Nguyen Thuy Tien
For the month of April, The Phantom will be hosting Student Spotlights to highlight students and their achievements. On April 12th, 2022, Annabelle Smith joined me to discuss her participation in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, as well as the flash fiction piece that won a Gold Key.
Tien Nguyen: Hi, my name is Tien Nguyen, and today I am here with Annabelle Smith!
Annabelle Smith: Hi!
T.N: Annabelle has won a Gold Key for her flash fiction piece, “Twenty Reasons to Save Myself and One to Burn.” Before we get started, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
A.S: I’m Annabelle, I’m a junior creative writer, and I write.
[laughter]
T.N: Okay, let’s get into your award-winning piece! Would you like to describe the plot?
A.S: So without giving too much away, the piece is about a girl who is in prison, and there are some very religious themes throughout the piece, and she continuously goes back to her sister, Mary.
T.N: When you wrote this, how did you find inspiration? And if you’re comfortable with sharing, what was the process like for such a heavy piece?
A.S: This piece… it took a little bit to get started because I wasn’t really sure where I wanted to go with it. But during the time -- I wrote this back in the fall, -- and there was a lot going on in my life with religion and at my church, and I knew I wanted to write something that could touch on that. So I went with the religious themes and just sort of the conflicts that can bring up in a person’s life. Even though the piece turned out to be heavy, I still think that it touches on the lighter and more positive aspects of religion.
T.N: That’s really beautiful. So for this piece, how is it unique from other pieces? How is the formatting and just the entire outline of it…
A.S: So this piece is a list story, which means it is written very much like a list. Every paragraph is just one sentence, and they’re technically fragments so it doesn’t really flow like a regular story that you would read. This piece was inspired by another piece by Richard Thomas called, “Twenty Reasons to Stay and One to Leave,” which you can definitely read that if you want to see more examples on these sorts of list stories.
T.N: And when you’re writing, do you often find inspiration from your life? And how do you apply that to your writing?
A.S: I think every writer takes inspiration from their life. Whether or not they’re conscious of it cause I think sometimes, y’know, you sit down to write a piece and think, “Well, this is just a fiction piece,” or “These are just characters I’ve made up,” but inadvertently, you’re writing about yourself and your feelings, and your characters are a little bit of you because it’s just, how can you write something that isn’t you?
T.N: That’s true. If you’re comfortable with answering this, have you ever faced an obstacle in your writing? And how have you overcome that?
A.S: I think with writing and with every art, every artist goes through a period of self doubt with a lot of their pieces. It can be hard to get past that, especially myself, I’m definitely a perfectionist. It’s hard to be able to look at my work all the time and be satisfied with it because as an artist, y’know, I’m always pushing myself to grow and to do more, and sometimes it’s hard to know when to stop.
T.N: If you could give advice to any writer, what would it be?
A.S: Well, y’know, with this award it wasn’t like I submitted and I thought, “Y’know what, this is the best piece I’ve ever written, this is definitely going to go places!” Like, I had doubts about it, and I wasn’t really sure if it was going to be…I guess good enough for people who didn’t know me and blind judges and all of the stuff you start getting into you start getting out there.
I guess what I would say is even if you have doubts about your piece or your art just in general, that’s okay, and that’s natural. The biggest step to overcoming that is saying, “Y’know what? Even if I’m not 100% sure, I’m still gonna try.”
T.N: Yeah, that’s really admirable. Can you describe to us what the contest was like?
A.S: So Scholastic makes it very easy. It’s all on this virtual dashboard. You log in and you have your account and that’s where you have your submissions, but you have to print off and sign these forms saying that you didn’t plagiarize. It’s kind of a long process to apply, but they make it super easy. And then you have to wait for a long time. Regional awards were announced in January if I remember correctly.
If you win a Gold Key, which I did for that piece [“Twenty Reasons to Save Myself and One to Burn”], then you’re told that in March if you won Nationals ‘cause all Gold Keys automatically go on to that level of judging. Then, it’s like these two long months of waiting and then, you log in back to your dashboard again on the day that Nationals is announced, and everyone is logging in so it takes a million years to load. And then, this year it said, “Congratulations!” up at the top!
T.N: Yay! So I know what’s next now that you’ve won, but besides being awarded that key, what else do you get to do?
A.S: So a fun thing about the key is that I haven’t gotten it yet but I’m actually going to get a legit gold medal in the mail, and that is my admission ticket to Carnegie Hall on June 9th. I’m going to be in New York City, I’m staying at a hotel right by Times Square, and I’m going to be honored at an awards ceremony in Carnegie Hall! So that’s really exciting.
T.N: Which you absolutely deserve because you’re an amazing writer.
A.S: Thank you!
T.N: To end this interview, where can we go to read your story?
A.S: I’m not sure what the timeline is, but I know Scholastic is working really hard to get everything with Nationals sorted out so they can get everyone the recognition they deserve. On the Scholastic Arts & Writing website, every national award-winning piece of writing and artwork is posted. Until then, you just have to ask me to read it, but there will be a point where it will be published on the Scholastic Arts & Writing website.
T.N: If nobody wants to read and they wanna read it now, where can they contact you?
A.S: You can contact me through Instagram. My Instagram is @a.b.marie_, you can just come find me on the Creative Writing floor, or you can try to contact me through The Phantom!
T.N: Yay! Okay, thank you, Annabelle!
A.S: Thank you!
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