Celebrating Asheville School’s Award-Winning Writers in the 2025 Region-at-Large East Scholastic Writing Awards
Asheville School students have been recognized for their literary talent in the 2025 Region-at-Large East Scholastic Writing Awards, a prestigious competition that has celebrated young writers for over a century. This year’s honorees join an esteemed list of past recipients, including Langston Hughes, Judy Blume, Billy Collins, David Sedaris, Ocean Vuong, Elizabeth Acevedo, and Stephen King. Their work was selected by a panel of literary and visual arts professionals who evaluated submissions based on originality, technical skill, and the emergence of a personal voice or vision.
Entries were judged blindly by leaders in the literary and visual arts, who evaluated submissions based on originality, technical skill, and the emergence of a personal voice or vision. This year, several Asheville School students earned recognition for their exceptional writing:
Honorable Mention Recipients:
- Jessie Acquah ’26 – Perfect (Poetry)
- Hannah Batiste ‘25 – Separated at Skin (Personal Essay)
- Jaden Cho ’25 – From Dreams-to-Table (Personal Essay)
- Adi Cross ’26 – It’s Not Home with the Lights Off (Poetry)
- Maddie Gilson ’27 – Tuesdays Shouldn’t be this Painful (Poetry)
- Eojun Shin ’25 – In Memory of My Grandfather (Personal Essay)
- Kearney Sword ’26 – An Act of Survival (Critical Essay)
- Sara Wan ’27 – Dear Pluto (Poem)
- Jason Wang ’26 – Each Other (Personal Essay)
- Selina Wang ’25 – The End of the World (Poetry)
- Yoga Wang ’26 – A Letter of Apology (Personal Essay)
- Logan Wit ’26 – White Paper Bag (Poetry)
- Jenn Xu ’25 – Keeping the Ice Pop Cool (Personal Essay)
Silver Key Recipients:
- Chloe Butler ’25 – Mr. Analog (Poetry) and Memory: A Guided Tour (Personal Essay)
- Kate Jeon ’25 – Golden Fries and Lingering Dreams (Personal Essay)
Gold Key Recipient:
- Amy Zhu ’26 – We Are All Our Flowers (Poetry)
Amy’s work will now advance to the national level, where it will be judged against top young writers from across the country. We invite you to read Amy’s poem below.
We are incredibly proud of these students for their dedication to the craft of writing and for sharing their voices with the world.
We are All Our Flowers By Amy Zhu ’26
I want to
be the most popular flower, but I’m just a
Daisy.Listening
to the butterfly, I painted my petals in color, but after a rain, I changed
back to my previous appearance.Listening
to the bee, I retracted my petals, trying to cover the pitted stamens, but it
was so tiring, and I accidentally returned to the original shape.I try to
make myself popular and join the flowers group. Listen to them talking about
their love with the cloud, listen to them talking how well their brothers and
sisters sell in the city and watch them reflecting their beauty in the pool together.
I feel like we areDifferent.
I seem to
envy them that they can do this at a young age. Because I know I am not
beautiful, I have no experience worth showing off, and I have nothing special
to stand out.But I see
that sometimes the sun shines on me, and I am golden, as if glowing.There are
tens of thousands of roses in this world, but loving myself is the starting
point of romance. Even if I am in an environment where hundreds of flowers compete
for beauty, I should learn to be that glowing daisy. My own life should live
out my attitude. I don’t have to force myself to fit in and worry about being
out of gregarious. There is always a cloud running towards me in the sky, and
there is always a firefly that lights upFor Me.
So, I
suddenly felt it doesn’t seem that important whether it is the most dazzling.
Even though I am in the grass and rarely noticed by others, I still have to be
myself. Otherwise, in this world, there will be lessLight.