Eighth Annual Narrative High School Writing Contest Winners

We are eager to share with you the winners and finalists of the Eighth Annual Narrative High School Writing Contest. This year Narrative welcomed free poetry submissions from our global community of high school students, who conjured poems in response to the prompt True or False?

Contributing teachers and students in the Narrative contest cover the world: in recent years, we have received submissions from forty-one countries, including Ghana, Malaysia, Nepal, China, Nigeria, Taiwan, South Africa, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Within the United States, we received poems from students in forty-nine states—a virtual world of young poets! In all, our Narrative for Schools programs reach more than 120,000 students and teachers in schools worldwide.

Of the first-place poem, written by Elane Kim, 2019–2021 Young People’s Poet Laureate and guest judge Naomi Shihab Nye remarked, “ ‘Aftermath’ is a stunning poem of details, objects, and intentions that mesmerized me from the first reading and simply would not let go. This is a poem of palpable presences. It’s magical. It says, Pay attention, we’re all surrounded by wonder. Absorb it, be changed by it.”

Of her experience judging the contest, Nye wrote, “I feel deeply grateful to have read these richly wide-ranging poems, as if I have traveled into a resonant layer of consciousness and been restored. Thanks to all the young writers who sent in work. Narrative appreciates you, I appreciate you, and may your great act of bravery and positivism in sharing your voices become a regular practice that benefits you throughout your lives.”

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