my way. But as time passed I grew tired of waiting for help that was never going to come so I had to become my own hero. Since making that decision I have been liberated from the labels that previously confined me and I took back control of my own life. My ability to be self motivated has assisted me in becoming a leader in several of my extracurricular activities. I was one of the 4 male students of my school district that was selected as a delegate by the American Legion to participate at the Boy’s State program and I am also the captain of my group in the Young Senator's Leadership Program that is run by California Senator Tony Mendoza. I also developed skills on the wrestling mat.  On one occasion I wrestled the person who was ranked the 9th best wrestler in the state and although I did not win there was not a single second that I was afraid to fail because I knew I gave it my all. Similarly I have put the same effort into becoming a successful. My father’s name is not on my birth certificate, but it is MY birth certificate. My origins are not the brightest but I was given a life that is mine to live and because “Life is made of two dates and a dash..” I have to “...Make most of the dash.” I am not going to live forever but if I were to leave this world today I would feel content with the person I see in the mirror. I know the difficulty that latinos face in this day and age I can envision assisting other young latinos achieving their dreams. I believe the most valuable thing in this world is opportunity because sometimes all it takes for someone to be successful is a chance to do so. Consequently I would like to be part of that chance that can foster the growth of future success.

Scholarship Essay Example #6

Change a Life Foundation Scholarship Essay Examples by Isabella Mendez-Figueroa

Prompt: Please explain a personal hardship or catastrophic life event that you have experienced. How did you manage to overcome this obstacle? What did you learn and how did you grow from it? This answer is critical to your application as Change a Life Foundation’s vision is to assist individuals who have persevered and overcome a hardship/catastrophic life event.

Filling out this application, and my college applications, has forced me to face head on the realities that I've grown up in. Looking back and describing my life I see all the ways in which I am disadvantaged due to my socioeconomic status. But I think it's important to note that I wasn't fully aware of any of it growing up. I knew that my parents couldn't buy me everything, but I also knew that they hardly ever said no. I was a very normal child, asking for chicken nuggets and looking at mom and dad any time I was scared or unsure of something. As I've grown I've learned to fight my own monsters but I now also battle the ones that frighten my parents, the monsters of a world that they weren't born into. Monsters of doubt and disadvantage that try to keep them stuck in a cycle of poverty; thriving in a world that casts them to the side and a society that, with its current political climate, doesn't welcome them with the warmest hello. The baby sitter, the house keeper, the driver, it's taken my dad 10+ years of night shifts to attain financial stability, and become an asset to his workplace. He's been one of the millions of people who has been laid off in the last couple of decades and has had to start over multiple times. But each time he's re-built himself with more resilience. I've grown up living in section 8 housing because my parents often found themselves living paycheck to paycheck, not by choice, but by circumstance. They've endured bankruptcy over credit card debt, have never owned a home, or been given access to resources that allow them to save. Every time we've readapted, we get struck by a new change. I currently live in Manchester Square, a ghost town, byproduct of the Los Angeles Airport expansion project. The 16 steps I have always known, soon to be demolished. My neighbors are empty lots, enclosed by fences. Homeless people’s pitch tents, under the roar of airplanes. My home is soon to become an accommodation to an airport, soon to be nonexistent. Knowing that my family has to relocate as I'm applying to college makes me feel a tad guilty, because of my lack of resources, I fear it will become a barrier into my transition to college. My parents finances are not a secret, I know their struggles as I hear about them day after day. My parents now deal with the burden of relocating, no longer having subsidized housing and again, struck by yet another need to readjust and reassemble. Relocating a family of 5 in an area plagued by gentrification of stadiums and demolition is no simple task as rent prices are as high as mortgages. It's odd they don't want me to stress or have it become my problem but I know it is, and I want to do whatever I can to help. My older sister is the first in my family to go to college. I was always the shyer one. She's taught me through her efforts that the only limits you have are the ones you place on yourself. With my sister's example I have followed in the footsteps of never letting money become a reason why I can't or won't do something. If my sister can do it, I can do it. I see the leadership characteristic is genetic and it runs in my entire family. I witness my parents be leaders everyday as they tackle cultural obstacles in a country that wasn't the one they were born into, speaking a language that is not their own, and raising children to succeed in a system of higher education; one they never had the privilege to be part of. My family and I are one. We stack our efforts, and obstacles on top of each other to further our successes as a whole. When I think back to my family's story I'm amazed to think that my grandpa came to the US in the midst of WW2, a bracero, leaving his family to help feed millions of Americans in time of war. My grandpa, a man of the fields, paved the way so I could defy the odds with my prosperity. At home, the teacher role often switches within my family. I am responsible for translating documents to my parents and explaining procedures and concepts as I, myself, am learning them. I have had the responsibility of helping assist my younger sister who has a mild case of Cerebral Palsy. Due to her pre-existing condition, she is a slow learner. I have dedicated a lot of time this past year, helping her with her transition from elementary to middle school and helping her adapt to such a drastic change. Sometimes, I only sleep 4 hours as I wake up and rush out the door in order to make it on time to 6am tutoring. Having to manage my schoolwork and home responsibilities has been difficult but I've managed to maintain high academic achievement by managing my time correctly and being persistent. If I truly want something, I need to go after it, and I will get it done. Sometimes being tired isn't an option.

Scholarship Essay Example #7

Millennium Gates Last Dollar Scholarship and $3,500 in Outside Scholarship Essay Examples by Famyrah Lafortune

Prompt: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” - Nelson Mandela. Describe a change you would like to make in the world. Tell us about how you would plan to make that change, and what obstacles you might encounter along the way. * (No more than 400 words)

Nothing is more important to me than ending racial inequality and discrimination in America, as I do not want my younger siblings to face the discrimination Black people continue to face in our present society. After winning our fight to freedom and provoking the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, why do Black teens face higher poverty rates than Whites and are still four times more likely to be incarcerated? “That was such a long time ago. You really need to get over it,” my White peers say when referring to racial inequalities. But, why then, in 7th grade, after winning Nazareth Academy’s Spelling Bee competition, did my fellow White classmate state with a heavy dose of surprise, “You know…when I first saw you, I didn’t think you were going to be smart?” I hope to contribute to ending racial discrimination by utilizing our present interconnectivity and running a social media campaign titled #It’sNotOver. #It’sNotOver aims to oppose the widespread misconception that, because racial inequality was legally outlawed, de facto racial inequality does not still persist in our society. Our recent presidential election may have brought life to a ‘Divided America,’ but it also exposed how influential social media is. By raising awareness of racial disparities that occur everywhere, I might encourage a new wave of change in our country like that of the present Time’s Up movement. Furthermore, if I can access the influence of celebrities in my #It’sNotOver campaign, like that of Time’s Up, I might similarly capture the attention of millions of people and inspire action against this issue across the globe. I know that social media can only do so much in addressing these issues as not everyone can afford the luxury of having internet access. However, I hope that my campaign can inspire all those who do have access to take it upon themselves to be the change by being inspired by the fact that we are globally united in this issue. Although I expect negativity and criticism from people who either do not believe that this issue exists or do not believe in our cause, I am willing to encounter it if it means our society as a whole irrevocably can grow to accept each other’s differences.

Scholarship Essay Example #8

Prompt: “It is very important to know who you are. To make decisions. To show who you are.” – Malala Yousafzai. Tell us three things that are important to you. How did you arrive at this list? Will these things be important to you in ten years? Why? * (No more than 400 words)

The three things that are important to me are my family, being successful, and leaving a legacy. As a result of my past, I keep these three crucial things at the forefront of my mind every day to help myself be successful. Above all, my family is the most important thing in my life. The meaning of family may differ for everyone, but for me, my family is life. I almost died in the 2010 Haitian earthquake, as Jacmel was one of the worst damaged areas, had it not been for my grandmother and my mom. Later, if it was not for my uncle, my mom would not have been able to come to America to give me a better life. Without my family, I wouldn’t be here. I am forever indebted to their sacrifices, and I am so grateful that I have their eternal love and support. Success is also very important to me. I hope to accomplish many things in my life, but most importantly, I would like to make my family proud so that they know that all of their sacrifices were worth it. Success to me is having a career that I love and allows me to help my family members financially. I hope to no longer experience hardships such as homelessness, poverty, and economic difficulties, as I had in my young life. Ultimately, however, I would like to grow into someone who is loved and remembered by people who aren’t my immediate family members and my friends. I do not wish to be glorified, but I want to be more than a nonentity in this big, vast world. I hope that if I can inspire the change that I want to make, I can leave a legacy that continues to influence and shape the landscape that follows me. After coming to the epiphany that if I died today, nothing would change except for the lives of those extremely close to me, I find myself unwilling to be just another Jane Doe. I want to leave a part of myself behind, whether it is a building or a popular hashtag, that is meaningful and permanent once I die.

