On the front page of the Arts section in today's New York Times is a nice story on the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, which some of you may have seen already. It begins:

Student Winners Follow the FamousIn 1932, a senior at Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn won second prize in a writing contest for a story called "Life - From Behind a Counter," about working in his father's grocery store.

The story ends with a salesman telling the boy, "vat you see in vun day, und vat you hear in vun day from dese people - you can write a leetle book about."

"I nodded - only I thought, 'I could write a big book,' " wrote the 18-year-old author.

The storyteller was Bernard Malamud, who would write many big books and win many awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for "The Fixer."

That early notice for the future literary star came from the Scholastic Awards, begun in 1923, when the contest sponsor, the Scholastic Publishing Company, received seven original writing submissions. This year, 200,000 middle school and high school students entered, along with an additional 50,000 competitors in the photography and art categories, for the national prizes now known as the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.

This year's 12 winners of the top prize, $10,000 in cash for a portfolio of work, were announced yesterday by Scholastic Inc., still the biggest sponsor of the awards (The New York Times is another corporate sponsor), which total more than $1.5 million in tuition scholarships annually.  [full story]

Why do I care? █████ works for the Alliance of Young Artists & Writers, which administers the competition for Scholastic, and I've served for three years now as a national juror—twice in the SF/Fantasy category, and this year in the American Voices (a/k/a Best in Show) category. I was also keynote speaker last year for the New York City regional awards ceremony.

In any event, the Alliance does praiseworthy work, and if you know any young writers or artists, be sure they and their schools know about the Awards for next year.