The 2011 Nation Student Writing Contest

The 2011 Nation Student Writing Contest

The 2011 Nation Student Writing Contest

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

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We’re delighted to announce the winners of The Nation’s sixth 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This year we asked students to send us an original, unpublished, 800-word essay detailing what they think is the most important issue facing their generation. We received hundreds of submissions from high school and college students in forty-one states. We chose one college and one high school winner and ten finalists total.

Congratulations to the winners, Bryce Wilson Stucki, an undergraduate at Virginia Tech, and Hannah Moon, a 2011 graduate of Brooklyn College Academy in Brooklyn, New York, and to our ten finalists! The winners each receive a cash award of $1,000; the finalists receive $200 each. All receive Nation subscriptions.

Many thanks to all of our applicants and the many people who encouraged their participation, and many apologies for our delay in naming the winners. The two winning essays will be excerpted in an upcoming issue of The Nation magazine and all finalists will be published at StudentNation on Monday, December, 5.

Winners

Bryce Wilson Stucki, Virginia Tech
Hannah Moon, Brooklyn College Academy, Brooklyn, NY

Finalists

College
Zoe Carpenter, Vassar College
Alex Klein, Yale University
Matthew Hickson, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Melanie Muller, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Jake Shoemaker, Dartmouth College

High School
Ashley Arkhurst, Manlius Pebble Hill School, DeWitt, NY
Sakib Ahmed, Herricks High School, Manhasset, NY
Conor Beck, South Portland High School, S. Portland, ME
Kevin Xiong, Cambridge Rindge & Latin, Cambridge, MA
Stephanie Weiner, Spanish River Community High School, Boca Raton, FL

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

The Nation Founded by abolitionists in 1865, The Nation has chronicled the breadth and depth of political and cultural life, from the debut of the telegraph to the rise of Twitter, serving as a critical, independent, and progressive voice in American journalism.


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