ANOTHER GREAT READ: HOW TO COMBINE YOUR COLLEGE ESSAY PROMPTS (TO SAVE 20+ WRITING HOURS)

Scholarship essay example #9.

Prompt: “Preservation of one's own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures.” - Cesar Chavez. What does it mean to you to be part of a minority community? What challenges has it brought and how have you overcome them? What are the benefits? * (No more than 400 words)

Being part of a minority is very conflicting for me as I feel both empowered as a part of a Haitian minority community but also disconnected from my non-immigrant peers. Coming from a background of poverty in Haiti, I knew that, even at a very young age, I had to be a good student in order to succeed. This work ethic--found throughout my Haitian community--has been very beneficial in my life as we all came here to pave ourselves a better future. As my mom held two jobs, went to college, and was temporarily homeless just to secure me a better future, I feel invigorated to be part of such an indefatigable community. And, it is because of this strong work ethic, central to my community’s core values, that I am now the salutatorian of a class of 679 students. As I was so young when I came to the US, I didn’t know how American society functioned, specifically elementary school. I was the only immigrant in a class of forty, barely spoke English, and had no friends because of these limitations. Every day of those first few years, I felt an almost physical divide between my peers and myself. I never experienced a sense of belonging, despite my efforts. Already a double minority as a woman and a Black person, I tried to relinquish my language and culture in favor of American language and values to better fit in the crowd. By doing this, however, I almost completely lost my cultural identity as both a Haitian and an immigrant, and also my language. It was in the halls of my first high school, International Studies Charter High School, that I realized the enormity of what I had lost. Where my peers retained their cultural identities and language, I had almost lost mine. It was there, I learned to embrace a part of me that was virtually buried inside, as I was encouraged to be more open: speaking Creole with my Haitian math teacher and peers. As a senior, I now volunteer weekly helping Haitian ESOL students with their homework. I am both a teacher and a student in that small classroom as I help them with their homework, and, in return, they help me in perfecting my use of Creole. They are my daily reminder of what unites us as Haitians—our ability to triumph in the face of adversity.

Scholarship Essay Example #10

Prompt: “The secret of our success is that we never, never give up.” - Wilma Mankiller. Tell us about a time when you failed at something. What were the circumstances? How did you respond to failure? What lessons did you learn? * (No more than 400 words)

I’ve danced ballet since I was seven-years-old. But, even after almost eight years, I could still barely extend my legs as high as my peers nor could do as many pirouettes as them. My flexibility was incredibly subpar and I easily wore out my Pointe shoes, making them unwearable after a couple of months. Where the average lifespans of my peers’ pointe shoes extended into months, mine could barely last ten classes. I was the weakling of my class at Ballet Etudes, and I was too absorbed in my insecurities to do anything to better myself to become the dancer I aspired to be. After a humiliating recital, wherein my pointe shoe ribbons untied in the middle of our group performance, I all but gave up on dance. I was in the middle of doing a Changement de Pieds (Change of feet jumping step) when I glanced down in horror to see my beautiful ribbons untied as I forgot to tape them with clear tape as I usually did before my performances. Glancing to my right, I saw that my ballet teacher backstage had also taken note and was rushing me to get off the stage, her hands beckoning me in a frantic manner. After berating me for not having properly tied my laces, I was not allowed to finish my part. Later, I could barely get back on stage that evening for our final performance as I didn’t want to fail myself and my team again. But, because of my move to Port Saint Lucie in the summer before sophomore year, I was able to rekindle my passion for ballet and pointe at South Florida Dance Company. South Florida Dance Company was my saving grace, a place where I was able to restart my experiences in dance and renew the joy I once felt in my art. It was an incredible feeling regaining my confidence and surety in my abilities, as a result of the additional help that I received from my dance teacher, Ms. Amanda. Presently, I always remind myself to be the best that I can be and to positively use my dance role models, like Misty Copeland, as encouragement to be a better dancer. From this experience, I learned that to overcome personal failures, I needed to move forward and think positively because change doesn’t happen when you sit still.

Scholarship Essay Example #11

National Association of University Women Scholarship Essay Examples by Isabella Mendez-Figueroa

Prompt: Please explain how your experience volunteering and participating in community service has shaped your perspective on humanity. Elaborate on how these experiences have influenced your future ambitions and career choice.

I didn’t really understand my community until I was forced to see it from the outside; sort of like when you see a picture of yourself someone else took that you weren’t aware of. It took a 3,000 mile flight for me to gain a different perspective of the world, of my world. When I landed in Maine it was nothing like the place I called home. There was no traffic, there were lots of trees, and absolutely no spanish to be heard anywhere. I missed my people, my home, and my community the most as I saw the ways in which other communities fostered creativity, advocacy, and community involvement. I talked about my community every chance I got, writing a public backlash to Donald Trump and reading out to the group of parents to show them my unique struggle. The election of Donald Trump has forced me to come to terms with the harsh realities of this world. The lack of respect he has for women, minority groups, and factual evidence are alarming. This presidency makes me want to prove wrong all of his perceptions of people like me, the poor, the immigrant, the woman. I left people in awe, leaving me empowered. I had people come up to me and explain that they can relate to my poem about not fitting in, being Mexican American and not feeling like you can consider yourself American or Mexican because you’re both. I emphasized that I, like many others, am in between and we have the same platform that anyone else does to succeed. I explained that many of us, hold this pressure of first generation children of immigrants to prove that we are the proof that our parents sacrifices of restarting in a new country was worth it. I was the visible representation of a first generation child of immigrants, branching out into a new environment despite where I had come from and shocking everyone with my prosperity. If I was the only visible representation available, I was going to use my voice to echo the feelings of my entire community and make it known that we are all here-- all of our struggles, our efforts, and our passions, are not absent from places where we are not seen. Maine helped me branch out in my own community now as a Student Ambassador. From this experience, I’ve learned that I can represent my high school and have the responsibility to assist staff at events for prospective students and organize presentations for parents. I spend a lot of time interpreting for parents at meetings and explaining the current events that are ongoing and new educational opportunities that students should take advantage of. I have had the privilege to work alongside office staff and the Principal, where I get to positively dedicate my time to parents who have general questions regarding the schools upcoming events. By dedicating my time as a Student Ambassador, I have allowed myself to excel at communicating with others and improving my customer service skills. I want my education to change the negative stigmas surrounding my community, by showing that it's possible to expand your access to the world and allow you to leave, by choice, through receiving a post-secondary education. I am someone who has grown up in an area with limited resources fostering limited mindsets. My neighborhood has 4 elementary schools, 2 high schools, and a strip club feet away from a library. What message does that send to children? It's normal in my community to have pregnant classmates in high school. People aren't aware of the world outside, they aren't encouraged to ever leave. Through my experience as a volunteer that communicates a lot with parents, I have learned that the American Dream does not simply belong to first generation students like myself. I have found that our accomplishments are stacked upon the sacrifices of our parents. I used to think that growing up was like the passing of a baton where you’re the next runner and it’s your turn to run your best race, but I now see that this is a team effort, as you expand your horizons your family also gets to experience the benefits. I want to demonstrate to my community that there can be a female, bilingual, Latina doctor. I want to showcase that one's zip code, doesn't determines one's success. One of the most common questions I get at these parent meetings is “what’s better college or university”? This question didn’t make sense to me at first then I realized that parents wanted to know the difference between community college and a four year. Concepts like financial aid, grants, loans, are all foreign concepts as most of our parents never went to college. They want to be able to help but do not know where to begin. As a student ambassador I helped bridge that gap. We often held meetings where we explained to parents within our community what resources were out there and available and what the difference were among the different options for each student. Being the student face for Animo, I’ve learned that I as a student and daughter, can provide assistance to my own community through the knowledge that I have gained. I am the communication that is needed in my community that’s necessary for further successes by using my personal knowledge and experience to help uplift and educate others in similar situations.

