Smithtown East HS Senior Earns Scholastic Honors

SMITHTOWN, NY — Alexis Yang, a senior at Smithtown High School East, won a national gold medal in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards in the short story category for her piece "Austin," the Smithtown Central School District announced in a news release.

More than 110,000 students submitted nearly 320,000 works of art and writing to the 2020 Scholastic Awards. Yang’s story was selected by some of the foremost leaders in the visual and literary arts for excellence in originality, technical skill and the emergence of a personal voice or vision. Only 3,000 works received a national medal, landing her work in the top 1 percent of all submissions.

Being the editor of Smithtown High School East’s literary magazine, "Solstice," last summer allowed Yang to indulge her passion for poetry with an internship at the Walt Whitman Birthplace and Historic Site in Huntington. Additionally, she was named a 2020 National YoungArts Foundation Merit Winner in writing/short story by the National YoungArts Foundation. Her work was published in Canvas Teen Literary Journal’s fall 2019 issue.

Yang will be attending Binghamton University in the fall. While she has not yet declared a major, she intends to pursue further studies in the field of English.