Our Annual Scholarship Program furthers DWPC’s mission of engaging in educational effort, charity, and philanthropy. Many thanks to our Scholarship Chair Estelle Meskin for identifying these talented young people for this year’s awards of $2,500 each toward college tuition. Scholarship funds come from generous DWPC member donations, fundraising campaigns through Colorado Gives, and community grants. Special thanks to “100 Jews Who Care” for their generous grant this year.
National Scholastic Art and Writing Medalists – Awards to Colorado High School Writers
Isabelle Vigueria is a recent high school graduate from Monument, Colorado, who has loved writing since first grade. She enjoys writing plays, television scripts, and novels. One of her favorite projects was turning what was supposed to be a five-page assignment into a full three-act play. She also loves writing “group stories” with her best friend, a hobby that brought them together and has kept them close over the years. In her free time, she can be found either hunched over her laptop or in the driveway fixing her 1977 Chevy Camaro.
Throughout high school, Isabelle took every AP English and history class that was offered. She is a three-time varsity basketball player and graduated as valedictorian. She volunteers with the special needs ministry at her church and will attend the University of Wyoming this fall to study history with the goal of becoming a teacher. She believes stories have the power to bring people together, and she looks forward to continuing to grow as a writer through the Denver Woman’s Press Club.
India Johnson is an eighteen-year-old author from Westcliffe, Colorado. She began writing in elementary school as a coping mechanism for her OCD and health issues. Not only did writing serve as the key to her healing, but she discovered something life-changing: she loved story. At the age of twelve, she finished and published her first novel—The Rebels’ Daughter—which later received a Scholastic Gold Key. She is now the author of the award-winning Freedom Through Fire Saga, developmental editor and illustrator for the bestselling National Park Mystery Series, and editor, writer, and illustrator for the anthology Firefly Tales by the S.E. Collaborative Guild of Authors and Artists.
India Johnson is a recipient of a Scholastic Art and Writing Awards National Silver Medal, three Scholastic Regional Gold Keys, and numerous Regional Honorable Mentions. She plans to become a full-time author. Starting this fall, she will be attending Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee, to study Animation. She hopes to use her degree to become a freelance illustrator, bring her books to life through art, and write and illustrate her own graphic novels.
Ruth Murray Underhill Award:
Rosaline Nizam is a Bengali Transfeminine poet who writes poetry exploring the complexities of queer experience within the circumstances of Islamophobia and anti-queer sentiments being at the forefront of current politics. She approaches this tension with a poetics of vulnerable tellings and stressed conceits. Rosaline is the winner of the Charles G Weekes Scholarship from Queens College in New York, earning a magna cum laude English Degree. There, she was Editor of Utopia Parkway Journal, the student-run literary publication, and published “The Books of Rosaline” collection of her poetry. She is currently studying at the University of Colorado Boulder in pursuit of an MFA in Creative Writing, where she also teaches undergraduate English classes.