Scholarship Essay Example #12

Prompt: Discuss in your essay any challenges or obstacles you have dealt with and overcome in life and how this will help you succeed in college and beyond. Describe how volunteer, community service or extra-curricular activities have shaped who you are today and what it has taught you. May also include future educational plans and career goals. [250-500 Words]

I have encountered an emotional barrier making it difficult to manage my schoolwork, extracurricular activities and family responsibilities. I have had to deal with being viciously raped by a peer during my sophomore year, resulting in severe depression. I am no longer allowed to be alone for a long period of time, as I’ve attempted to commit suicide twice, but I do not regard those as true attempts to end my life. I just wanted someone to know how I felt and how much I needed help. My past has only made me more resilient, as I choose to prove to myself and those around me that I am more than the barriers I’ve encountered–but overcome. It took a 3,000- mile flight for me to gain a different perspective of my world. Landing in Maine was nothing like home. There was no traffic, lots of trees, and absolutely no Spanish to be heard anywhere. I was a 10th grader when I found myself at Coastal Studies for Girls, a marine science and leadership school; I would be there for a whole semester. I was surrounded by strangers who looked different, sounded different, and could recite tide pool specifics in casual conversation. I was the visible representation of a first-generation child of immigrants, branching out into a new environment. An environment where I wanted to prove wrong all perceptions of people like me, the poor, the immigrant, the brown woman. I used my voice to echo my community and make it known that, we, are here–all of our struggles, our efforts, and our passions, are not absent from places where we are not seen. Returning home, I had the privilege to work alongside school administrators as a student ambassador. I got to positively dedicate my time to parents who have general questions regarding the school and help translate information. I have learned that the American Dream does not simply belong to first generation students like myself, but I now see it is a team effort, as you expand, your family also gets to experience the benefits. One of the most common questions at parent meetings is “what’s better college or university”? This question did not make sense to me, I then realized that parents want to know the difference between community college and a four year. Concepts like financial aid, grants, loans, are all foreign concepts as most of our parents never went to college. As a student ambassador, I help bridge that gap. We often hold meetings where we explained resources available and different options for each student. I have learned, that as a student, I can provide assistance to my own community through my knowledge. I am the communication necessary for further successes, using my personal knowledge and experience to help uplift and educate others in similar situations. My pursuit is to not only go to college but thrive and come back ready and able to help students like myself that have to fight for their seat in the lecture hall.

Scholarship Essay Example #13

Prompt: The Rainbow Scholarship is awarded to a deserving LGBTQ student who aims to participate in a high-quality, rigorous education abroad program. If you would like to be considered, please explain why you would be a strong candidate for the Rainbow Scholarship. What will this scholarship enable you to achieve for yourself and your LGBTQ community?

It is my life goal to make films that will change the way society see groups of people typically defined by stereotype and cliché. By immersing myself in Prague’s culture through the American Institute of Foreign Study year-long program, I will gain the cinematic and philosophic tools to create films that will help others to better understand the LGBTQ community. I’ve been making movies since I was old enough to hold a camera, but now I’d like to take it a step further. While abroad, I’ll visit the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) in Prague. The Hollywood Reporter puts FAMU at the top of the list of best film schools in Europe. I put it at the top of my list of prospective graduate schools because it was the center of Czech filmmakers’ during communist rule in the 1960s. FAMU was where rebellious film makers broke the bonds of censorship by creating films that depicted the perspectives of marginalized people. I want to do the same thing today. I ask: What can the Czechoslovak New Wave filmmakers and their struggle for social equality teach me about making films that will help to free the LGBTQ members in my own community? I will find my answers here: In November, the international film festival held in Prague called the Mezipatra will screen around a hundred top-ranking films on lesbian, bisexual, transsexual and queer themes. What better place for a queer filmmaker obsessed with Czech New Wave film to meet people to learn and collaborate with? I’d also like to volunteer to work on a photography project at the Lobkowicz Palace and Nelahozeves Castle, 15km from Prague, where I will find one of the world’s largest private collections of world-famous artworks, artifacts, and a library of over 65,000 volumes. I hope to hone my skills with a camera and take a zoomed-in look at the Prague history. I’m going to wear my Canon t2i like a glove. And finally, I hope to better understand Czech culture as it pertains to film making by studying at Charles University and taking classes like “Central European Film: Search for Identity” and “Hollywood and Europe”. I will get more in touch with the performance and character elements of film by taking the theater class “Prague Theater Scene: Performance Analysis.” Finally, I’ll learn to better listen to what my community in Prague has to say (literally and figuratively) by taking Czech language classes in a two-week intensive course that includes two language-focused events where students engage with the local area. Through traveling abroad in Prague, I give myself to a new perspective and open myself up to influence. I want to use my experience to create films that will convince others to do the same—as a representative of the LGBTQ community, I want to send the message of acceptance and tolerance to the world, from the screens of Mezipatra in Prague to my conservative parents’ television sets.

Scholarship Essay Example #14

$1,000 local school district scholarship by Amani Davis.

Last February, I partook in a Divas in Defense workshop. Within this class, our group met a woman who was a survivor of domestic violence. She was also close to becoming a victim of sex trafficking. From this I learned that intimate partner violence is the leading cause of female homicide and injury-related deaths during pregnancy. Although it is not a common hot topic, many people go through it everyday. These people are not only women but men and children, too. Therefore, domestic violence is an issue that is under-discussed, yet extremely important. Every 1 in 4 women will be a victim of severe violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime. This means our mothers, sisters, grandmothers or even daughters can be victims of domestic violence. We have to be the ones willing to initiate the conversation because many victims are scared. Everyday more people are speaking up about their own stories. Celebrities such as Bill Clinton, Rihanna, and Halle Berry have spoke about their personal accounts with domestic violence. Through these views, people are seeing domestic violence as a bigger issue and an issue that needs to be opened up about. All in all, domestic violence is all around us. Additionally, abuse can hurt people physically, mentally, and financially. Physical abuse results in injuries that cost money in order to be fixed. Many remain in or return to an abusive relationship because they lack the financial resources to live on their own. Also, children who grow up around domestic violence are 15 times more likely to be physically and/or sexually abused than the national average. In short, abuse can have various effects on those involved. To surmise, domestic violence is often kept quiet within minority communities. As a whole, we have to be proactive and reactive in order to fight the current problem with abuse. Nevertheless, we have to be the change we want to see.Ultimately, domestic violence is not an issue that can be completely rid of, but we can make a true difference through education and prevention. Some issues have to be dealt with in house before we see a major turn around.

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The Award-Winning Novels of 2021

The year's big literary prize-winners.

The wait for a return to the raucous, glitzy literary awards ceremonies and afterparties of yesteryear goes on. Yes, for the second season running, statuettes were delivered by mail, speeches were made over zoom, and victorious authors donned formalwear to get tipsy in their apartments when they should have been spotlit at auditorium podiums, drinking in the cacophonous applause of their peers.

Still, a prize is no less prestigious for having been awarded in abstentia, and it’ll take more than a protracted global pandemic to stop up from tipping our caps to the year’s literary champs.

From the Pulitzer to the Booker, the Nebula to the Edgar, here are the winners of the biggest book prizes of 2021.

Congratulations to all!

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Awarded for distinguished fiction published in book form during the year by an American author, preferably dealing with American life. Prize money: $15,000

Louise Erdrich, The Night Watchman (Harper)

“In this season of literary wildfires, when cultural borrowings have unleashed protests that have shaken the publishing industry, the issue of authenticity is paramount. Erdrich retakes the lead by offering the reader the gifts of love and richness that only a deeply connected writer can provide. You never doubt these are her people. The author…delivers a magisterial epic that brings her power of witness to every page. High drama, low comedy, ghost stories, mystical visions, family and tribal lore—wed to a surprising outbreak of enthusiasm for boxing matches—mix with political fervor and a terrifying undercurrent of predation and violence against women. For 450 pages, we are grateful to be allowed into this world … I walked away from the Turtle Mountain clan feeling deeply moved, missing these characters as if they were real people known to me. In this era of modern termination assailing us, the book feels like a call to arms. A call to humanity. A banquet prepared for us by hungry people.”

–Luis Alberto Urrea ( The New York Times Book Review )

Finalists: Daniel Mason, A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth  (Little, Brown and Company) Percival Everett, Telephone (Graywolf)

* National Book Award

Recognizes an outstanding work of literary fiction by a United States citizen. Prize money: $10,000

James Mott, Hell of a Book (Dutton)

“There’s an intimacy to Jason Mott’s fiction, retained even when the scope of his narrative widens. But even by these standards, his fourth novel is a uniquely tight, personal story that digs into deeply emotional territory. Through two interwoven storylines unfolding in a witty, often devastatingly incisive style, Hell of a Book is a journey into the heart of a very particular American experience, one that far too many don’t live to tell … You may think you see where these two stories are headed, where they will converge and knit together, and what they will have to say at the end, but you don’t. And even if you could, Mott’s bittersweet, remarkably nimble novel would still keep you turning the pages … a masterwork of balance, as Mott navigates the two narratives and their delicate tonal distinctions. A surrealist feast of imagination that’s brimming with very real horrors, frustrations and sorrows, it can break your heart and make you laugh out loud at the same time, often on the same page. This is an achievement of American fiction that rises to meet this particular moment with charm, wisdom and truth.”

