Madeleine Prescott may be a quiet sophomore at Tech High School, but give her pen and paper and she finds her voice! Prescott is the winner of the 2019 Anthem Essay Contest.
Prescott began writing stories in first grade. Her first story was about flowers flying away. Upon reflection, she realizes she wrote the story to represent her family’s move at the time. She still has that story – and every story she’s written since.
By the time Prescott was in middle school at South Junior High School, she joined a bloggers group with her English teacher, Ms. Good.
“It [blogging] was a different kind of writing – non-fiction,” explains Prescott. “I continued that because I do Montage [school newspaper] here like I did in middle school which was called ‘Giggles in the Middle.'”
Not only does Prescott write for Tech’s school newspaper, but she is involved in the Young Author’s Club at Tech as well. She enjoys the world development aspect for a group story the club collaborates on.
When asked, Prescott says she prefers to write fiction. Most of her stories from middle school were set in a dystopian type of world. Her influence came from “The Hunger Games.” She leans more towards fantasy now in high school.
Prescott wants to write stories with a lot more character development, which is why she loved her writing assignment from her 9th grade language arts class with Ms. Fenstad. Students chose from prompts and were asked to examine the characters. When the essay was finished, they could then submit it to an international essay contest for extra credit points.
Prescott chose to write about the prisoners in Ayn Rand’s dystopian novel, “Anthem.” After a few drafts and some time with Fenstad, Prescott then submitted her piece to Ayn Rand’s essay contest.
When Prescott received the email saying she won, she didn’t realize it was for first place.
“Then they called me,” she reflects, “like a video call, to make sure I was a student and they told me. I was like, ‘Oh, ok.”
She told her mom and a few others but then didn’t tell anybody else. Prescott started to doubt she’d actually won first place – first in over 8,000 entries.
“I quit telling people because I didn’t hear from them in over a month. I just kept thinking, ‘Well, that can’t be,'” remembers Prescott. “I just want to keep this contained because I don’t know. Then, when I got the check in the mail, I was like, ‘Ok. I can tell people now.'”
Ms. Fenstad gave her an “A” on her assignment. The extra credit points were well worth it. Prescott also received a $2,000 award for first place in the essay contest. Her plan is to save 90 percent of the money and maybe write a book.
A writing career is a definite option for Prescott. She believes being a novelist would be fun. However, she’d be satisfied as a journalist if travel was involved.
As Prescott looks to the future, she continues to write. Her current story is about two children that meet at a circus and all the adventures they experience. With a little confidence boost of winning an international contest, Prescott has found a way to prominently share her voice.
You must be logged in to post a comment.