Seventh Annual Narrative High School Writing Contest

We are eager to share with you the winners and finalists of the Seventh Annual Narrative High School Writing Contest. In this most challenging year, Narrative welcomed free poetry submissions from our global community of high school students, who conjured poems in response to the prompt Blind Spots.

Contributing teachers and students in this year’s Narrative contest covered the world: we received submissions from seventeen countries, including Ghana, Malaysia, Nepal, China, Nigeria, Taiwan, South Africa, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Within the United States, we received poems from students in thirty-six states and 145 cities and towns—a virtual world of young poets! In all, our Narrative in the Schools programs reach more than 100,000 students and teachers in schools worldwide.

Of the first-place poem, written by Andrew Kang, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet and guest judge Jericho Brown remarked, “ ‘Buzzcut’ is a deceptively simple poem carrying in it the complexities of family, identity, and the gains made once we’re willing to lose. The poem rightly risks sensual imagery for the sake of real epiphany. And the poem makes sure to situate itself in the present moment in a way that makes it last forever.”

William Carlos Williams once observed, “It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day from lack of what is found there.” There are plenty of blind spots in our modern world, which is all the more reason to celebrate these young writers, who grace us with their wisdom, talent, and vision. Enjoy!
                                                                      —Carol Edgarian

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