–Matthew Jackson ( BookPage )

Finalists: Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land (Scribner) Lauren Groff, Matrix (Riverhead) Laird Hunt, Zorrie (Bloomsbury) Robert Jones Jr., The Prophets (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)

* Man Booker  Prize

Awarded for the best original novel written in the English language and published in the UK. Prize money: £50,000

Damon Galgut, The Promise (Europa Editions)

“Damon Galgut’s remarkable new novel, The Promise , suggests that the demands of history and the answering cry of the novel can still powerfully converge. As a white South African writer, Galgut inherits a subject that must feel, at different times, liberating in its dimensions and imprisoning in its inescapability … The Promise is drenched in South African history, a tide that can be seen, in the end, to poison all ‘promise’ … Galgut’s novel most closely resembles the work of predecessors like Woolf and Faulkner in the way it redeploys a number of modernist techniques, chiefly the use of a free-floating narrator. Galgut is at once very close to his troubled characters and somewhat ironically distant, as if the novel were written in two time signatures, fast and slower. And, miraculously, this narrative distance does not alienate our intimacy but emerges as a different form of knowing … His new novel exercises new freedoms. One is struck, amid the sombre events, by the joyous, puckish restlessness of the storytelling, which seems to stick to a character’s point of view only to veer away, mid-sentence … Galgut uses his narrator playfully, assisted by nicely wayward run-on sentences … Galgut outsources his storytelling, handing off a phrase or an insight to an indistinct community of what seem to be wise elders, who then produce an ironically platitudinous or proverbial commentary … Galgut’s narrator skims across his spaces, alighting, stinging, moving on to the next subject. As the novel proceeds, his narrator seems to grow in adventurous authority.”

–James Wood ( The New Yorker )

Finalists : Anuk Arudpragasam, A Passage North  (Hogarth) Patricia Lockwood, No One Is Talking About This  (Riverhead) Nadifa Mohamed, The Fortune Men (Knopf) Richard Powers, Bewilderment (W. W. Norton) Maggie Shipstead, Great Circle (Knopf)

* Man Booker International Prize

Awarded for a single book in English translation published in the UK. Prize money: £50,000, divided equally between the author and the translator

David Diop, tr. from French by Anna Moschovakis,  At Night All Blood is Black (FSG)

“… astonishingly good … Alfa understands that his revenge is growing ghoulish; he understands that France as a colonial force is exploiting his bravery and his grief; he understands, even, that he is in part responsible for Mademba’s suffering, which is perhaps the novel’s most harrowing thread. But Alfa’s understanding cannot free him. He is, in effect, doomed by his own comprehension. Diop’s prose, which is at once swift and dense, captures that effect well. He and his translator, Anna Moschovakis, wall the reader into Alfa’s mind and his story, refusing even the smallest glimmer of light.”

–Lily Meyer ( NPR )

Finalists : Mariana Enríquez, tr. from Spanish by Megan McDowell, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed  (Hogarth) Olga Ravn, tr. from Danish by Martin Aitken, The Employees  (New Directions) Benjamín Labatut, tr. from Spanish by Adrian Nathan West, When We Cease to Understand the World (New York Review of Books) Maria Stepanova, tr. from Russian by Sasha Dugdale, In Memory of Memory (New Directions) Éric Vuillard, tr. from French by Mark Polizzotti, The War of the Poor  (Other Press)

* National Book Critics Circle Award 

Given annually to honor outstanding writing and to foster a national conversation about reading, criticism, and literature. Judged by the volunteer directors of the NBCC who are 24 members serving rotating three-year terms, with eight elected annually by the voting members, namely “professional book review editors and book reviewers.”

Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet (Knopf)

“… told with the urgency of a whispered prayer—or curse … Unintimidated by the presence of the Bard’s canon or the paucity of the historical record, O’Farrell creates Shakespeare before the radiance of veneration obscured everyone around him. In this book, William is simply a clever young man—not even the central character—and O’Farrell makes no effort to lard her pages with intimations of his genius or cute allusions to his plays. Instead, through the alchemy of her own vision, she has created a moving story about the way loss viciously recalibrates a marriage … This is a richly drawn and intimate portrait of 16th-century English life set against the arrival of one devastating death. O’Farrell, always a master of timing and rhythm, uses these flashbacks of young love and early marriage to heighten the sense of dread that accumulates as Hamnet waits for his mother … None of the villagers know it yet, but bubonic plague has arrived in Warwickshire and is ravaging the Shakespeare twins, overwhelming their little bodies with bacteria. That lit fuse races through the novel toward a disaster that history has already recorded but O’Farrell renders unbearably suspenseful.”

–Ron Charles ( The Washington Post )

Finalists: Martin Amis, Inside Story (Knopf) Randall Kenan, If I Had Two Wings (W.W. Norton) Souvankham Thammavongsa, How to Pronounce Knife (Little, Brown) Bryan Washington, Memorial (Riverhead)

* Kirkus Prize

Chosen from books reviewed by  Kirkus Reviews  that earned the Kirkus Star. Prize money: $50,000

Joy Williams, Harrow (Knopf)

“Williams’ tone is caustic and discomfiting; it brings to mind the moment in which we are living, when matters of science and public health are regularly ridiculed or redirected in favor of political or economic platitudes…At the same time, her vision is too capacious for Harrow to be read so narrowly … The implication is that chaos is both our invention and our destiny, which means there can be no solace or forgiveness for our collusion with it. This is the source of Williams’ fierce and unrelenting anger, and it invests Harrow with a potent moral weight … a piece of writing in the vein of Samuel Beckett or Franz Kafka, its humor weaponized by rage … ‘Before the eyes can see, they must be incapable of tears,’ Williams tells us—excavating, as she does throughout this magnificent and moving novel, the middle distance between silence and experience.”

–David L. Ulin ( The Los Angeles Times )

Finalists: Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois (Harper) Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle (Doubleday) Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, My Monticello (Henry Holt) Mariana Enríquez (tr. by Megan McDowell), The Dangers of Smoking in Bed  (Hogarth) Pajtim Statovci (tr. by David Hackston), Bolla (Pantheon)

* Women’s Prize for Fiction

Awarded to a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom.

Susanna Clarke, Piranesi (Bloomsbury)

“… the sweetness, the innocence of Piranesi’s love for this world is devastating to read. Clarke’s writing is clear, sharp—she can cleave your heart in a few short words. In these brief but gut-wrenchingly tender interactions we are felled by the loneliness Piranesi can’t fully grasp. The concept is gone from his mind of what he longs for the most … This crossing of realms—the magical and scientific; the mystical and profane—in both Jonathan Strange and Piranesi is an alluring combination. As if Marie Curie meets Cleopatra on Mary Anning’s beach. The mystery of Piranesi unwinds at a tantalizing yet lightening-like pace—it’s hard not to rush ahead, even when each sentence, each revelation makes you want to linger … Humans seek connection and knowledge—but how do we define those quests? How do we approach those paths? Both worlds in this enthralling, transcendent novel come with magic and reason, beauty and warmth, danger and destruction. However ill-gotten, Piranesi has achieved an equilibrium, a delicate peace with the contradictions of pain and love. How do we do the same? How do we bear the pain of our limits, and what must we give up to survive?”

–Vikki Valentine ( NPR )

Finalists: Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half (Riverhead) Claire Fuller, Unsettled Ground (Tin House) Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom (Knopf) Cherie Jones, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House (Little, Brown) Patricia Lockwood, No One Is Talking About This (Riverhead)

* PEN/Faulkner Award

Awarded to the author of the year’s best work of fiction by a living American citizen. Prize money: $15,000

Deesha Philyaw, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (West Virginia University Press)

“… juicy goodness bursts from every page … While continually acknowledging the importance of the church in the Black community, Philyaw sees the contradictions it creates with clarity, sometimes painful, sometimes hilarious … This collection marks the emergence of a bona fide literary treasure. As one of Philyaw’s characters might say, praise the Lord.”

