Irvington High School juniors Brooke Dunefsky and Alex Lee and Irvington Middle School eighth grader Tane Kim were recognized with awards at the prestigious 2021 Hudson-to-Housatonic Writing Region Scholastic Art & Writing Awards competition.
Dunefsky earned an honorable mention award for her science fiction and fantasy “The Treaty” and Lee earned a Silver Key for his flash fiction” Dirt Spoon.” Their teacher Julie Ippolito said both students have been amazing in their willingness to try new things with their writing, and the effort they apply to developing and honing their skills.
“Alex’s winning story was extremely well-crafted and structurally and thematically sophisticated,” Ippolito said. “Brooke impressed me by exploring the science fiction genre and developing an inventive and engaging narrative in her winning entry.”
Kim earned a total of six awards for five poems and a personal essay. He received a Silver Key for “Ball Boy,” a Silver Key for “Adolescence,” an honorable mention for “Melt, places to call home,” an honorable mention for “My Armor,” and an honorable mention for “I want to sing in the shower, How I want to walk at the beach,” and an honorable mention for his memoir, “A Whisper.”
“Although Tane enjoys writing in all mediums, he is particularly passionate about writing poetry,” his teacher Olivia Evanko said. “His poems are nuanced, playful and relevant. All of his writing is deeply original, tracing themes that touch on the complications offered by our humanity, as well as understanding identity during adolescence, which, in the past year, has been anything but normal.”
This year, nearly 1,700 works were submitted to the regional level for consideration by a panel of novelists, editors, teachers, poets, librarians, journalists and other creative professionals. The students’ work was recognized as some of the most outstanding works submitted from among their peers.
Presented by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards program identifies students with exceptional artistic and literary talents.
