Numerous 91探花 students were recognized for their short stories and poetry this year. Senior Jessica Wang鈥檚 short story 鈥淐hild from the Stars鈥 will be published in Hyphen magazine. Founded in 2002, Hyphen is a nonprofit news and culture magazine that tells the stories of Asian America. Jessica began writing the story at the end of her junior year in her creative writing class. She continued working on it over the summer at the Iowa Young Writers鈥 Studio.
鈥淲hen I鈥檓 looking for story ideas, sometimes I Google random things. I looked up the word for autism in Chinese and it translates as 鈥榗hild from the stars.鈥 So I wrote a story about two Chinese girl students in an all-white school; one is autistic. The other student is assigned to be her translator. At first, she doesn鈥檛 want to become friends with her because she doesn鈥檛鈥 understand autism and sees her as a burden. But as their relationship develops, they become better friends.鈥
This is not the first piece of Jessica鈥檚 writing to be recognized. In her sophomore year, she was a semifinalist for the Smith College Poetry Prize for 鈥淚n the Kitchen with My Mother.鈥 Her poem 鈥淟ike July鈥 was published in the 2016 edition of the Apprentice Writer. Last year, she won Silver Key and Gold Key awards for poetry in the 2018 Massachusetts Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and this year she won three Gold Keys for short story, poetry and writing portfolio.
Nine 91探花 students had fiction and poetry published in the Marble Collection, a Massachusetts High School Magazine of the Arts: Evita Thadhani (III), Max Li (I), Sarah Hsu (II), Alex Millard (I), Serena Fernanopulle (II), Tatiana Meyer (II), Jennifer Chen (II), Hana Wideman (II), and Alex Paul (I). 聽In addition, Evita, Sarah, Serena and Tatiana were selected to read their writing at the Marble Collection鈥檚 gala celebration that took place at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
Evita, who submitted a flash fiction story about a strained mother-daughter relationship from childhood to adulthood, said she enjoyed using the 惭补谤产濒别鈥檚 offer of tutoring sessions with a college student via Facetime. Evita also was named a finalist, along with Max Li and Malia Chung (III), in the Helen Creeley Student poetry competition. Malia advanced to win the competition and was asked to read her poetry at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival.
Malia also won the Smith College Poetry Prize, a national contest sponsored by the Poetry Center at Smith College.聽 Two weeks ago at Smith, Malia was asked to open, reading her own poetry, for the renowned poet Marie Howe, who judged the contest.