–Marion Winik ( The Star Tribune )

Finalists: Matthew Salesses, Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear (Little a) Rufi Thorpe, The Knockout Queen (Knopf) Robin Wasserman, Mother Daughter Widow Wife (Scribner) Steve Wiegenstein, Scattered Lights  (Cornerpost Press)

* PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction

Awarded to an exceptionally talented fiction writer whose debut work represents distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise. Prize money: $25,000

Michael X. Wang, Further News of Defeat (Autumn House Press)

Finalists: Dima Alzayat, Alligator & Other Stories (Two Dollar Radio) Miriam Cohen, Adults and Other Children: Stories   (Ig Publishing) Mary South, You Will Never Be Forgotten: Stories (FSG Originals) Shruti Swamy, A House Is a Body: Stories (Algonquin Books)

* Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction

Awards established in 2012 to recognize the best fiction and nonfiction books for adult readers published in the U.S. in the previous year. Administered by the American Library Association.

Prize money: $5,000 (winner), $1,500 (finalists)

James McBride, Deacon King Kong (Riverhead)

“… a feverish love letter to New York City, people, and writing. The prose is relentless and McBride’s storytelling skills shine as he drags readers at breakneck speed trough a plethora of lives, times, events, and conversations. The novel is 370 pages, but McBride has packed enough in there for a dozen novellas, and reading them all mashed together is a pleasure … fast, deep, complex, and hilarious. McBride’s prose is shimmering and moving, a living thing that has its own rhythm, pulls you in from the first page and never lets go. His story focuses on the people that make the Big Apple what it is: the strange, the poor, the insane, the mobsters. He also showcases the city’s wonderful diversity, filling his pages with Puerto Ricans, African Americans, Italians, and Irish folks … McBride has a talent for writing about big ensembles … full of heart, humor, and compassion. It contains page-long sentences that sing and individual lines that stick to your brain like literary taffy. This is a narrative about flawed, poor people navigating an ugly, racist world and trying their best with the help of God, each other, or the bottle; their stories are unique, but the struggles are universal—and that makes this a novel about all of us. In Deacon King Kong , McBride entertains us, and shows us both the beauty and the ugliness of humanity. I say we give him another National Book Award for this one. It’s that good.”

–Gabino Iglesias ( NPR )

Finalists: Ayad Akhtar, Homeland Elegies (Little Brown) Megha Majumdar, A Burning (Knopf)

* International DUBLIN Literary Award

An international literary award presented each year for a novel written in English or translated into English. Prize money: €100,000

Valeria Luiselli, Lost Children Archive (Knopf)

“I wrote down the microchemical raptures I was having, one after the next, from beginning to end of this revelatory novel … The Lost Children Archives [is] a semi-autobiographical gloss that Lueselli skillfully crafts without dipping into the pedantic accumulations that sometimes overwhelm such books … It is a breathtaking journey, one that builds slowly and confidently until you find yourself in a fever dream of convergences. The Lost Children Archive is simply stunning. It is a perfect intervention for our horrible time, but that fleeting concurrence is not why this book will be read and sampled and riffed on for years to come … The Lost Children Archive contains multitudes, contradictions, and raises difficult questions for which there are no easy answers. It is a great American novel. It is also a great human novel.”

–Rob Spillman ( Guernica )

Finalists: Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other (Grove) Colum McCann, Apeirogon (Random House) Fernanda Melchor, Hurricane Season (New Directions) Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Press) Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys (Doubleday)

* Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

An annual award presented by The Center for Fiction, a non-profit organization in New York City, for the best debut novel. Prize money: $10,000

Kirsten Valdez Quade, The Five Wounds (W. W. Norton)

“In three parts that unfold over the course of a year in the aptly named New Mexico town of Las Penas, The Five Wounds is a knife-sharp study of what happens to a family when accountability to other people goes out the window. Quade’s characters are experts at pushing love away, especially when intimate connection is most necessary … As each member of the Padilla family battles their personal demons, hope shimmers like a mirage over everyday life, a sweet what-if that Quade expertly suspends above the text … it is a treat to see the author’s exceptional command of pacing on display in a novel. Proof that what you say is just as important as how you say it, her precise lines are wanting in neither substance nor style, and her darkly hilarious, tender, gorgeous use of language is one of the crowning pleasures of the novel … an irreverent 21st-century meditation on the restorative powers of empathy.”

–Elena Britos ( BookPage )

Finalists: Priyanka Champaneri, The City of Good Death (Restless Books) Linda Rui Feng, Swimming Back to Trout River   (Simon & Schuster) Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois   (Harper) Violet Kupersmith, Build Your House Around My Body (Random House) Patricia Lockwood, No One Is Talking About This (Riverhead) Jackie Polzin, Brood   (Doubleday)

* Los Angeles Times Book Prize

Recognizes outstanding literary works as well as champions new writers. Prize money: $1,000

(Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction)

“… a collection of luminous stories populated by deeply moving and multifaceted characters … No saints exist in these pages, just full-throated, flesh-and-blood women who embrace and redefine love, and their own selves, in powerfully imperfect renditions. Tender, fierce, proudly Black and beautiful, these stories will sneak inside you and take root.”

Finalists: Maisy Card, These Ghosts Are Family (Simon & Schuster) Meng Jin, Little Gods (Custom House) Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain (Grove) Shruti Swamy, A House is a Body (Algonquin)

David Diop, tr. by Anna Moschovakis,  At Night All Blood is Black (FSG)

“From the very first pages, there is something beguiling about At Night All Blood Is Black, a slim, delicate novel by the Senegalese-French writer David Diop … This transgression against the dead—or the delusion of such—fills the story with a mythic affliction that recalls the old sailor’s in Samuel Coleridge’s epic poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The narrative voice brims with innuendoes and habitual repetitions like ‘I know, I understand’ and ‘God’s truth,’ which imbue the character with an edgy eccentricity … But this book is about more than a lone man’s spiritual burden. Diop realizes the full nature of war—that theater of macabre and violent drama—on the page. He takes his character into the depths of hell and lets him thrive there … As violent and disturbing as these encounters are, they are rendered with such artistic grace that one derives a strange pleasure in reading about even the bloodiest of nights. The novel, though originally written in French, is grounded in the worldview of Senegal’s Wolof people, and the specificity and uniqueness of that culture’s language comes through even in Anna Moschovakis’s translation … By the time we reach its shocking yet ultimately transcendent ending, the story has turned into something mystical, esoteric; it takes a cyclic shape … More than a century after World War I, a great new African writer is asking these questions in a spare yet extraordinary novel about this bloody stain on human history.”

–Chigozie Obioma ( The New York Times Book Review )

Finalists: Peter Cameron, What Happens at Night (Catapult) Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji (Riverhead) Danielle Evans, The Office of Historical Corrections (Riverhead) Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Likes   (Riverhead)

* Edgar Award

Presented by the Mystery Writers of America, honoring the best in crime and mystery fiction.

(Best Novel)

Deepa Anappara, Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line (Random House)

“In Jai, Anappara has created a boy vivid in his humanity, one whose voice somersaults on the page. Rich with easy joy, Anappara’s writing announces the arrival of a literary supernova … Telling a story from the perspective of a child always risks a descent into sentimentality. There’s not a lick of it here … We marvel at…threads, so vibrantly woven by Anappara … This is the power of this novel, how it keeps us grounded—not in the flats of the hi-fi dwellers but in something closer to India’s heart, which she locates in the minds of children with bony shoulders and dirty feet.”

–Lorainne Adams ( The New York Times Book Review )

Finalists: Caroline B. Cooney, Before She Was Helen (Poisoned Pen Press) Richard Osman, Thursday Murder Club (Pamela Dorman Books) Ivy Pochoda, These Women (Ecco) Kwei Quartey, The Missing American (Soho Crime) Heather Young, The Distant Dead (William Morrow)

(Best First Novel)

Please See Us by Caitlin Mullen (Gallery Books)

“What Mullen’s debut gives readers is a wrenchingly detailed, utterly credible story of women whose peril comes from poverty … Mullen is brilliant at depicting their points of view … Mullen builds almost unbearable suspense about whether the two friends will join the women in the marshes.”

–Connie Fletcher ( Booklist )

Finalists: Nev March, Murder in Old Bombay (Minotaur Books) Elisabeth Thomas, Catherine House (William Morrow) David Heska Wanbli Weiden, Winter Counts (Ecco) Stephanie Wrobel, Darling Rose Gold (Berkley)

* Nebula Award

Given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America for the best science fiction or fantasy novel.

