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Sierra Nevada College honors outstanding high school writers

Tanya Canino
Special to the Bonanza
Jenny Jung, of Andover, Mass., reads her first-place nonfiction story, "A Reality on a Friday Night," during the Jan. 10 event at Sierra Nevada College. Behind her are Dalia Ahmed from Miami, Fla., who won first place in the poetry category, and Emily Markwiese from Santa Fe, N.M., a finalist in the poetry category.
Courtesy Tanya Canino

AND THE WINNERS ARE

Poetry

First place: Dalia Ahmend, Miami, Fla., “How to Mix Native Blood with Foreign Water: A Lab.”

Second place: Talin Tahajian, Belmont, Mass., “Dream in Which the Moon…”

Third place: Hanel Baveja, Ann Arbor, Mich., “Concavity of Checkmate”

Local winner: Stephanie Hsu, Fremont, Calif., “Mitosis”

Fiction

First place: Alexa Derman, West Field, NJ, “Kindergarten”

Second place: Catrina Sun Tan, San Francisco, Calif., “The 29”

Third place: Nick Burns, Ventura, Calif., “Moon Country”

Local winner: Sara Lagen, Prunedale, Calif., “The Countdown”

Nonfiction

First place: Jenny Jung, Andover, Mass., “A Reality on a Friday Night”

Second place: Allison Light, Little Rock, Ark., “How to Be Holy”

Third place: Tyler Randazzo, Bethlehem, NH, “Camp”

Local winner: Eloise Perrochet, Northridge, Calif., “Death of a Dogfish”

As a 6-year-old child, Jenny Jung randomly scribbled words on walls, her skin and even on her sleeping father, but in high school, she arranged those words to win first place in the 2013 Sierra Nevada College High School Writing Competition and a chance to read alongside well-known, published authors.

Sierra Nevada College hosted three of the 12 high school competition winners in early January, recognizing them Jan. 10 during the final night of the Incline Village college’s low residency, MFA program in creative writing.

With Josh Weil, the author of the highly-acclaimed novella collection, “The New Valley,” sitting in a full audience of writers, MFA students and published faculty, Jung, a junior from Andover, Mass., read “Reality on a Friday Night,” which earned first-place in the creative nonfiction category.



Also reading were high school winners Dalia Ahmed, of Miami, Fla., who won the poetry category, and Emily Markwiese, of Santa Fe, N.M., another finalist in the poetry category.

“This is the second year we’ve invited winners to read at the MFA residency,” said June Saraceno, Sierra Nevada College English program chair. “They get to read alongside nationally acclaimed writers (this year Roxanne Gay and Josh Weil) and also have the opportunity to hear and interact with other writers.



“It’s a way to recognize their work and also to welcome them into a community of writers that is very nurturing and supportive of these young authors.”

Sierra Nevada College honors the best young writers in the country with the High School Writing Competition.

The winners earn a cash prize and an opportunity to visit the Incline Village campus to visit with the experienced faculty and published authors in the MFA program.

The low-residency MFA in Creative Writing is a two-year program with four distance-learning semesters, punctuated by five week-long residencies.

Each residency is an eight-day intensive series of workshops, seminars, readings, and more. The latest was held Jan. 4-11, featuring best-selling author Colum McCann, as well as several other authors such as Weil, who mentored the MFA students.

Before Weil read on Friday, Jan. 10, the high school students had their turn to read their works.

Ahmed, who read her poem, “How to Mix Native Blood with Foreign Waters: A Lab,” said the $500 award was “a shock.”

“I didn’t expect to win. When I saw the letter, I freaked out on the spot,” said Ahmed, who says her inspiration comes from those who are exiled due her “conflicting background of being Arab-African-American.”

Sierra Nevada College faculty and Sierra Nevada Review editors sifted through more than 700 submissions to choose the winners of the third annual contest.

“The final decisions were incredibly difficult given the quality of work we received this year,” said Laura Wetherington, faculty adviser for Sierra Nevada Review.

High school students submitted original, unpublished work to Sierra Nevada College for the contest and possible inclusion into the Sierra Nevada Review, an annual literary magazine.

“Many submissions exhibited stylistic innovation, skillful language use, and engaging development of theme. We were thrilled to see this level of craft from high school writers,” Saraceno said.

First-place winners in each category received $500; second-place, $250; and third-place, $100, plus eligibility for a $20,000 scholarship to Sierra Nevada College, Nevada’s only four-year, private, liberal arts college.

Tanya Canino is an adjunct English professor at Sierra Nevada College, and the faculty adviser of the school’s student newspaper, Eagle’s Eye.


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