Awards

2022 Jon Miller Student Writing Competition Results

Prizes will be announced on this page on May 5th, 2022. 

We are still awaiting the permission forms we need to publish the full text of some of the 2022 prize-winning works.  In the meantime, we are publishing the names of the authors and the titles of their works only.  

Writers own the copyright to the works they submit. The permissions we request grant the Prize Committee permission to publish the works on this site but will not restrict the writer’s ownership rights in any way.

Note:  The PDF documents that will be linked to the titles of prize winning works below display correctly in most browsers on most devices. But some browsers, including the Chrome browser for Windows 10,  hang when trying to open them.  The easiest solution is to login to your Google/gmail account.  You can also sidestep the problem by using the incognito mode on the Chrome browser for Windows 10.  A more permanent fix involves clearing the cache of the Chrome browser, but this will result in the loss of some useful cache data so proceed with caution.  

This web site is optimized for display on large screen devices such as desktop or laptop computers but is readable on other devices as well.

Prize winners in the Jon Miller Student Writing Competition 2022

Posted 5/5/2022

Below are listed the names of the winners and honorable mentions of the 2022 Jon Miller Student Writing Competition.  To read the works by these authors, click on the underlined titles.  We are not planning to publish links to the honorable mention winners at this time.  For information about this year's reading panel, see the About the Prizes page.

We received 99 entries to the competition in 2022--16 nonfiction works, 58 poems and 25 works of short fiction. Both the quantity and quality of the entries speak to the creativity, thoughtfulness and literary talent of the NCSSM student body, both residential and online. It was the difficult task of the Reading Panel to award only a few prizes from the many impressive works submitted this year. These represent only the most outstanding works among the many others that deserve praise . 

Nonfiction

First Prize:              Zenith Jarrett - "Dead Poets Speak"  

• "A passionate work on the culture produced and shared by people of color and other marginalized groups across borders and across generations, including NCSSM.  The author investigates the relationship between art and revolutionary politics, and advocates for the life affirming practice of creative improvisation."  The Awards Panel 

Second Prize:       Angela Chen - “Rich Red” 

• A poignant, graceful reflection on the author's relationship with her mother, her family's history and Chinese culture. With an eye for telling details, the author explores the wounds and sacrifices of her parents and highlights the central role of language in the immigrant experience.”   The Awards Panel

Third Prize:           Meara Kane - “The Abuses at the Judge Rotenberg Center and the Ableist Roots of Behavior Modification” 

• A well-supported consideration of the behaviorist principles underpinning aversive therapies used on intellectually "disabled" (or non-conforming) youth, including practices that the UN has classified as torture and which the FDA wants to ban.  The author clearly demonstrates the need for new and robust research in the field and for the empowerment of Neurodiverse patients to collaborate in the creation of ethical and effective new therapies."  The Awards Panel

 Honorable Mention (in alphabetical order)

Paulina Goping - “State of Affairs” 

Sherry Liu - “The Other Side” 

Helen Wu - "Rise of Indie Game Development"

Poetry

First Prize:             Huda Haque - “On Fridays”   

• • • • • • • • • "This poem creates a strong sense of (ironic) contrast between multiple poles (past/present, East/West, religious/secular, sacred/profane, youth/age), and conveys a compelling feeling of displacement and alienation.  It effectively uses the motifs of time, prayer, and the body as a thread of continuity.  There is an awareness of the pious, the bodily, the faithless, the materialistic delivered in an intimate voice.  A strong meditation on the place (or the lack thereof) of faith in a fallen world. " The Awards Panel

Second Prize:      Josie Barboriak - “an ode to the north carolina state fair” 

• • • • • • • • • "This poem effectively uses the Ferris wheel as a jumping point to explore the dissonance and adjacencies of terror and wonder, the holy and the destructive, the mundane and the sublime. Coherent rhythm supports coherent imagery and metaphor. The reiteration of circular imagery, the repeated use of the letter "o," and references to eyes and sight pull the poem (especially the first three stanzas) together well." The Awards Panel

Third Prize:           Lauren Mills - “out and about in NYC” 

• • • • • • • • • "This poem recreates a palpable sense of place and feeling of discovery--and pushes past it into a celebration of identity.  The author skillfully uses alliteration, rhythm, consonance, and rhyme to contrast the insidious hypocrisy of the South with the joyfully unapologetic energy of New York City. " The Awards Panel

Honorable Mention (in alphabetical order)

