memory

Story·Sadie Perkins, age 13 — A girl visits her dying grandmother in a nursing home, struggles with grief after her death, then feels her grandmother's presence return to comfort her.

Story·Bailey Curtin, age 11 — After her sister Jade dies from a brain tumor, Cate steals some ashes and walks to a PEI beach where a mysterious dove appears and draws their family's safety symbol...

Story·Julia Lockwood, age 12 — A girl who visits graves meets the ghost of Ada Lee Clemmons, an eleven-year-old who died in 1907, and realizes she's been keeping the forgotten child company.

Poetry·Tristan Hui, age 11 — A child's memory of digging in sand and being lifted by their father above ocean waves captures a moment of perfect safety and belonging.

Poetry·Dusty Gibbon, age 12 — A young poet captures New York City at night through vivid sensory images—scraggly trees, moonlight on curtains, flickering streetlamps—ending with the city caught in 'the tangled thicket of past importance.'

Poetry·Tristan Hui, age 11 — A child recalls digging in sand and being lifted by their father over crashing waves, finding belonging in that moment of safety and joy.

Story·Ellen Salovaara, age 13 — A young woman preparing for her wedding remembers her father's death when she was eight and realizes she must let go without forgetting as she asks her mother to walk...

Poetry·Gianna Harris, age 9 — A child kneels by the Mississippi River, praying and remembering walks with her mother, feeling freedom in the water's flow and memories on its surface.

Story·Sophia Gallegos, age 13 — A girl dreams of descending through ocean layers to encounter a mysterious jellyfish, then wakes to ordinary life while harboring her grandfather's secret journal of undiscovered sea creatures.

Poetry·Malin Moeller, age 11 — A meditation on how dreams warp time and memory, leaving only fragments and distortions as evidence of the night's passage.