Both Amanda Lu and Rin Swann recently learned that they won the Gold Medal for the national Scholastic Art and Writing Contest, one of the country’s highest honors for student writers.  Rin also won an American Voices & Visions Medal for her work. 

How did you find out about this opportunity?

Amanda: I was going through Blackboard and saw Scholastic under the GOAL tab and thought it could be an interesting opportunity. Finding out more information, I discovered that Andy Warhol had won an award along with a lot of others and thought I might give it a try, too.

Rin: I was talking to a friend about the event and decided it might be a good idea to submit some of my own work.

Do either of you have a particular interest in writing?

Amanda: I have always enjoyed writing. Even as a kid I would always make up small, fictional stories and have kept a journal since I was six years old. I see myself as a mix between S.T.E.M. and humanities, so I’m excited to see what is store for me in the future.

Rin: Yes, I’ve known that I wanted to be a writer since I was nine, and I intend on pursuing a literary major in college.

What different categories did you submit to? What are the titles of the pieces you entered?

Amanda: The entries were submitted in December, and I submitted to the personal essay/memoir category. My piece is titled “Memoirs of an American-born Chinese” and is a series of vignettes from my life from age one to now.

Rin: I submitted pieces of mine to the humor, science-fiction/fantasy, personal essay/memoir, and poetry categories. The titles of my pieces are “The New Normal”, “Cash, Credit, or Memories”, “The Fair Prince”, and “When Boardgames Go Horribly Wrong”.

Was it difficult picking out pieces to enter?

Amanda: It was pretty easy for me to pick out what I wanted because I have always been good at keeping diaries and documenting myself and my life.

Rin: Not at all. Writing can be difficult at times, but all these pieces are ones I loved working on.

How has this experience impacted you?

Amanda: I guess it gave me a bit of a morale boost. I’ve been struggling this year since all the writing we’ve done in class is very expository or argumentative and I find it hard to express myself creatively that way. Each time I write I prefer fiction to anything else.

Rin: I actually cried when I found out, mostly because it’s always been my dream to be a writer and to have an outside influence tell me my writing is good enough has been incredible. The amount of new opportunities I’ve been presented with is amazing.