Martha Wells, Network Effect (Tor)

“Like the series-to-full-length movie format it follows, everything is a bit wider and a bit heavier, but all the hallmarks of the series are there. We get a return of some beloved characters, more dodgy corporate interlopers, more robots-on A.I.-on-robot…action, and a bigger mystery. But now, with a little more room to breathe, Wells draws out all of those elements in a way that extends the enjoyable experience of the novellas, yet doesn’t drag. Network Effect is more than twice the size of All Systems Red , but you’ll come to the final pages and hardly notice … what makes it all stand out is the way Wells writes Murderbot’s engagements with the world and the humans that inhabit it. It feels legitimately the way I imagine a sentient computer system that is smarter than all of us—but also watches a lot of trash TV—would view the world … The other strength of the series is a bit more subtle; it lies in the way Murderbot approaches gender …This approach continues in Network Effect, with what appears to be the beginnings of a non-traditional romantic relationship that has been bubbling since early in the series, and that I hope Wells will give us more of. And that’s the hallmark of any good series—it leaves you wanting more. Murderbot and the world it inhabits constantly leave you wanting more, in the best possible way … Network Effect is a wonderful continuation of the series, and I highly recommend it if you enjoyed the first books. But if you haven’t read those yet, you really should before trying this on for size. It’s OK, we’ve got time. Not done yet? Sigh … humans.”

–Steve Mullis ( NPR )

Finalists: Susanna Clarke, Piranesi (Bloomsbury) N. K. Jemisin, The City We Became (Orbit) Silvia Moreno Garcia, Mexican Gothic (Del Rey) C. L. Polk, The Midnight Bargain (Erewhon) Rebecca Roanhorse, Black Sun (Saga)

* Hugo Award

Awarded for the best science fiction or fantasy story of 40,000 words or more published in English or translated in the prior calendar year.

“As always, Wells is deftly skilled with her characters, showing us compelling people with very human needs and fears—even when some of them aren’t human. But she’s even defter with humour: perhaps my favourite part of Network effect happens after Murderbot ends up freeing another SecUnit from its governor module … And, as always, Wells has written some really great, tense action. This is a perfectly paced space opera adventure novel, one in which Murderbot continues to grow as a person. An enormously relatable person. The conclusion is deeply satisfying while also holding out the possibility of more Murderbot stories to come. I could read about Murderbot all week. While I recommend Network Effect highly, and while I suspect that a reader could start here and still enjoy the story, this is a novel that will work best in the context of what has come before.”

–Liz Bourke ( Locus )

Finalists: Rebecca Roanhorse, Black Sun (Saga) N. K. Jemisin, The City We Became (Orbit) Tamsyn Muir, Harrow the Ninth (Tor) Susanna Clarke, Piranesi (Bloomsbury) Mary Robinette Kowal, The Relentless Moon (Tor)

* Bram Stoker Award

Presented by the Horror Writers Association for “superior achievement” in horror writing for novels.

Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians (Gallery/Saga Press)

“Jones, a Blackfeet writer who has published more than 20 books, ‘likes werewolves and slashers,’ according to his author bio, but he has also spent a lifetime interpreting Native American culture and mythology for contemporary readers. So he does here, exploring Native American deer and elk mythology and delving into the importance of elk ivory … Jones writes in clear, sparkling prose. He’s simultaneously funny, irreverent and serious, particularly when he deploys stereotype as a literary device … The Only Good Indians is splashed with the requisite amounts of blood and gore, but there’s much more to it than that.”

–Martha Anne Toll ( The Washington Post )

Finalists: Alma Katsu, The Deep (G. P. Putnam’s Sons) Silvia Moreno Garcia, Mexican Gothic (Del Rey) Todd Keisling, Devil’s Creek (Silver Shamrock Publishing) Josh Malerman, Malorie (Del Rey Books)

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College Minor: Everything You Need to Know

14 fascinating teacher interview questions for principals, tips for success if you have a master’s degree and can’t find a job, 14 ways young teachers can get that professional look, which teacher supplies are worth the splurge, 8 business books every teacher should read, conditional admission: everything you need to know, college majors: everything you need to know, 7 things principals can do to make a teacher observation valuable, 3 easy teacher outfits to tackle parent-teacher conferences, how to write an award winning college admissions essay.

Almost every college considers application essays to be important or extremely important to their admission process. A poorly written essay can make a college reject an exceptional student . On the other hand, remarkably written essays can help average students gain admission into their choice schools . Below are a few tips that can help you write a winning essay.

Avoid listing in your college applications essays

Unfortunately, many applicants wrongly try to make sure their college application essays include all their activities and achievements. Those types of essays sound just like what they actually are, a boring list. There are other aspects of the application where you can list your extracurricular activities, so make your lists on those spaces.

The most interesting and fascinating essays are stories with a precise focus. Your essay should reflect your passions and reveal your identity with carefully selected detail. With a thoughtfully narrated story about a challenging time in your life, you can better talk about yourself than using a list of honors gotten and competitions won. With your scores and grades, you can prove that you’re smart. Let your essay portray your maturity and thoughtfulness, and that you have a profound personality.

Express your character

When deciding the admission status of applicants, most colleges also consider the character and personal qualities as incredibly important, alongside the applicant’s essay. Your character can be detected at three points in the application: extracurricular activities you were involved in, your essay, and during the interview (if any). Your essay is the most revealing and direct of the three points for the admission units. Keep in mind that colleges are not entirely in search of applicants with all “A”s and high scores on the SAT. They are in search of good citizens to make up their campus communities.

From the Admissions Desk

Kerr Ramsay, the Vice President for Undergraduate admission in High Point University said that the nicest personal statements are centered on the student and not the person, situation, or event which are being described. Also, the admission team thinks it’s better to learn more about what the applicants appreciate the most in their lives.

Keep it a Bit Humorous

Being thoughtful and mature in your application essay is fundamental; however, you would not want it to sound too uptight. Apply creative metaphors, a few self-deprecating jokes, or a properly written witticism to lighten up your essay. Just don’t make it excessive. When an essay is written with too many puns or unwarranted jokes, it is most often rejected. Also, humor cannot take the place of substance. The major thing is to carefully answer the essay prompt; you will definitely get a bonus for making your reader smile or perhaps cry. A lot of candidates have been rejected because they did not pay attention to the prompt, hence their essay turned out ridiculous rather than intelligent.

Pay Attention to Your Tone

Besides the added humor, the holistic tone which your application essay takes is particularly important. At the same time, it is not easy to get it right. If you are asked about your achievements, writing 750 words about how useful you are might show you off as a braggart. Take time to equalize every one of your proud achievements with an act of kindness or humility to other people. Also, you don’t want your essay to be full of complaints so let your essay talk about your skills, and not about how you were wrongfully given a low score in math or not made to graduate top of your class.

Mechanics Matter

Your chances of getting admitted can be undermined by punctuation mistakes, grammatical issues, and spelling errors. Your reader becomes distracted if the errors are too many, and your essay becomes hard to understand. Even with a few errors, you could be losing chances. They indicate an absence of quality control and attention to your writing , and if you must excel in college, strong writing skills are somewhat needed.

Ask for help if you know you are not very strong in English. Let a teacher you feel close to help you reread the essay; otherwise, you can take it to a friend who is good at editing write-ups. However, if you don’t know where to get expert help from, you can get a thorough review of your essay through online essay services.

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Writing Like the Award-Winners

Good writing packs an emotional punch—award-winning author martine leavitt teaches how to throw one at full force..

When you sit down to read a book, what are you hoping for? A “book hangover,” where you wander around thinking about it for days afterwards? Or maybe you want to love the characters so much that they inspire you to write your own fiction. Either way, chances are the book’s author wants you to love it just as much as you want to. So, if you’re a writer, how do you write that kind of story? On March 15, 2024, award-winning author Martine Leavitt answered this question at the Department of English’s masterclass for creative writing students.

When it comes to her writing, Leavitt wants her readers to feel something. “I want them to be moved,” she began. “So, the next question is . . . what is the most powerful way to evoke emotion in your reader?”

Leavitt explained that the secret lies in how you convey your characters’ emotions to your reader. To that end, all the components of a story—characters, desires, obstacles, stakes—should be in service to the emotion of the story. But before you can know what to do, you first have to know what not to do, so Leavitt began by listing three things that aren’t effective when communicating emotion.

