Rockville Centre teen wins NY Times, Scribe writing contests

A young writer at South Side High School earned high recognition for her work over the summer.

Sixteen-year-old Isabelle Lu, a junior, placed in the New York Times’ Seventh Annual Student Editorial Contest in the high school category for an essay she submitted about her appreciation for both modern, young adult fiction and classic literature. She also earned first place in the Scribe Writing Contest’s poetry category for a poem inspired by her family trips to China.

In the New York Times contest, Lu was one of nine winners out of more than 6,000 entries. In the Scribe Writing Contest, Lu came out on top out of hundreds of submissions from 17 countries spanning six continents.

“Being recognized pushed me to have faith in my own writing,” Lu said, “especially since there are so many teen writers out there, and I was reading their work while getting inspired.

“Actually having my own work recognized helps me believe that I can have the same potential,” she added, “and pursue getting published or entering contests with more confidence.”

Lu’s New York Times essay, “No Love of Milton If Not For Loving Frivolous Fiction,” which is published on nytimes.com, is about the value of reading YA novels. She argues that reading youth fiction is just as important as reading the classics.

“I had this friend who could only read classics because his dad would not let him read things for fun,” she explained. “I was really indignant about it —  I read a lot of silly things when I was younger.”

Now, Lu reads both classic literature and modern YA. Her favorite classic is “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” by Gabriel García Márquez, and her favorite YA novel is “The Princess Bride,” by William Goldman.

“There’s limitless potential for what can be found in reading,” Lu said. “I think, personally, reading helped me find empathy and a lot of important lessons when I was a child.”

Lu was pleased to have her essay recognized and published because it was a topic she’s so enthusiastic about, she said, and it gave her the opportunity to convey her passion to a wide audience and to fellow readers.

For the Scribe Writing Contest, Lu was given just two hours to complete a poem about longing. She drew inspiration for the poem from “imagery and scenes” from her summer trips to Yunnan, China, where her maternal family is from.

“It’s often difficult to start writing something and face the blank page,” she said, “but when they expressly tell you to do it in two hours, it allowed me to focus and make it complete.”

Lu is the editor of SSHS’s literary magazine, a club in which students discuss their creative writing throughout the school year and curate their best work, as well as submissions from staff and other students, to publish a literary magazine at the end of the year.

While Lu is not looking to write as a career, she said she knows it will always play a part in her life and be an important skill for any field she enters. She took away from her writing experiences that “if you have confidence in yourself,” she said, “you’re a lot more likely to achieve what you want.”