creativity

Story·Alex Berman, age 13 — A whimsical origin story explains how the floating, two-eyed giiants of Chocolate Lemon island became the one-eyed cyclopes we know today.

Story·Ava Bush, age 13 — A lonely woolly mammoth at a rigid academic school befriends a creative girl who teaches him about color-emotions, leading to their escape to a colorful utopia.

Story·Valentine Wulf, age 12 — A teenage inventor's basement startup becomes a global corporation that destroys the environment and exploits workers while maintaining public support through clever marketing and the slogan 'for the greater good.'

Story·Sabrina Guo, age 12 — An art student struggles to paint a childhood memory she doesn't have, ultimately creating a canvas that blends her parents' first meeting with imagined moments they never shared.

Story·Yanni Yohannes, age 9 — A six-year-old dreams of creating an immortality potion, achieves it as an adult through a meteor fragment, becomes wealthy, then loses everything and returns to normal life.

Poetry·Ari Martinez, age 9 — A playful exploration of mistakes through wordplay, comparing them to tissues on cake and balloons on garbage cans, then deconstructing the word itself.

Story·Sydney Burr, age 11 — A girl who writes by a mountain stream is transported into her own story about an Egyptian pyramid, where she meets her protagonist and must find a way out.

Poetry·Neel Rangan, age 9 — A young poet imagines a distant land where theatrical beings act out our dreams, created by God so humans could experience wonder during sleep.

Poetry·Tatiana Rebecca Shrayer, age 9 — A father and daughter venture into the woods to craft a bow and arrows, transforming branches into instruments that sing and shoot arrows toward stars that scamper like foxes.

Poetry·Sophia Dahlin — A teacher introduces experimental poetry written by multilingual students in Shanghai, created through unconventional writing prompts designed to spark wild imagination.