What Not to Do

When writing, avoid naming emotion, using clichés, and writing melodrama or “purple prose.” Each of these techniques creates distance between your readers and your characters, diminishing the emotional impact of your story. The phrases “My character was sad” or “her heart skipped a beat” act as written shorthands for emotion, telling you about what someone is feeling without making you feel it yourself. They don’t reveal anything interesting about how the character experiences sadness or surprise in their unique worldview.

Purple prose is a bit different—rather than using fewer words, it uses too many. “It’s trying to show off,” Leavitt said. “It draws attention to the writer. It wakes the reader up from the dream because we don’t believe it.” Still, the effect is the same: it interferes with your reader’s firsthand experience of the story. If a reader doesn’t have to invest effort to understand your characters, they won’t be invested in your story.

What to Do Instead

If you’re wondering what that leaves you to work with, you’re not the only one. As Leavitt finished with don’ts, she asked, “So how many of you are sitting there thinking ‘Okay, so if that’s not it, what is it, Martine? You’ve left me nothing.’” The trick is as simple to articulate as it is difficult to implement: you have to use metaphor.

Metaphor (and its accompanying literary device, the simile) compares one thing to another. Specifically, Leavitt talked about picking an object and using it to illustrate your character’s emotional state—a concept T. S. Eliot called the “objective correlative .” For example, you may write, “The moss had gotten to Marcille’s gravestone the way time had gotten to Faucett’s memories: blotting out all the important bits.” Or perhaps you’re writing about embarrassment, so you might try something like this: “The only explanation was that someone was slowly filling Vivan with lava. It was hot, slow, and getting worse by the second.”

While you may find it more difficult to write this way initially, it’s more rewarding for you and your readers in the long run. For your reader, the process of creatively tying two unrelated things together engages them; since they have to work to understand your meaning, they begin to co-create the story with you. And for you, the writer? As the class wrapped up, Leavitt said, “Sometimes the best writing I do is when I put my pen down, close my eyes, and I imagine my character and try to crawl into her body . . . One of the wonderful blessings of being a writer is that we do get to have that opportunity to really imagine what it is to be a human being. Which is something maybe all Christians should be good at, or try to be better at.”

Martine Leavitt is the award-winning author of 11 books. Her young adult novel Calvin won the 2016 Governor General’s Award for English Language Children’s Literature. She also teaches creative writing at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, where she serves as the Katherine Paterson Endowed Chair. You can find more of her work on her website here .

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Book News & Features

10 writers win 2024 whiting awards for emerging authors.

Meghan Collins Sullivan

Ten emerging writers have won the 2024 Whiting Awards, announced in a ceremony Wednesday night.

Each writer will receive $50,000 to help support their craft — one of largest awards granted to new authors. A number of past Whiting winners have gone on to publish award-winning and bestselling works, including Hernan Diaz , Catherine Lacey , Colson Whitehead , Alice McDermott and Ocean Vuong . A few of this year's winners have already made a name for themselves in the books world, too.

Excerpts from the works of the 2024 Whiting award winners

Courtney Hodell, Whiting's director of literary programs, said in a statement: "This year's winners have made liminal space their own — that place of potential that exists between states, whether those are genres, languages, countries, or definitions of self."

Here are the 2024 Whiting Award Winners:

(with comments from the Whiting committee)

Aaliyah Bilal (fiction) whose short story collection Temple Folk "invites readers into a world whose complexity has been often overlooked, informing her explorations with a prickling specificity and psychological insight"

Yoon Choi (fiction) whose "supple prose propels the reader through these unhurried, layered stories of the Korean diaspora, exploring the bonds and rifts between generations and the weight of secrets" in the work Skinship

Shayok Misha Chowdhury (drama) who "writes with ruthless splendor and inventiveness about the borders of language, sexuality, the public self and the hidden life," including in Public Obscenities

Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig (drama) "whose meticulous and politically acute fables bring the histories of nations, of capital, and of censorship to life," including in the trilogy The China Plays

Elisa Gonzalez (poetry) who uses The Iliad to examine her brothers death

Taylor Johnson (poetry) whose poems, including those in Inheritance, are " of steely subtlety that sing of desire, a hunger for fresh language and forms"

Gothataone Moeng (ficton) whose "nine big-hearted, capacious stories, rooted in the villages and cities of Botswana, examine all that blooms and breaks in the bonds, desires, and ambitions of women" in Call and Response

Charif Shanahan (poetry) whose Trace Evidence "sets out to discover how a person should live. His laboratory is the fierce, complex pull of attachment and separation from his mother, his family, his beloveds; love turns itself, in his hands, into a crucible to understand other truths – about race, sexuality, belonging"

Javier Zamora (nonfiction and poetry) who is the New York Times -bestselling writer of the memoir Solito and also the author of the "watchful, incantatory" collection of poems Unaccompanied. "His work transmutes testimony into art; whatever he turns his eye on next will also enlarge us"

Ada Zhang (fiction) whose "graceful, crystalline stories" in The Sorrows of Others " explore the paradox that historical silences and legacies of the past – in particular, the impact of the Cultural Revolution on Chinese Americans – can lead to new openings and new voices"

2015 Winning Essay By Matthew Waltman

Profile in Courage Essay Contest Press Release

Tom Selders: A Mayor for All the People

By Matthew Waltman Dwight-Englewood School in Tenafly, New Jersey

Immigration reform is one of the most contentious issues in America today, provoking angry debates in Congress, fueling tension in town hall meetings across the country, and even dividing families. In 2007, as the battle over immigration reform played out in Congress, Tom Selders, the Republican mayor of Greeley, Colorado, put a local face on the issue. Selders spoke out on Capitol Hill about the devastating effect of an immigration raid at a Greeley meatpacking plant and urged Congress to enact comprehensive immigration reform. As a result, he faced a backlash of criticism at home. Selders knew his public stance on immigration was politically risky, particularly since he was seeking reelection in the upcoming mayoral race. Nonetheless, as an elected official, he felt an obligation to advocate for all the people of Greeley, especially those who otherwise would have no voice (Bernuth). Like the courageous senators in Profiles in Courage , Selders was willing to “sacrifice all—including his own career—for” his principles and the greater good (Kennedy 7).

A lifelong Republican from a conservative town, Selders may seem an unlikely advocate for immigration reform. He admits that while growing up on the affluent west side of Greeley, he rarely ventured into the working class Latino neighborhoods on the east side of town. As mayor, however, Selders was determined to meet with community groups from all parts of Greeley to ensure he was representing the interests of all residents, regardless of race, class, or nationality (Riccardi). In December 2006, Selders learned that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had raided the Swift & Company meatpacking plant—Greeley’s largest employer—and arrested 262 undocumented workers as part of a multi-city enforcement action known as “Operation Wagon Train” (Perl 88). Eyewitnesses reported that those detained were “treated like animals” (Cooper). They were handcuffed and shackled, denied access to food, water, and bathrooms, and were not allowed to contact their families (“ICE”).

Shortly after the raid, many of those arrested were deported. Others remained in legal limbo for more than a year awaiting a hearing (Warner). On the day of the raid, more than 200 Greeley children returned home to find one or both parents gone (Lofholm). Selders sympathized with the children—many of whom were U.S. citizens—who were “devastated by their parents being arrested and detained,” but he initially did not speak out (Riccardi). When John F. Kennedy first entered Congress, he was told that “the way to get along is to go along” (Kennedy 4). These words were equally applicable to the situation in Greeley, where local leaders faced pressure to not “rock the boat” by taking positions contrary to the prevailing political sentiment (Thompson). However, as more details emerged about the raid and as community relations degenerated over the immigration issue, Selders knew he could not remain silent. He denounced the inhumane treatment of those arrested. “People with leg irons and handcuffs—was that really necessary?” he asked. “Is this what our country is about?” (qtd. in Olinger).

In May 2007, Selders traveled to Washington, D.C. to speak to Congressional lobbyists about the impact of the raid on immigrant families and the community (Delgado). He recognized his actions would likely be unpopular with those who had helped Greeley earn its reputation as “a GOP stronghold” (Cooper). Yet, he also knew that promoting the dignity and respect of all residents, especially those he “felt had not been well represented,” was the “right thing to do” (qtd. in Bernuth). Selders also hoped to prompt meaningful debate about immigration reform and move the discussion past divisive, partisan bickering and toward constructive solutions (Selders). In Profiles in Courage , Kennedy commended elected officials who had the political courage to break with their parties and place “their convictions ahead of their careers” (206). By taking a stand in favor of a more humane immigration policy, Selders did just that.

