Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School’s Annual Writing Contest

Poetry

1st Place: Lydia Wosen, “Why I’m Not Where You Are”

2nd Place: Riley Nee, “”Washed Out”

3rd Place: Roxanne Thompson, “Silent Wind is Thinning”

Short Story

1st Place: Roxanne Thompson, “Those Who Walk Onward”

2nd Place: Chiara Moran, “Desolate Awakenings”

3rd Place: Forest Snipes, “Sugarcane”

Personal Essay

1st Place: Frances Liu, “Last Time I Heard Cicadas”

2nd Place: Ani Mkrtchyan, “Warts”

The Chips staff (B-CC’s literary arts magazine) and English teachers choose finalists which are judged with the support of the Writer’s Center in Bethesda by the following judges:

Personal Essay Judge: Amy Freeman is a freelance writer with bylines in The Washington Post, Parents.com, Santa Fe Writing Project, HuffPost, Furious Gravity, and elsewhere. She is Development Director at The Writer’s Center.

Poetry Judge: Emily Holland is a lesbian writer with poems appearing in publications including Nat. Brut, Homology Lit, bedfellows, and Wussy. She is also the author of the chapbook Lineage (dancing girl press 2019). Her work has received support from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities and Sundress Academy for the Arts. She is the editor of Poet Lore and past Editor-in-Chief of FOLIO at American University, where she earned her MFA. For more, visit her website: emily-holland.com.

Short Story Judge: Zach Powers is the author of the novel First Cosmic Velocity (Putnam 2019) and the story collection i (BOA Editions 2017). His writing has been featured by American Short Fiction, Lit Hub, Tin House Online, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. He serves as Artistic Director for The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and lives in Arlington, Virginia. Get to know him at ZachPowers.com.

Sponsored by the Bethesda-Chevy Chase HS English Department; B-CC’s literary-arts magazine, Chips; the Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School Educational Foundation; and The Writer’s Center.