Sophomore Cylina Wang and senior Aanum Khan are national award winners in the 2026 Scholastic Arts & Writing competition. Each had won regional Gold Key awards, making them eligible for a national award. 

Cylina received a gold medal and an American Voices Award for her short story "Війна," which means war in Ukrainian. No more than one American Voices recipient is named from each of the five regions. The American Voices Award is defined as “a superlative work of writing.” 

Cylina also won a gold medal in the Personal Essay & Memoir category, along with a New York Life Award, for her piece "Gott ist tot."  The New York Life Award recognizes writers whose work explores death and personal grief. Cylina’s piece was dedicated to her late grandfather.  

Aanum won a silver medal in the Speculative Fiction category for her story "College Tours," which she based on her experiences of visiting and learning about colleges.  

The awards have been in existence since 1923. Over 110,000 students entered more than 335,000 original works of art and writing in the 2026 Scholastic Arts & Writing competition. 

Both students said they crafted their pieces across many days of drafting and revising. 

“I completed the first draft of my short story within a week,” Cylina said, “followed by restless rounds of revision. In total, I went through 39 drafts, counting each day’s iteration as a collective set of changes. The second piece, a memoir, took three days to draft, and was followed by approximately 23 drafts.” 

Aanum said her piece on colleges took about a month to write. “I refined it after school, during free blocks, and even in late-night journaling sessions,” she said. “I found myself basing it on reality more and more as my college process progressed.” 

Writing, to Cylina, unfolds over time in a “slow process of discovery.” She said she enjoys the “feeling of uncovering rather than inventing. For me, writing is less about portraying something entirely new and more about revealing something that has always been there but has always resisted words. As I move through a piece, I begin to understand not only the world I’m building, but also the logic, tensions, and silences that shape it.” 

Cylina said each piece required her “to inhabit what the characters experienced. In my writing, I try to isolate my own experiences from shaping how I tell the story. I try to zoom out, even in the memoir, and stick with what is objectively observed rather than what is subjectively felt. Then, on my own time, I return to the memoir, read it over and over, feel the grief rise and settle in my throat, allow it to overwhelm me, and then move on.” 

Aanum describes her piece as a “fun ghost story, but it's also a reflection on the dark sides of colleges. While researching some of my potential school choices, I discovered long histories of sexism, slavery, and assault. Such histories were incorporated into my piece accordingly. ... I think we should look at these institutions with open eyes. They, too, are a part of our often-silenced histories. On a lighter note, I love ghost stories. I love lush description and pithy internal monologues. I got to explore all of that.” 

She said she had plenty of support along the way.  

“The piece evolved through peer review and working in bite-sized chunks,” Aanum said. “I could always find a friend to read over my pieces in the Writing Studio, where I serve as a writing consultant. I've always approached writing as a communal activity — I think the myth of the solitary writer is just that, a myth, and the best writers bounce ideas off each other, unafraid of judgment. My best ideas are the most incomplete, and they become complete because of my many writer friends. They know who they are, so thank you!” 

Aanum also has a message for others. She said she will miss the writing community at LC. She did not enter the Scholastic competition until her junior year and has won national recognition twice.  

“I would encourage more people to enter [the competition],” she said, “as creative writing is a uniquely human and very accessible activity.”