When speaking to Josefin Eraula and Lizzy Sosa, it’s clear that being writers is an integral part of who they are. They believe that writing has saved lives, fixed relationships and can change the world in small ways. And their passion, not their pride, fueled them to each earn a National Silver Medal of Distinction from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards this spring.
While they’ve submitted pieces throughout high school, this year is the first time Eraula, a senior, and Sosa, a junior, have received a national award from Scholastic. Both pieces by the girls were very personal to them.
After Sosa performed “My Search History Would Classify Me as a Stalker. :)” as a freshman at the Berkeley Center for the Arts spoken word poetry slam, she submitted it to the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards every year since.
“I just saw that the poem had meaning, it had impact, and that was the first time that I had seen my writing do something,” Sosa said. “ Last year, I got it published in a smaller literary journal, so I saw success there and I wanted to see if I could get success again with Scholastic.”
Eraula wrote “bittersweet beats.” as a part of her senior thesis which focuses on family, love and existentialism. The poem focuses on Eraula’s experience as a Filipino girl in the South.
“I just had to write a poem about it and how easy people change, but how hard it takes for them to get there,” Eraula said. “I wrote a quick little draft…and it was just pure, raw emotion in the middle of the night. I just needed to write and that’s what came out of it.”
Sosa said the day the national award winners were to be announced was a nerve-racking one for her and Eraula. As soon as she was able to access the results on the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards website, she began searching for winners from Goose Creek, South Carolina.
“My name was there and Josefin’s was there, so I took a picture of it, and I sent it to her, and I was like, ‘Josefin, Josefin, Josefin, look!’,” Sosa said.
Eraula said she was manifesting for them both to win an award all along, but she was still shocked when they actually won.
“It’s just a big deal to see that every year our program continues to be successful because that’s really what we want,” Sosa said. “We want to make sure that we’re still successful and prominent, because writing needs to be a bigger thing.”