This year, writing talent is emerging as nine Milton students take prizes in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Scholastic made 624 awards from more than 5,000 submissions.

For the second year in a row, a Milton student has won Scholastic’s prestigious New York Times James B. Reston Portfolio Gold Award, a single, unrestricted $10,000 cash grant scholarship for the most outstanding nonfiction portfolio. This year’s winner, Daniel Corkum, also recently won the grand prize in Seventeen magazine’s annual short story contest.

Scholastic gold key winners are Emily Cunningham, for poetry and writing portfolio; Meg Weisman, for short story and writing portfolio; Ashley Chow, Andrea Harris and Morgan Love, for poetry; and Jacob Hentoff, Noah Lawrence and Hannah Pulit, for short, short stories.

Miltonians have long been known as great writers. From the brilliance of T.S. Eliot, Class of 1906, to that of 2004 National Book Award winner in poetry, Jean Valentine ’52, and National Book Award finalist in fiction, Sarah Bynum ’90, Milton writers have enjoyed acclaim.

Last fall, Emily Cunningham and Andrew Gorin each won a 2004 Achievement in Writing Award. They were among the 689 winners chosen from 2,600 outstanding student-writers nationwide. The awards were sponsored by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and recognize excellent high school prose and poetry.

Milton Academy offers students Creative Writing and Advanced Creative Writing. In both classes, students critique peers’ work. The advanced class emphasizes workshop and individual conferences and allows students to specialize in fiction and poetry, or fiction and drama.