Brett Kessler, a junior at Flower Mound High School, was named one of the winners of the highly competitive Elizabeth Bishop Prizes at the Walnut Hill School for the Arts in Natick, Massachusetts.
Kessler won in the Fiction category for his short story “For Ariel, on Her Birthday.”
The student editors of the Writing & Publishing Program selected the winning verse and fiction from nearly 500 submissions received from around the world, including pieces from young writers in Albania, Turkey, and China.
Both the Prize-winning works and those by the runners-up will be published this spring on The Blue Pencil Online (www.thebluepencil.net), which is produced by the Writing & Publishing Program.
Kessler will be awarded a $15,000 scholarship to the Writing & Publishing Program at Walnut Hill, contingent upon application to and acceptance by Walnut Hill’s Admission Committee, and will receive a copy of Elizabeth Bishop’s Poems, Prose, and Letters, published by The Library of America, a steadfast supporter of the Prizes.
The Bishop Prizes are held annually in recognition of Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Elizabeth Bishop, who was a member of the Walnut Hill Class of 1930 and an the editor of The Blue Pencil. The Prizes are awarded to authors whose work has been published or accepted for publication by The Blue Pencil Online in the preceding year.
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