                                               David Kim - “Rocky Mount” 

Tasha Paul - "Century"

                                 Short Fiction

First Prize:             Isabella Larson - "The Danse Macabre - An Account of Odd Events" 

• • • • • • • • • "The account may be odd, according to the title, but as the narrative proceeds it discloses a heartfelt story about friendship and charity.  The writer creates an appealing but mysterious character, successfully maintaining that mystery until its revelation. This is an deceptively simple story told with subtlety by a writer who cares about the characters. 'Something tells me we both want to be saved from our solitude,' says one character, and so they are." .The Awards Panel

Second Prize:       Michael Vineyard - “Interstate Styx” 

• • • • • • • • • "We suspect from the title the kind of environment we're about to inhabit, and the story does not disappoint.  The reader rides Interstate Styx along with our narrator toward the journey's conclusion, experiencing the rise and fall and rise of her emotions, in this original excursion into the psychology of dying." The Awards Panel 

Third Prize:           Quint Johnson - “Late Night Show” 

• • • • • • • • • " 'Late Night Show" is an unconventional entry for the short fiction category.  But it succeeds in engaging its audience through detail and dialogue that sharply define individual characters with distinctive voices.  Via the drama's sly narrative development through a series of interchanges, the characters explore the nature of love in their attempts to deal with the messy relationships in their lives.  The drama evokes laughter but also sympathy from the reader.  Particularly vivid and human is Tom, the radio show's DJ.  At times he expresses views about gender and sexuality the audience/reader may find objectionable, but his perspective and speech patterns concretely define who he is and where he comes from." The Awards Panel

Honorable Mention (in alphabetical order)

                                               Mya Gorritz- “Raul Never Misses”  

                                               Jordan Guy - “Coming Home” 

Prizes will be announced on this page on May 5th, 2021. 

We will contact the writers of winning entries to request permission to post their works here. Comments offered to the authors by the reading panel will not be posted. Students under 18 years of age will need to have a parent sign the consent form. Writers own the copyright to the works they submit. The permission we will request will grant the Prize Committee permission to publish the works on this site but will not restrict the writer’s ownership rights in any way.

Because the End-of-Year Recognition Ceremony will not be held on campus this year, NCSSM will mail Certificates of Award and prize checks to students at their home addresses.

When combined with other funds an individual received from the NCSSM Foundation during a calendar year, awards from this competition could result in the issuance of an IRS Form-1099.

Note:  The PDF documents linked to the titles of prize winning works below display correctly in most browsers on most devices. But some browsers, including the Chrome browser for Windows 10,  hang when trying to open them.  The easiest solution is to login to your Google/gmail account.  You can also sidestep the problem by using the incognito mode on the Chrome browser for Windows 10.  A more permanent fix involves clearing the cache of the Chrome browser, but this will result in the loss of some useful cache data so proceed with caution.  

This web site is optimized for display on large screen devices such as desktop or laptop computers but is readable on other devices as well.

Prize winners in the Jon Miller Student Writing Competition 2021

Posted 5/5/2021

Below are listed the names of the winners and honorable mentions of the 2021 Jon Miller Student Writing Competition.  To read the works by these authors, click on the underlined titles.  We are not planning to publish links to the honorable mention winners at this time.  For information about this year's reading panel, see the About the Prizes page.

We received 99 entries to the competition in 2021--24 nonfiction works, 55 poems and 20 works of short fiction. Both the quantity and quality of the entries speak to the creativity, thoughtfulness and literary talent of the NCSSM student body, both residential and online. It was the difficult task of the Reading Panel to award only a few prizes from the many impressive works submitted this year. These represent only the most outstanding works among the many others that deserve praise . Comments by the Reading Panel will be forwarded by email to those who requested comments in the next week or so in hopes they will encourage all who submitted works to the competition to continue developing their writing talents. 

