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 the Narrative contest cover the world: in recent years, we have received submissions from twenty-eight 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-nine 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.”

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