memory

Poetry·Daniel Shorten, age 9 — A child's fragmented memories of a play or film screening blur with overheard dialogue, creating an unsettling meditation on mortality and childhood observation.

Story·Michaela Frey, age 12 — A foster child who lost her voice after trauma struggles to speak again, remembering the woman who silenced her years ago.

Poetry·Teddy Lykouretzos, age 13 — A meditation on impermanence that moves from photographs and fireflies to wedding cake and stone statues, arguing that nothing can truly be preserved.

Personal Narrative·Claire Jiang, age 12 — A granddaughter traces her family's rise and fall through China's civil war and Cultural Revolution, from her great-grandfather's fruit business to burning ownership papers for survival.

Poetry·Sofia Dardzinski, age 9 — A meditation on time through the perspective of a clock, whose red hand moves endlessly through numbers, carrying promises and memories without limits.

Personal Narrative·Ilina Chaudhury, age 11 — A four-year-old visits her grandmother in India and gradually understands what death means when her grandmother dies of cancer during the trip.

Story·Olivia Ladell, age 13 — After Earth's population flees to Mars, an eight-year-old boy is accidentally left behind. Eight years later, on his sixteenth birthday, he discovers another forgotten teenager.

Poetry·Tatiana Rebecca Shrayer, age 13 — A cast iron staircase in a restored Russian school is the only original element remaining, holding memories of young women who once descended with diplomas and dreams of freedom.

Poetry·Tatiana Rebecca Shrayer, age 13 — A young visitor to Sobibór death camp touches the train tracks and imagines herself as a child searching for murdered parents.

Poetry·Tatiana Rebecca Shrayer, age 13 — A former police officer now mows lawns and sells oysters, dreaming of sirens while tending rich people's gardens.