Nonfiction

First Prize:                Jacob Jarrett - "Making Black Art for a White Audience"  

• "This powerful piece is shaped by a clear rhetorical voice with a great sense of rhythm and lyricism. The author's persuasive use of evidence and well-structured argument addresses many important questions about the purpose of art and how Black artists in particular can influence the circulation and perception of their work." The Awards Panel 

Second Prize:       Sherry Liu - “Sweet and Sour” 

• A delightful piece with a strong creative vision that draws on a blend of personal, social, political and historical information to undergird the author's enthusiasm for American-Chinese food.  The author uses visual metaphors and vivid examples to support the intriguing claim that “Chinese food might just be one of the few truly American creations.”  The Awards Panel

Third Prize:           Gavin Reider - “Dismantling the Elitism of Mathematics” 

• "An interesting essay with a clear and passionate message.  The author condenses several millennia of mathematical history into a fascinating portrait of an intellectual field that is essential to the development of society and yet still remains closed to many communities that could both benefit from and contribute to it." The Awards Panel

 Honorable Mention (in alphabetical order)

Hayes Hartpence - “Rewriting the Future: Reformation of Child Labor Laws” 

Meara Kane - “Frederick Douglass and His Intellectual Battle Against Slavery” 

Elena Singer-Freeman - "Biological and Social Consequences of Human Germline Editing"

Poetry

First Prize:             Josie Barboriak - “On Finding Oneself fictional”   

• • • • • • • • • "The poem moves surefootedly between the “we” of real characters in the poem and the self-consciousness of realizing oneself as a character in a work of art—then ends strongly with the two brought together (and a nice nod to the writing of the poem itself).  It deftly describes a circumstance of being a “writer by necessity” which may well include fictionalizing the real by using film clips and fiction itself. Good lines and images strengthen the poem overall. " The Awards Panel

Second Prize:      Huda Haque - “On the Metro Platform after Lung Surgery” 

• • • • • • • • • "The tension of the 'four' characters is revealed nicely, with the lung surgery patient watching the smoker and imaging death by burning. The poem is solid and thought-provoking as the narrator confronts a behavior that compromises his life.  It finishes with a very strong ending." The Awards Panel

Third Prize:           Isabel Hardwig - “January Kills Some Time” 

• • • • • • • • • "This poem is written with wonderfully effective imagery reflective of the pain of the pandemic time – it manifests the possibilities of both seeing the losses and being those losses. The slightly hallucinogenic quality of the images has its own internal logic that carries the reader completely into its world of motion. " The Awards Panel

Honorable Mention (in alphabetical order)

                                               Nathan Zhang - “Lantern Day” 

Short Fiction

First Prize:             Sara Talekar - “Carving” 

• • • • • • • • • "An accomplished story, “Carving” gains its power from the understatement and deliberation with which it develops.  Through action and economical detail, it illustrates subtly but concretely the simultaneous development of the narrator’s individuation from her parents and her discovery of her identity as an artist.  The story achieves something paradoxical in its economy: it gracefully articulates a tale of feeling ungraceful and inarticulate and in the process transcends that struggle through—and as—a work of art.." The Awards Panel

Second Prize:       Carson Campbell - “The Unknown” 

• • • • • • • • • "There are many memorable lines in this suspenseful and cleverly written story.  From the very first sentence that gets us right into the middle of things, it keeps us guessing.  And we care what happens to this space explorer.  In addition to the skillful use of language, there’s compelling imagery as well. The last sentence in particular hits the right, cynical note for an effective and disturbingly ambiguous ending." The Awards Panel 

Third Prize:           Nina Zhuo - “Weeping Willow” 

• • • • • • • • • " This very short story has tangible power, with an atmosphere of memory and regret.  From the beginning we have to--and want to--arrange the mysterious images into a kind of narrative. The very melancholy final sentence is just one example of the piercing language and image throughout this fine piece ." The Awards Panel

Honorable Mention (in alphabetical order)

                                                Chloe Monson - “A Glimpse into the Lives of the Mechanic and Android”  

                                                 Sarah Motteler - “Electra Heart” - Sarah Motteler

Prize winners in the Jon Miller Student Writing Competition 2020

Posted 4/27/2020

Below are listed the names of the winners and honorable mentions of the 2020 Jon Miller Student Writing Competition. Once the authors have returned the necessary permission forms, a link to the work will also be published here. We are not planning to publish links to the honorable mention winners at this time.  For information about this year's reading panel, see the About the Prizes page.

We received 123 entries to the competition in 2020: 31 essays, 58 poems and 34 pieces of short fiction. Both the quantity and quality of the entries speak to the creativity, thoughtfulness and literary talent of the NCSSM student body, both residential and online. It was the difficult task of the Reading Panel to award only a few prizes from the many impressive works submitted this year. These represent only the most outstanding works among the many others that deserve praise . Comments by the Reading Panel will be forwarded by email to those who requested comments in the next week or so in hopes they will encourage all who submitted works to the competition to continue developing their writing talents. 

