In today’s episode, host Billy DiMichele is joined by Chris Wisniewski, Executive Director of the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, Karlotta Frier and Anyango Mpinga, two professional artists and national jurors for the 2025 Scholastic Awards, and Nia Cao, a teen writer and recipient of the 2025 New York Life Award, a sponsored Scholastic Award that recognizes outstanding works dealing with grief. Each of these interviews will explore a particular component of the Scholastic Art & Writing Award—from a work first being submitted through to a national winner taking a bow on the incomparable stage of Carnegie Hall.

Listen to hear more about what makes a program like the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards so special, so enduring, and so necessary.

Resources
About the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards: https://www.artandwriting.org/
About the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers: https://www.artandwriting.org/the-alliance/
About the New York Life Award: https://www.artandwriting.org/scholarships/new-york-life-award
Gallery of teen work recognized in the 2025 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards: https://www.artandwriting.org/gallery/
More listening: Scholastic Reads! Celebrating 100 Years of the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

Highlights
Chris Wisniewski, Executive Director of the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers

“More than anything else, when we talk to teenagers and ask why did you enter the program? It was really about the opportunity to share their work, to have their work celebrated, particularly in their home communities, or even on the stage of Carnegie Hall. That’s a really extraordinary thing for a young person who’s at a crucial moment in their creative development and really thinking about what’s next for them. So that recognition is really important.”

“We also see the Scholastic Awards as being almost like a big national tailgate party for art and culture. What we’re doing is bringing communities together all around the country to celebrate these young people who are doing extraordinary things in their art and writing.”

“When you think about the fact that one out of every four high schools in the country has a young person who enters this program, we can rightfully say that we are conducting a celebration of creative teens on a truly national scale. And when we award 2-3,000 national medals, that really is a recognition of some of the very finest creative work that has happened anywhere in this country over the past year by teenagers.”

“With 103 years of Scholastic Awards under our belt, that makes us a unique repository of teen creativity. We can tell a story about what young people were thinking about, and what was on their minds when they were making art and writing over the course of these past 100 years, and that’s something that’s unique to this program.”

“The work that I find tends to resonate most powerfully with our jurors is the work that expresses a unique point of view. So young people who have the courage to really put themselves out there and to go beyond a classroom assignment or a sense of the expected, that’s always the best path, not just to winning a Scholastic Award, but to really developing as a creative. To remember to always be true to yourself first.”

Karlotta Frier, professional artist and 2025 national juror

[On what intrigued her about participating as a juror] “I got invited and didn’t know it was going to be so much fun and feel so important to me…Winning an award was really important to my path…and that experience of being seen by someone else other than my mom who always believed in me this whole time, but somebody else, in New York [meant] maybe I can do this.”

Anyango Mpinga, professional artist and 2025 national juror

[On the message she would want Scholastic Awards participants to hear] “I just want them to know that their voice is valid and to not change for anyone…If you’re really connected to who you are, and this is your creativity, the best thing you can do for yourself is cultivate that creativity and become even better than you were yesterday, and stick to it, and make that your voice…you have to stick to your guns, and you have to fight for yourself.”

_Nia Cao, teen poet and recipient of the 2025 New York Life Award _

“[My poem] was a really important work to me, and it was the first time that I processed [my uncle’s] death. Applying for the New York Life Award, it wasn’t something that I hesitated about. This is something that really resonates with my poem and with my work, and I think it was something that really tied into his legacy.”

“It’s validating to be acknowledged and know that my poem resonated with someone, and it feels as if the judges are saying to me, ‘I see you, I hear you.’”

Special Thanks
Producers: Allyson Barkan and Anne Sparkman
Sound engineer: S. Shin
Music composer: Lucas Elliot Eberl

The program gained fame through the students who won its awards, many of whom went onto groundbreaking careers in art, fashion, film, and literature. They include Bernard Malamud, Ezra Jack Keats, Truman Capote, Richard Avedon, Andy Warhol, Sylvia Plath, Cy Twombly, Kay WalkingStick, Robert Redford, Stephen King, Ken Burns, Yolanda Wisher, Zac Posen, Lena Dunham, and Amanda Gorman.

A century after Robinson laid out his vision, the program is still going strong. The Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, which administers the program, recently published A Thousand Familiar Faces: 100 Years of Teen Voices. The new anthology offers a look at life through young people’s eyes, whether they’re grappling with World War I, the Great Depression, the Vietnam War, or the September 11 attacks. You’ll find memoirs, poems, and essays about teenage life, family, identity, grief, racism, and immigration.

In this episode, Hannah Jones, Deimosa Webber-Bey, and Henry Trinder join host Suzanne McCabe to talk about A Thousand Familiar Faces. Hannah, who edited the anthology, is also an author. She won a Scholastic Award, herself, in 2004. Deimosa and Henry combed through the Scholastic archives to find the best of the best of student writing from the past 100 years. Deimosa is the director of Information Services & Cultural Insight at Scholastic, and Henry recently earned a master’s degree in library science from Pratt Institute.

→ Resources
A Thousand Familiar Faces: A new anthology of award-winning teen writing features works dating back to the 1920s. You can download it for free here.
Scholastic Art & Writing Awards: Administered by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, the awards have fostered creativity among young people since 1923.

→ Highlights
Hannah Jones, editor, A Thousand Familiar Faces
“It was [surprising] how vital and important and immediate and fresh the voices from the ’20s and ’30s and ’40s felt.”

“I want every single one of these writers to just have their moment of being read by someone new.”
Henry Trinder, researcher, A Thousand Familiar Faces
“Poetry was a more dominant form as a means for expression for the teenagers in the ’20s and ’30s. As that went on, short stories became more popular, and now, it seems, essays have become much more popular.”

“It was comforting to read these stories and see myself in them.”
Deimosa Webber-Bey, researcher, A Thousand Familiar Faces
“It was very satisfying to . . . come away that much richer in knowledge about Scholastic history, about teenagers, about the 20th century.”

→ Special Thanks
Producer: Maxine Osa
Sound engineer: Daniel Jordan
Music composer: Lucas Elliot Eberl

→ Coming Soon
Pride Month: Author Simon James Green Talks About Gay Club!