Groton students win 70 Scholastic Art and Writing awards

Thirty-two Groton School students won seventy Scholastic Art and Writing awards this year, including twelve gold keys, the highest regional distinction. 

Evelyn Cai ’27 won seven awards across both divisions, including two gold keys in Mixed Media for “Polar (Bear) Opposites” and “Your Vote is Matter” and a gold key in Critical Essay for “Reclaiming the Past: Ownership, Memory, and Justice in The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary.” Evelyn also won silver keys in Painting (“Nothing to See Here”) and Short Story (“Stitch by Stitch”) and honorable mentions in Printmaking (“This is Not a Game”) and Painting (“Bleached”).

Sagata Das ’26 won five awards, including two gold keys in Personal Essay and Memoir for “A Letter to My Living Martyr” and “Thread of Fate,” and a gold key in Humor for “On Crying: A Parody of How to Win Friends and Influence People.” Sagata also received a silver key for Poetry (“Ellipsis, Eclipses, Ellipses”) and an honorable mention in Personal Essay and Memoir (“Beyond the Drop”).

Liv Ding ’26 won a gold key in Short Story (“Fifty-Seven Million Grains of Rice”) and Poetry “Prufrock at the Symphony,” as well as a silver key for “The Fire of the Working-Class: A Comparison of Social Protest within Two Poems” (Critical Essay) and an honorable mention for “Fourth of July” (Short Story).

Amanda Chang ’26 received awards for four Critical Essays: silver keys for “Selling the Idea of Masculinity: An Exploration of Gender Expectations in Death of a Salesman” and “Immigration and Im(MA)gration in Poetry,” and honorable mentions for “A Comparison of the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Bible” and “In(QUEER)ing into the Subjugation of the LGBTQIA+ Community in the United States: An Orwellian Perspective.”

Holly Bradsher ’26 won four honorable mentions for her Photography (“Darling,” “Industrial Age,” “Inverted,” and “Landline”). Kaylynn Cho ’29 received honorable mentions in Poetry (“Just your stereotypical Asian girl,” “Lists,” “Part of the process”) and Dramatic Script (“Promise Under Fireworks”). Ava Meyer ’26 also received four Photography honorable mentions for her “DaVinci’s Dream,” “Emilia,” “Purple Rain,” and “Still Life.” 

Several other students were awarded multiple keys. Hanna El-Jeaan ’27 won a gold key in Science Fiction and Fantasy for “Gospel of Ezekiel” and a silver key in Flash Fiction for “In the Silence of Longing.” Samuel Lu ’27 won two awards in the Critical Essay category: a gold key for “Re-evaluating the Narrator in William Faulkner’s A Rose For Emily” and a silver key for “The Spiritual Parable in Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find.” 

Olivia Engstrom ’26 won two awards for Personal Essay and Memoir: a gold key for “Like Cypselae in the Breeze” and an honorable mention for “The Wind Whispers.” Kristin Qin ’27 won two awards for her painting: a gold key for “Tiger Mouth” and an honorable mention for “Old Man and His Castles.”

Ethan Yan ’27 won two silver keys in the Critical Essay category for his “Potential Cognitive Benefits of Alphabetic and Logographic Writing Systems” and “Unpacking the Dynamic of Legacy Admissions.”

Kevin Cai ’26 was awarded a silver key in Critical Essay for “Holy Ambitions and Unholy Alliances: Napoleon Bonaparte and the Exploitation of the Catholic Church, 1790–1810” and an honorable mention in Personal Essay and Memoir for “What Remains.” Payson Dong ’29 won a silver key in Architecture and Industrial Design for “Urban Oasis Triangle” and an honorable mention in Novel Writing for “The Deadly Invitation.” Jake Murray ’25 won a silver key in Drawing and Illustration for “The Erosion of Love” and an honorable mention for his Art Portfolio, “Soul from Stone.” Zimo Zeng ’29 received a silver key in Personal Essay and Memoir for “Apples” and an honorable mention in Flash Fiction for “Trapped by Silence.”

Multiple honorable mentions went to Anna Favero ’27 (“Ambivalence” in Ceramics and Glass and “Escape to the Treehouse” in Sculpture), Julia Landau ’25 (“American Heros” and “Tea Time,” both in Painting), Daniel Mao ’26 (“Amazon, Rousseau, and the FTC: Questioning the Ethics of Lobbying in the United States” and “Looking Down the Edge of a Cliff: Why Our Civilization is in Danger,” both in Critical Essay), and Tabita Picucci ’27 (“languid” in Fashion and “Death’s Note” in Short Story).

Twelve additional students received awards for their writing or visual art. Silver key winners included Ava Dwyer ’26 (Critical Essay), Max Fan ’25 (Personal Essay and Memoir), Pauline McAndrew ’26 (Poetry), and Lindy Zhang ’25 (Personal Essay and Memoir). 

Students whose work received honorable mentions were Sara Agrawal ’26 (Personal Essay and Memoir), Zeynep Erkoc ’26 (Critical Essay), Sage Greaves ’26 (Critical Essay), Alexandra Kwon ’27 (Drawing and Illustration), Rose Lee ’28 (Personal Essay and Memoir), Morayo Olateju ’27 (Dramatic Script), Irene Seo ’28 (Poetry), and David Yu ’28 (Short Story).