As of March 13, Clarke Central High School senior Shea Peters, junior Maya Cornish and sophomore Audrey Enghauser are Clarke County School District winners for the 2020 Young Georgia Authors competition. Peters submitted a piece entitled “Your Fault”, which was further recognized as a Northeast Georgia RESA winner and will move on to state-level competition. “I would absolutely recommend submitting to this competition. Not that everything should be done for college, but awards and accolades like this are tangible things to incorporate into college and scholarship applications,” Peters said. “It also feels good to be recognized for something you’re proud of — not that you necessarily need the validation, but it is reassuring that others feel that something you’ve created is worth reading.” Illustration by Lilli Sams
Clarke Central High School senior Shea Peters, junior Maya Cornish and sophomore Audrey Enghauser are Clarke County School District winners in the 2020 Young Georgia Authors competition.
Young Georgia Authors is an annual state-wide, multi-round competition that judges writing pieces submitted from students grades K-12. If a piece advances past every round goes from school-level, to district level, to RESA district level then to the state level where there is one winner per grade level.
Clarke Central High School senior Shea Peters was announced as the Northeast Georgia Regional Educational Agency winner for her grade level in the Young Georgia Authors competition on March 13.
“I submitted ‘Your Fault’, which is a prose piece written from the perspective of a half of a grapefruit that I forgot was in my refrigerator for a shamefully long period of time. It’s melodramatic and absurd, which made it really fun to write,” Peters said.
CCHS Instructional Coach Ginger Lehmann spent time vetting through the schoolwide submissions and assisted in choosing the winners.
“I helped with promoting the program this year. I also helped to read and select the school level winners,” Lehmann said. “I expect to be involved in the same way in the future, but I will also increase my efforts to gather submissions by encouraging teachers to identify excellent writing that students do in their classes.”
Lehmann believes competing in YGA has major benefits for writers all across the state.
“Writing is important as an academic skill and as a method for self-expression and reflection. Giving students an opportunity to participate in a competition like this inspires young writers to write creatively and submit their very best work,” Lehmann said.
For Peters, her major takeaway from the competition was risk-taking.
“I think submitting work to something like this can be scary, especially for those who are deeply invested in their pieces. If other people don’t feel the same way, it can be crushing,” Peters said. “But if you don’t put your work out there, it’ll never be recognized for its true potential! In the end, the reward is far greater than the risk.”
Similar to Peters, for CCHS sophomore and CCSD YGA winner Audrey Enghauser, the competition gave her a feeling of accomplishment.
“I didn’t know much about the competition when I submitted my work, and I forgot about it for a while,” Enghauser said. “I never expected to win, so I would say my biggest takeaway is that if you do work hard to submit something that means a lot to you, it may get recognized.”
YGA also served as a way for Enghauser to honor her late grandmother.
“I submitted an essay about my grandmother entitled ‘Turning Grief into Nostalgia’. It is a This I Believe essay that focuses on how my mom and I remember her and how we moved past the pain,” Enghauser said. “Writing it allowed me to explore my feelings about her passing and share my strategy for coping with loss.”
For CCHS junior Maya Cornish, another CCSD YGA winner, the process of writing and submitting her essay entitled “In Dependence” was a good way to reflect on her personal strengths.
“I submitted a This I Believe essay from my Creative Writing Project in (my) journalism class, and it was about my independence and how it’s been something that I’ve always– It’s been a very core part of my identity,” Cornish said. “I still like being recognized as an individual, just as me. But after coming to Clarke Central and really having to learn and just really having to depend on others– that is why the title of my piece is “In Dependence”.
