BY JESSICA STEELEY
Clarkston News Staff Writer
Aspiring artists and writers from the Midwest were honored at the 2017 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, including one of Clarkston’s own students, senior Emma Lohmeier.
Lohmeier received a medal and honorable mention for her short story “Waiting for Inevitability” in the Science Fiction/Fantasy category during the awards ceremony on March 11 at the University of Iowa.
“It was about a man who could see into the future all the time,” Lohmeier said of her original work. “Every second of his day he can see what he’s going do in the future and he can’t do anything about it.”
Time-travel movies gave Lohmeier the idea for her piece. She’s always had a problem with stories allowing people to change the future.
“I don’t think you can change the future. I think the future is as set in stone as the past is,” Lohmeier said. “That’s why I wrote the short story because he can see into the future, but he can’t do anything about it. It’s taking my theory and putting it in a short story.”
Laura Mahler, Lohmeier’s Advanced Placement Literature teacher, told her class about the contest in relation to an assigned writing assignment. The students had to submit the assignment to a writing contest and Mahler suggested the Scholastic Awards.
Lohmeier said she and her friend, Alex, decided to submit their pieces. They spent one lunch period every week for two months editing their work with their teacher.
This fall Lohmeier plans to attend Central Michigan University as an education major and she hopes to add a second major or minor in writing.
“I’ve been interested in writing since ninth grade,” Lohmeier said. “Some teacher told me to write a horror short story and I got really excited and after I wrote it I was like ‘Oh my gosh.’”
She even did an independent study last semester to work on a novel, which she’s been writing for a year.
“It’s very impressive, we’re very proud,” said Beth, Lohmeier’s mother, of her daughter’s writing. “There were well over a thousand people (at the ceremony). It was basically an hour of all these important people telling (the contestants) how wonderful they are.”
The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards is the country’s longest-running and most prestigious scholarship and recognition program for creative students in seventh through 12h grade.
Nearly 10,000 art and writing works from the Midwest were judged by the University of Iowa’s Belin-Blank Center. Renowned alumni of the award include Andy Warhol, Sylvia Plath and Stephen King.
“It’s really interesting the names of the alumni – that was kind of exciting,” Beth said. “It really made you realize what a big deal this is with these huge names who also were awarded this.”