Sixteen Exonians Win National Scholastic Awards

This year, 16 Exonians received 31 national honors at the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards for their writing, including an American Voices Award, 16 Gold Medals, 1 Silver Medal with Distinction and 11 Silver Medals. The categories included poetry, short story, flash fiction, personal essay and memoir, critical essay and journalism.

Upper Ayush Noori, the recipient of one gold and one silver medal, wrote about his grandmother. “Sharing my grandmother’s courage is meaningful because I don’t want her voice to be forgotten. Grappling with her lifelong struggle is a fundamental expression of my own truth, identity, and history. I believe it’s important to be vulnerable and share that with the world, so we create spaces for other people to be vulnerable as well.”

Prep Danielle Sung, meanwhile, used the competition as a means to experiment with her recently recognized interest in writing. “Ever since I came to Exeter, I realized that I was more into writing than I thought,” Sung said. “My writing piece is about art and about how numbers can’t express art and everything you do.”

In contrast to Sung’s experience, senior Jenny Yang has had a long-time investment in writing. “In elementary school my mom would always make me keep a journal and write whenever we went anywhere, and then in high school I started doing it more seriously,” Yang said. “It forces you to dig deep into your mind to look for ways to describe what you’re trying to say, whether that’s an image or a feeling.”

Upper Penny Brant’s gold medal essay on her experience as a person of mixed race garnered support from her acquaintances. “My sixth grade math teacher, who is also a person that is of a multicultural background, wrote me an email and told me that that piece really resonated with him,” she stated. “I was very glad to see that my piece was able to cross so many barriers.”