Wilmette Teen Wins Top Honor At Scholastic Art And Writing Awards

WILMETTE, IL — A graduating senior from North Shore Country Day School was awarded a Gold Medal Portfolio Award, the top honor at the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, along with a $10,000 scholarship.

Isabella "Izzy" Cho, who has committed to attend Harvard University in the fall, was one of eight gold medal winners in writing at the 97th edition of the national awards. Eight portfolio medals are also awarded in the visual arts, and all 16 gold medalists will receive cash scholarships.

Cho's gold medal-winning portfolio consisted of eight works, including poetry, a personal essay and a short story. She joins past winners of the nonprofit's prestigious writing awards, including Truman Capote, Lena Dunham, Stephen King and Joyce Carol Oates.

Cho, 18, of Wilmette, told Patch she has been submitting her writing to Scholastic since the seventh grade. Soon after starting high school at North Shore Country Day School in Winnetka, Cho became an editor with Polyphony Lit, an Evanston-based, student-run creative writing journal, where she is currently an executive editor.

During the summer of her sophomore year, Cho attended the summer residential program at the Iowa Young Writer's Studio.

"They separate you into pretty small seminars and you're able to workshop, discuss craft, have conversations with published authors," Cho said. "I feel like those sorts of more intimate, specialized spaces were very critical for my growth as a writer."

Cho also credited North Shore Country Day School's small class sizes, creative assignments and opportunities for critical thinking with developing her writing abilities.

"That, I think, promotes an environment of dialogue, of self-advocacy, of really exploring and talking about the material," she said. "Whether that be in a STEM or humanities-oriented class. So I think the unique class structure really helped me as a writer and also as a thinker."

In January, she took part in National YoungArts Week in Miami after she was named a finalist of YoungArts awards in writing. The event provided a chance to take master classes, connect with an alumni network and receive one-on-one advice about her work. She was subsequently named one of just two students in Illinois to be semifinalists to become U.S. Presidential Scholars for the Arts through the YoungArts program.

Cho said she she is not sure whether she is interested in writing professionally after university, although she said does plan on taking some creative writing classes at Harvard. She said she also plans to start submitting more work to literary journals rather than submitting applications for awards with deadlines.

"You can do it whenever you'd like. You can write a poem and then decide to submit it whenever. Even if it takes a long time, that's fine. You could just go at your own pace," she said. "So no matter what sort of profession I end of up committing to I definitely want to maintain my writing, and I think one of those ways is to keep submitting and to keep being in conversation with people who manage those sorts of journals."