May 8, 2023
High school students from Fairborn, Dayton, and Mayfield have won cash awards in Ursuline College’s 2023 High School Writing Contest. Their winning works were recently published in Inscape, Ursuline’s award-winning fine arts journal.
The first-place winner was Alec Massey of Fairborn High School for “Disfiguration.” Sanaa Averette of Stivers School for the Arts was awarded second place for “N/A,” while Sarah Fricke of Mayfield High School won third place for “That Peculiar Grin/Those Furrowed Eyes.”
This year, Inscape received almost 200 submissions from across Ohio. Inscape’s editorial team selected 26 entries for review by external panel of judges. The judges were Honey Bell-Bey, Cuyahoga County Poet Laureate; Adenike Marie Davidson, PhD, professor of English and Gender Studies and Chair of English and Foreign Languages at Delaware State University; and Celine Gomez, an endorsed AP Literature consultant for the College Board and Question Leader for AP Literature national scoring.
Ursuline College asked for poems, short stories, and essays about their vision of the future. All three winning works are poems, with the final selection made by Ms. Bell-Bey.
“The works of these talented prize winners demonstrate the power of the imagination to both envision and re-invent the future—the theme of this year's publication," said Humanities Chair and Assistant Professor of English Katharine G. Trostel, PhD, who serves as faculty advisor to the Inscape editorial team. She continued, "These powerful entries give us a glimpse into the hopes, dreams, and fears of the next generation of college students."
The winners received cash awards of $100, $50, $25 for first, second and third place, respectively. Ursuline College has produced a fine arts magazine since 1945. The term “inscape” was coined by English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins.
The 2023 edition of Inscape is available online at www.ursuline.edu/Inscape2023. Paper copies are available upon request.