Essays

First Prize:             Audrey Zhou - "Society Says" 

• • • • • • • • • "A deeply thoughtful and beautifully written piece engaging Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1841 essay "Self-Reliance" in a true conversation that sheds light on both the original essay and the author's personal experience as an immigrant. Impressive in its articulate and nuanced investigation of Emerson’s ideas through the lens of the immigrant’s journey — the essay is delivered in an eloquent and well-controlled narrator’s voice, full of evocative metaphors and illustrative examples. " The Awards Panel

Second Prize:       Elena Singer-Freeman - "The Effects of the Tragedy of the Commons on Climate Change"

• • • • • • • • • "An ambitious overview of a variety of ideas and proposals related to the issue of climate change, with a focus on the psychological barriers that must be creatively addressed and overcome in order to move the world's nations to become more engaged and successful in reducing carbon pollution. Very lucidly presented and well-researched— effectively stitches together different perspectives in considering the solution to a critical global problem. " The Awards Panel

Third Prize:            Panisara Purcell - "My Home"

• • • • • • • • • "A lovely personal essay which uses memorable details and evocative language to create a clear sense of place, presence, and subjectivity of the individual experience — making a common story feel distinctly personal. The author conveys a heartfelt message about the crucial moments and significant relationships that shaped her life using a writing style that is both creative and simple, with well-wrought sensory images that keep the narrative fresh. " The Awards Panel

Honorable Mention (in alphabetical order)

                                                 Nnamdi Obi - "The 'Lucky' One" 

                                                 Christopher Williams - “Booker T. Washington v. W.E.B Du Bois: The Fight Against Segregation” 

                                                 Nichole Zhang - “The Invisibility of Oppression: Women's Roles in The Yellow Wallpaper and The Awakening"

Poetry

First Prize:             Nathan Zhang - "On Seeing Pieces of a Terracotta Soldier"

• • • • • • • • • "This is a powerful and meaningful poem with valuable ideas and explorations into the meanings of life, death, change, and reverence for what is      discovered and remembered. A compelling mix of interlocking metaphors, and the resultant complexity of style and content is exceptionally            well done." The Awards Panel                                                           

Second Prize:       Isabel Hardwig - "an unspecified timeline of making it" 

• • • • • • • • • "The energy and relentless forward-flow of a poem about fatigue is a great conceit, and it works well here. That energy strongly carries the poem, and the language hits just the right notes of fizzy/fuzzy exhaustion. A truly interesting meditation with stream-of-conscious ponderings on the absence of rest." The Awards Panel

Third Prize:            Emily Yang - "press one to call back" 

• • • • • • • • • "Each of the individuals drawn in the poem is interesting and complex; it pictures a complicated view of the distortions of a modern “nuclear family” life in compelling metaphors. Each image reflects and reveals a concern of the narrator." The Awards Panel

Honorable Mention (in alphabetical order)

                                                Kaylene Eun - "Doveland" 

                                                Sidney Nesbitt - "The thing that's over” 

Short Fiction

First Prize:             Chloe Monson - "Grandfather's House" 

• • • • • • • • • "What an atmospheric piece this is. The house itself is a brooding, powerful character. Throughout, the rhythm of the prose, with its short, simple sentences, keeps the reader moving along farther, bravely, into this suddenly strange house. The writer trusts that our imagination will fill in the details that aren’t already there. This is a good story to read aloud, as most good fiction should be." The Awards Panel

Second Prize:       Carson Campbell - "The Blade that Kills"

• • • • • • • • • "With its modulated, smooth pacing, 'The Blade That Kills' demonstrates skill at building character, controlling a narrative arc, and developing a thoughtful conflict. It surprises without seeming contrived. With this story’s narrative strengths, its writer creates a tale that, while interesting and entertaining, invites readers into a more serious engagement with problems of perception and issues of responsibility. " The Awards Panel 

Third Prize:           Ruth Wu - "Chrysanthemums in the Snow" 

• • • • • • • • • " 'Chrysanthemums in the Snow' gains as much of its strength from what it leaves out as from what it makes explicit. An artful rendition of a family death experienced very differently by the different generations under different cultural influences, this story demonstrates mastery at allowing economical and strategic details build story and meaning and leaving space for the reader to comprehend them. ." The Awards Panel

Honorable Mention (in alphabetical order)

                                                 Amisha Jain - “Back to Reality” 

                                                 Avanti Panajkar - “The Box" 

                                                 Sahil Pontula - “Zugzwang ”