College best friends, separated after a conflict; a chance encounter in a New York city market and a second chance at friendship 20 years later — that was the premise for sophomore Anushka Gaur’s Gold Key-winning scholastic writing submission. It captures the importance of deep friendships, where people will inevitably fight but get back together every time.
Gaur, among 18 other SHS students, won 2025 Region-At-Large West Writing Awards on Jan. 29, after submitting to the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards in December. The 2025 winners in each category are:
- Gold Key: freshmen Fiona Liu and Makela Shen, sophomore Gaur, junior Jane Lee and senior Madisron Kerner
- Silver Key: freshmen Liu and Joelle Luo; juniors Anthony Luo, Celina Ren, Anagha Vitaldevara and Ruiyan Zhu; senior Zijing Zhang
- Honorable Mention: freshman Joelle; sophomores Muyi Chen and Gaur; juniors Ava Cai, Amelia Chang, Kathy Chen, Willis Chung, Lee, Ren, Tiffany Sun and Nolan Woo; seniors Aneri Shah and Zhang
Gaur wrote her short story “Shadow Market” last summer, while she attended a summer camp in New York.
“I was trying to make friends at the camp, so I thought: ‘What if I write something about friendship?’” Gaur said. “I was roaming around the city, seeing small details and taking it as inspiration for the setting. I do that a lot with my writing — just looking at my surroundings and drawing inspiration.”
Liu took a different approach for her Gold Key-winning short story “Money Problems,” illustrating the story of a Chinese immigrant through a series of math problems. The story is set as a 15-question, 3-hour examination, where each problem depicts a scenario from the immigrant girl’s life.
“I was doing a lot of math problems at the time, so I wanted to create a story based off of these problems,” Liu said. “I wanted a more creative way to tell a story. Anyone can write a story, but I like the ones where you can tell that story through a different format.”
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Liu and her friends would call over Zoom to write, ultimately authoring over 200 pages of comedic stories and other content. Now, she writes by jotting something down every time something inspires her and fleshing it out into a full piece within the next few weeks.
In addition to short stories, Liu also submitted several pieces of poetry to the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. Her contrapuntal poem, “Snapshots of Two Intersecting Lies,” received a Gold Key, while her own favorite poem, “We’re Sitting on Car Hoods at Starbucks,” received a Silver Key. The latter was inspired by her experience in the school’s Speech and Debate program.
“In Speech and Debate, we do a lot of critical stuff about how America is imperialist,” Liu said. “So, I wrote this poem to link corporations to the effects they have world-wide, kind of like how America uses these corporations to sort of colonize the rest of the world. I also wanted to incorporate some of the other bad things happening in America right now, like school shootings.”
Many students also submitted artworks to the Scholastic Awards and, and the winners in each category are:
- Gold Key: sophomore Claire Jung, junior Ren and senior Zozan Liao
- Silver Key: freshman Ananyasri Kannan; sophomore Jung; juniors Bryan Zhao, Ren, Daniel Yu and Rebecca Wang and seniors Caitlin Lee, Liao and Neel Reddy
- Honorable Mention: sophomores Alicia Huang and Clara Choi; juniors Younseo Cho, Jena Lew, Amy Miao, Ren and Yu and seniors Diya Kapoor, Liao and Reddy
Jung received a Gold Key for her pen illustration, “Cultural Apostrophe,” which portrays run-down buildings being overcome by wildlife. Trees and mushrooms cover the buildings, and on them lay moths, iguanas, and many other animals.
Although Jung took art classes during elementary school, she quit during middle school and didn’t start drawing again until last year.
“I started doing art again because I liked how there is no right or wrong, and that’s part of the creative aspect,” Jung said. “Everyone can look at an apple and think to color it red. But, an artist could want to color it like blue with a bunch of flowers growing out of it, or add butterflies in the background. It all depends on the message you want to convey.”
“Cultural Apostrophe” was the first pen drawing that Jung attempted, and it took her nine hours over several art classes to complete the artwork. Since it was her first time, she spent time experimenting techniques and ways of shading. She also collaged different texture photos from Pinterest to create a cohesive background.
According to Jung, the name of the piece represents the feeling of wanting to carry on your culture while also paving your own path. In “Cultural Apostrophe,” a side profile of a masked girl breaks away from the buildings and nature, looking toward the left side of the page.
“It’s a piece about all the changes in our lives,” Jung said. “The mask represents the huge impact that the pandemic also has made on us high school students and our culture growing up. It’s about how we keep parts of our culture but also make our own.”
