Country School 8th Graders Earn Scholastic Art and Writing Awards

The Connecticut Writing Project—UConn, in partnership with the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, presented Country School 8th Graders Nadia Goodman of Old Lyme and Roosevelt Liu of Wallingford with awards for their writing. Their writing was reviewed and recognized by a panel of creative professionals and awarded for outstanding merit in originality, technical skill, and the emergence of their personal voice and vision.

 

Middle School English teacher Kristin Liu’s students read the anthology of short stories Flying Lessons and Other Stories. As part of a creative writing lesson on point of view, Liu assigned her students to model their own pieces after “How to Transform an Everyday, Ordinary Hoop Court nto a Place of Higher Learning and You at the Podium” by Matt de la Peña, a piece written in second person. Both Goodman’s and Liu’s submissions were revisions of their initial in class quick-writes. 

 

Goodman earned an Honorable Mention in the Flash Fiction category for her piece "The Edge of the Cliff." She wrote, “Walking back home, you think of everything you just observed. The pink jellyfish, drifting under the blue waves, being watched by the trees, next to the lucky dragonfly on the rock you were sitting on just moments before.” Liu earned an Honorable Mention in the Short Story category for her piece "The Butterflies and Frogs of Life." She concluded her piece with a hopeful message, “Now, years after your long, eventful journey, you speak to people about how to keep going when things get rough. Because if it worked for you, in one of the most unpleasant situations, it can work for everyone. When you talk about working with the frogs, you describe that it’s what it was, essentially: One big, wet, disappointment. But then a butterfly came flying to help you. And that’s what you have to do: wait for the butterflies of life.”

Since 1923, the Awards have recognized some of America’s most celebrated artists and writers when they were teenagers, including Tschabalala Self, Stephen King, Kay WalkingStick, Charles White, Joyce Carol Oates, and Andy Warhol. Country School is proud to count Nadia Goodman and Rosie Liu among this group of alumni authors.