winners of our fall essay competition
1st prize: Cynthia roman Cabrera
Cynthia Roman Cabrera (she/her) is a Dominican and Puerto Rican native Bronx, New Yorker. She uses poetry to write on identity, cityscape, culture, and trauma. Her work includes community to foster personal growth, vulnerability, and communal accountability. As someone who has lived in various marginalized communities, her poetry reflects the impact of larger systems meant to cause harm. Her experiences as a scholar, broke girl, comelona, reader, advocate, and queer person in love help shape and transform her work.
2nd Prize: Kay Brown
Kay Brown (she/her) is a Southern Black Women writer and founder of Disturbance E-Magazine. She was born and raised in South Carolina and is a first-year student at Mount Holyoke College. She is interested in exploring how the relationship between language& power, Black Southern Womanhood, &how art can be used to break down institutional systems to create a new Disturbance in the world.
3rd Prize: Skye Margiotta
Skye Margiotta, a biracial poet, playwright, and essayist mainly residing in Upstate New York, admires how the subconscious mind is influenced by the clear-cut truths embedded in the metaphors of written work. One reason she writes—as a means to easily introduce and correct these human cognitive biases. A rising high school senior, Margiotta serves a management position of her school literary magazine and as the Editor-in-Chief of her school newspaper. Her work in language and literature has been recognized by the Laureate, Teen Ink, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and Harvard University's Division in Continuing Education.