Nation Student Writing Contest Winners, 2012

Nation Student Writing Contest Winners, 2012

Nation Student Writing Contest Winners, 2012

Meet the twelve winners!

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Reuters/Brian Snyder 

We’re delighted to announce the winners of The Nation’s seventh annual Student Writing Contest!

This year we asked students to send us an original, unpublished, 800-word essay detailing what they think is the most important issue of Election 2012. We received close to 1,000 submissions from high school and college students in forty-two states. We chose one college and one high school winner and five finalists from each category. The contest was open to all matriculating high school students and undergraduates at American schools, colleges and universities.

Congratulations to the winners, Andrew Giambrone, an undergraduate at Yale University who wrote about the human costs of unemployment and argued that the economic crisis is also an existential catastrophe, and Tess Saperstein, a junior at Dreyfoos School of the Arts in Boca Raton, Florida, who elegantly limned Susan B. Anthony’s contemporary legacy. The winners each receive a cash award of $1,000; the finalists receive $200 each. All receive lifetime Nation subscriptions.

Many thanks to all of our applicants and the many people who encouraged their participation. Please read and share the winning essays. The two winners will be excerpted in an upcoming issue of The Nation magazine and all finalists are published at StudentNation.

Winners
Andrew Giambrone, Yale University
Tess Saperstein, Dreyfoos School of the Arts, Boca Raton, Florida

College Finalists
Guido Girgenti, Occidental College
Erik Lampmann, University of Richmond
Alex Ritter, Baylor University
Gabriel Schivone, Pima Community College
Helen Yang, Princeton University

High-School Finalists
Nikolas Angelopoulos, Polytechnic High School, Pasadena, California
Kathryn Davis, Claremont High School, Claremont, California
Ethan Evans, South Warren High School, Bowling Green, Kentucky
Kristy Hong, Deerfield Academy, Deerfield, Massachusetts
Audrey Yu, Booker T. Washington High School, Tulsa, Oklahoma

Meet last year’s winners!

We cannot back down

We now confront a second Trump presidency.

There’s not a moment to lose. We must harness our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger, to resist the dangerous policies Donald Trump will unleash on our country. We rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists and writers of principle and conscience.

Today, we also steel ourselves for the fight ahead. It will demand a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Project 2025, a far-right supreme court, political authoritarianism, increasing inequality and record homelessness, a looming climate crisis, and conflicts abroad. The Nation will expose and propose, nurture investigative reporting, and stand together as a community to keep hope and possibility alive. The Nation’s work will continue—as it has in good and not-so-good times—to develop alternative ideas and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further solidarity in a nation divided.

Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.

The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

I urge you to stand with The Nation and donate today.

Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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