Writer of the Year Submission

One of writing’s greatest strengths is its ability to use pain to foster compassion, to use this compassion to connect us all.

​

Before I was a journalist, I was a creative writer. I wrote my first short story in second grade and followed that with a myriad of sunset-colored poems throughout middle school. But beyond imagistic poems and witty short stories, what I fell in love with was writing memoirs.

​

There is something about putting the most vulnerable version of yourself on white pages, dissecting the thoughts that nestle between margins, facing them and confronting them, that is deeply intimate and healing — an exploration of and interaction with the self.

​

When I joined my high school journalism program, I came to realize writing’s power not just to heal the self but to heal others. Our sadness connects us — we are less alone when we understand we are not the only ones in pain.

​

So writing is about connecting, sending a sound out into the dark and listening for what comes back. Although it sounds simple, it was only after an interview with a previously incarcerated man that I gained this understanding.

​

In my sophomore year, I wrote a feature about prison art programs and their ability to rehabilitate individuals. For this piece, I got to interview someone who had participated in a writing program during his time in prison.

​

His name was Frederick Griffin. He was in prison for 17 years due to gang enhancement and gun charges. Before I interviewed him, I merely sought to obtain another part of my story, but what I learned from that 30-minute Zoom call was so much more than that.

​

Griffin shared that writing allowed him to be a version of himself he once felt he couldn’t be in a place with cramped cells, soiled floors, and windowless walls. He described the process as tender and intimate, but most importantly, he described writing as a gift that allowed him to wrestle his grief and burden — to face it, confront it, and heal. 

​

When Griffin asked me if I would like to hear his work, I ecstatically agreed, curious to hear even just a sliver of what filled his mind during his time in prison. He read his piece — a letter from his body to himself wherein the voice of his body speaks about the sexual abuse it experienced early on. Once he finished, he said this had been his first piece of writing, an attempt to address the trauma he had tried to silence for years. Writing about it allowed him to realize this trauma had to be heard, understood, and accepted as part of himself for him to heal. 

​

After a few more follow-up questions and a request for him to send more of his work, I ended the Zoom call, but his wisdom and self-understanding compelled me for days. 

 

Before the interview, I just saw him as another person to quote, but after, I realized how his pain connected to mine and my classmates — high school students in a prosperous suburb who nevertheless also suffer. We all have pain within us. But the need to heal serves as a point of connection for us all. 

​

I believe in writing for this reason — in the empathy it creates. I owe much of my compassion to writing, and while I began as a writer who mostly wrote about herself, journalism was my guiding light to hearing the stories of others and putting them out there for people to relate to and find strength in.

 

Writing is the lifeline of our world. It instills an urgency for change within us and charges our voices with ambition.

​

With this understanding, I hope to continue finding stories in every crevice and crack of the world, spotlighting them for others, and granting readers a space to find themselves within a story. As Griffin discovered, the first person we’re writing to is often the self because the self is lonely and difficult to understand. It is only after we begin to understand ourselves that we begin to understand others, share our words, and send them out into the dark to show that we are not as alone as we seem.