Top Greenhills writers collect McDowell Awards

Greenhills students gathered recently to honor the winners of the 2oth annual McDowell Writing Awards at an all-school assembly featuring journalist and fiction writer V.V. (Sugi) Ganeshananthan.

V.V. Ganeshananthan

The awards, named for Greenhills’ third head of school, are presented each year to students who produce the best entries in categories including essays, poems, plays, fiction/memoirs, and journalism. A typical year brings as many as 350 entries, so the competition is keen.

At the assembly, Ganeshananthan, now a visiting professor of creative writing at the University of Michigan, reminded winners that competitions like the McDowell Awards can serve to help them focus and finish their work.

“I began writing for publication in much the way I’m guessing many of you have: for school,” said Ganeshananthan, whose first novel, Love Marriage, was published in 2008. “When I was writing on my own, I sometimes had a really hard time finishing things. But when I had the deadlines those contests and publications and teachers gave me, I began to learn that I could finish.”

Ganeshananthan, who also has written for Granta, The Atlantic Monthly, American Prospect, and a variety of other magazines, addressed the various roles journalists and writers play—not least of which is actually that of audience member.

“Before I was a journalist or a fiction writer, before I wrote novels or reviewed books or did media criticism, I was the audience,” she said “I think that’s true of many of us, maybe even all of us who write. All writing is on some level fandom; we’re writing in homage to work we’ve read and loved.”

That means Ganeshananthan is still, perhaps foremost, an avid reader, and a reader of many different kinds of writing. And that’s a course she recommends for aspiring writers, as well.

“One of the first things reading taught me,” she said, “was how much I could be interested in.”

This year’s winners:

Essay

Grade 6                                    Alan Zhu

Grades 7-8                              Harry Bagenstos

Grades 9-11                            Sinduja Kilaru

Poetry

Grade 6                                          Will Ellsworth

Martha B. Grimes Award        Anna Scott

Grades 9-12                                 Karen Guan

Fiction/Memoir

Grade 6                                    Zoya Uzzaman

Grades 7-8                              Ryan Kirkpatrick

Grades 9-11                            Anne Snabes

Playwriting

Middle School                          Bess Markel

Upper School                          Maggie McMillin

Journalism

Francesca Lupia

This year’s honorable mentions:

Essay

Middle School                         Lauren Bohm (7-8)

Upper School                          Elizabeth Reeves

Poetry

Middle School                          Madeline Berger (6), Leila Bagenstos (7-8)

Upper School                          Marilyn Schotland

Fiction/Memoir

Middle School                          Anisha Fujii (6), Adam Buchmueller, Tyler Holland (7-8)

Upper School                          Rachel Frank

Journalism

Allison Schulte