In the wake of his trip, Selders faced tremendous political repercussions. He was vilified on local talk radio (Riccardi), and received angry emails and “more hate calls than I care to mention” (qtd. in Quintero). Some accused him of wanting to turn Greeley into a sanctuary for illegal immigrants. Others called him “traitor scum” and derisively asked, “Have you thought about running for mayor of your favorite country, Mexico?” (“Swift Justice”). There were threats of a recall petition and demands that Selders withdraw his reelection bid (“Residents”). But Selders refused to be intimidated. “When you get elected to a job like mayor,” he said, “you deal with controversy” (qtd. in Villegas).

During Selders’ reelection campaign, his challenger blasted his stance on immigration and members of his own party actively campaigned against him (Boyle). Selders was also the target of hateful campaign mailings by anonymous groups. One accused him of advocating “instant U.S. citizenship” for undocumented workers (“Greeley”). Another claimed Selders was soft on “gangs, crimes and illegals” (Louis-Sanchez).

In the end, Selders’ refusal to “compromise away his principles” (Kennedy 11) on immigration cost him the election (“Greeley”). The Los Angeles Times called Selders’ defeat “a cautionary tale of the politics of illegal immigration,” which, to some, showed “how a good man trying to do the right thing was taken down by the forces of intolerance” (Riccardi). Following his defeat, Selders was asked if he would speak out again, knowing the political consequences. “I’d do it again in a heartbeat because it was the right thing to do and it needed to be done,” he replied. “[I]llegal people who are here are still human beings. They deserve at least the dignity of being treated with respect” (qtd. in Bernuth).

Today, America finds itself at a crossroads as it grapples with the question of what type of nation it aspires to be. Does it want to be a country that deprives individuals of their basic human rights simply because of their immigrant status? Tom Selders courageously said no. By taking a stand in favor of immigration reform and the basic dignity and humanity of all people, Selders did more than exemplify political courage: he showed what it means to be an American and uphold the values that we, as a nation of immigrants, should hold dear.

Bibliography

Bernuth, Kate. “Ousted Greeley Mayor Says Immigration Anger Blindsided Him.” Colorado Independent . The Colorado Independent, 16 Nov. 2007. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.

Boyle, Rebecca. “Retired Cop Hopes to Become Mayor.” Greeley Tribune . Swift Communications, 10 July 2007. Web. 25 Nov. 2014.

Cooper, Marc. “Lockdown in Greeley.” The Nation . 26 Feb. 2007. Web. 25 Nov. 2014.

Delgado, Vanessa. “Greeley Mayor Heads to Washington to Stop Immigration Raids .” Greeley Tribune . Swift Communications, 15 May 2007. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.

“Greeley Mayor Defeated Amid Debate Over Illegal Immigration” Denver Channel . Scripps TV Station Group, 7 Nov. 2007. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.

“ICE Melts Stigma of Immigrant Arrests.” Editorial. Greeley Tribune . Swift Communications, 25 June 2009. Web. 25 Nov. 2014.

Kennedy, John F. Profiles in Courage . New York: Harper Perennial, 2006. Print.

Lofholm, Nancy. “Fear from Swift Plant Raid Resonates in Greeley Six Years Later.” Denver Post . The Denver Post, 15 Jan. 2013. Web. 25 Nov. 2014.

Louis-Sanchez, Maria. “The Mud Slinging Continues: Anonymous Group Attacks Selders in Recent Mailing.” Greeley Tribune . Swift Communications, 24 Oct. 2007. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.

“Mayor Tom Selders Speaks in Washington.” Greeley Tribune . Swift Communications, 17 May 2007. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.

Olinger, David. “Border Wars Personal out West.” Denver Post . The Denver Post, 27 Jan. 2008. Web. 24 Nov 2014.

Perl, Lila. Immigration: This Land is Whose Land? Tarrytown, NY: Marshall, Cavendish, 2010. Print.

Quintero, Fernando. “Greeley Mayor’s Call for End to Raids Ignites Firestorm.” Rocky Mountain News . Rocky Mountain News, 17 May 2007. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.

“Residents Suggest Recall of Greeley Mayor Amid Raid Controversy.” Denver Channel . Scripps TV Station Group, 29 May 2007. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.

Riccardi, Nicholas. “What Cost a Mayor his Job.” Los Angeles Times . Los Angeles Times, 27 Nov. 2007. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.

Selders, Tom. “Lest we Unjustly Stereotype our Neighbors.” Editorial. Greeley Tribune . Swift Communications, 4 Aug. 2007. Web. 25 Nov. 2014.

Swift Justice: Illegal Immigration in America . Dir. Julie Speer. Little Voice Productions, 2010. DVD.

Thompson, Ron, and Linde Thompson. “Mayor Selders Took a Courageous Stand.” Letter.

Greeley Tribune . Swift Communications, 19 June 2007. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.

Villegas, Andrew. “Mayor Defends Actions, Won’t Drop out of Election.” Greeley Tribune . Swift Communications, 19 May 2007. 24 Nov. 2014.

Warner, Ryan. “One Year after Greeley Immigration Raid Part 2.” CPR . Colorado Public Radio, 5 Apr. 2010. Web. 25 Nov. 2014.

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Claire Cunningham, 2024 1st Place First-Year Writing

Any student enrolled in English 101P, 101, 102, or 112 during Spring 2022 through Spring 2023 may submit an essay of any kind on any topic. There are no length limits for this category. Claire Cunningham wrote the 1st place submission in the First-Year Writing category for the 2023 President’s Writing Awards

About Claire

Claire Cunningham is a Boise native and a current sophomore at BSU. Majoring in Film & Television, she plans to go into film after graduation, taking whatever job will have her. Outside of academics, Claire enjoys going to the movie theater, writing, reading, and live-tweeting episodes of Abbott Elementary.

Winning Manuscript – Girlhood

(Per the author’s request, “Girlhood” is unavailable to access on this website).

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Department of Physics

You are here, award-winning author richard rhodes visits yale for keynote talk on “the rise of malignant deterrence”.

Pulitzer-Prize winning author Richard Rhodes came to campus on April 16 to give a keynote talk on “The Rise of Malignant Deterrence”, as well as a writing workshop for a science and engineering audience.  He also attended one-on-one meetings and a luncheon.  

Rhodes’ visit was co-sponsored by the Department of History, the Department of Physics, the Department of Political Science, Wright Lab, and the  Kimball Smith Series .

The series of events was initiated by Steve Lamoreaux, professor of physics and a member of Yale’s Wright Lab, who originally invited Rhodes to give a guest lecture for his undergraduate course called “Impact of the Atom”.  Lamoreaux explained that the logistics of scheduling Rhodes during the time of the class did not work out, but the students in the course were able to attend the keynote and the other events during the day, along with the greater Yale community.

Lamoreaux said, “Richard Rhodes brought the story of the Manhattan project into the open; at the time he wrote “The Making of the Atomic Bomb,” very little official documentation on the project had been released. The Department of Energy started opening troves of information—warehouses full—and it was a lot of work to sift through it all. His book stands the test of time.” 

Lamoreaux continued, “I doubt the interest in Oppenheimer would have developed, and further developed into an outstanding movie, had it not been for “The Making of the Atomic Bomb”.

Alexandra Paulus—an undergraduate student who co-organized the events on behalf of the Kimball Smith Series along with Anthony Asuega-Souza from the School of Global Affairs—explained that during the seminar, “Rhodes discussed how and why nuclear deterrence, which has historically served as a means of conflict prevention, is becoming increasingly weaponized as an enabler of aggression.” 

Paulus said, “It was an absolute honor and pleasure to spend the day with Richard Rhodes! Mr. Rhodes spoke to what was one of the most intellectually diverse rooms I have been in at Yale, full of undergraduates, graduate students, faculty members, and other Yale affiliates heralding from departments ranging from Physics to Philosophy to Energy Studies. I’m grateful to my fellow Program Coordinators on the Kimball Smith Series team for helping organize such a successful day!” 

Rhodes is a member of the Yale Class of 1959. He is the author or editor of twenty-six books including “The Making of the Atomic Bomb,” which won a Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction, a National Book Award and a National Book Critics Circle Award; “Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb,” which was one of three finalists for a Pulitzer Prize in History; and, most recently, “Scientist,” a biography of the biologist Edward O. Wilson. He has received numerous fellowships for research and writing, including grants from the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. He has been a host and correspondent for documentaries on public television’s “Frontline” and “American Experience” series. His play, “Reykjavik,” about the historic summit meeting between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland, in October 1986, has been performed at Stanford University and in Washington, D.C.