Congrats Arja!
National Gold Medal Award Winner
From the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers . . .
2018 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards National Medalist
We are pleased to announce that Aquin Senior Arja Kumar has earned a National Medal in the 2018 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, presented by the alliance for Young Artists & Writers. Her work was selected by creative professionals as the most accomplished in the nation. This year, nearly 350,000 works of art and writing were submitted. Less than 1% were recognized at the national level. Students receiving top Awards have been invited to attend a ceremony at the world-famous Carnegie Hall on June 7 and to participate in showcase events at Parsons School for Design at The New School and Pratt Institute's Pratt Manhattan Gallery in New York City. The exhibition will be on display June 1-10. (unfortunately, Arja won't be attending the awards as she has a prior commitment)
Since 1923, the Awards have recognized creative teenagers from across the country. By receiving a Scholastic Art & Writing Awards National Medal, Arja joins a legacy of celebrated authors and artists including Andy Warhol, Sylvia Plath, Truman Capote, Robert Redford, Joyce Carol Oates, and the renowned author and illustrator who will receive our Alumni Achievement Award this year, Marc Brown.
Aquin is so very proud to have Arja represent Aquin in this year's Scholastic Art & Writing Awards!
From Arja . . .
Here are excerpts from my short story "ACNE" that won. If anybody is interested in the full story, it will be exhibited at Carnegie Hall in June and will be archived in the Scholastic Library then. The story is an illustration and study of the suburban and urban youth cultures from the eighties to the modern day.
ACNE
after Sherwood Anderson
by Arja Kumar
On Fridays I dream about the city. I see young grocery boys on sidewalk corners — their silhouettes the shade of the burning blue in a fire, dancing like gypsies when they move. I see young wanderer girls sitting on lone benches — cheeks a shade of too pale pink, a tiny rippled pool of rust copper blood dabbling out of the cut on their painted lips. I see unknown shadows and smell the poisonous tomorrow breath of poor strangers that lingers in the air like a question with no answer. In my Friday dreams there is only Aquarius, dark purple, city lights, fog and cloud.
On Sundays I dream about our small town. I see the farm boys' breath disappearing into the cold winter air. I see the farm girls’ white dresses spinning while they dance in the rain during a heavy summer thunderstorm. I see their crooked yellow teeth and smell their rotten yesterday breath. Sure, they smell of earth and their hands are always dirty, but they are real boys and girls. Their skin is an abandoned map — rugged hills, flowing creeks, honey wheat fields. Their eyes are faded and dreamy like foggy days and fire and burning leaves. I hear them singing rock and roll loud at night while cruising down lonely roads at midnight in their beat up trucks and their parents yelling their names over the wastelands…
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The Middle of Nowhere, IL 1984
We were bored and in a mess.
We were at the abandoned school again and it was eleven o’clock leaning towards midnight, and a couple of us were drinking Coca-Cola mixed with apple juice straight out of a milk jug to celebrate the night and beginning of autumn. Our cars were parked side by side by side and all of our radio stations were tuned to the same number: 102.1 THE BIG ROCK FM.
We were all wearing faded leather jackets and torn up Chucks addled with dirt and grass stains and crushed ash. We were all dangerous spirits back then . . .
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The Middle of Nowhere, IL 1998
The boys had the small town blues — a virus one in every three suburbans is bound to get. The four blue boys mooned around the youngest one’s house together and laid under the ceiling fan. It was the middle of July. They had an infinite amount of time to waste. The boys laid mindless, swimming in a pool of lazy imagination. At least, that’s the scene they imagined in their heads — an unmade movie. In reality, all four of them were arguing about leg hair over lemonade . . .
The doorbell rang. He sighed, groaned a little, and got up to open the door . . .
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The Middle of Nowhere, IL 2017
I am wearing an old David Bowie t-shirt. I whistle lazily to the tune of Keep on Loving You and drum on the side of my father's beat up old car when I am at a stop light. I am listening to a mixtape: a CD labelled OLDIES BUT GOLDIES in Sharpie scrawl. The songs make me think of CVS robbers and Bonnie and Clyde and the chemical structure of dopamine. The windows are open and the wind brings in too much brutal autumn air. A few ladybugs fly inside and stay to crawl around on the windshield. Once in a while, I notice one moving on my steering hands and flick it off…