1: We released our Winter 2014 Issue.
Featuring cover art by Alexander Zhang, and contributions from Lauren Berry, James Grinwis, Jacques J. Rancourt, Erin Entrada Kelly, and Matthew Wimberley, among other brilliant writers and artists.
2: Adroit represented four Finalists, three Honorable Mentions, eleven Merit Award recipients, and two United States Presidential Scholars in the Arts at the 2014 YoungArts Awards.
Special congratulations to journal-affiliated 2014 Presidential Scholars Alicia Lai (Writing – Poetry) and Amanda Prager (Cinematic Arts).
3: We had our Winter 2014 Release Reading at the University of Pennsylvania’s Kelly Writers House.
From left to right: Luisa Banchoff (Princeton, ’17), Alina Grabowski (Penn, ’16), Camara Brown (Penn, ’17), Peter LaBerge (Penn, ’17), Lydia Weintraub (Princeton, ’18), Richie Hofmann, and Emily Sheera Cutler (Penn, ’15).
And it’s been immortalized for your enjoyment! Featuring Penn and Princeton-affiliated staff members and contributors, as well as contributor & 2014 Adroit Prize for Poetry judge Richie Hofmann.
4: Adroit snagged thirteen national Scholastic Art & Writing Awards medalists, including Prose Reader Nathan Cummings: named the National Student Poet for the Western Region in 2013, and named one of eight Gold Medals for Writing Portfolio in 2014.
From left to right: 2013-2014 National Student Poets Aline Dolinh, Sojourner Ahebee, Nathan Cummings, Michaela Coplen, and Louis Lafair.
And Prose Reader Julia Falkner filled in as 2014-2015 National Student Poet for the West! Yeah, pretty cool.
5: Our 2014 Graduating Class of staff readers and editors graduated from high school, and went to college. (*Insert gif’s of proud parents*)
Oh, there they are. Hearty congratulations to the Class of 2014, who began in the fall at the following institutions: Columbia University, Georgetown University, Harvard University (2), Pomona College, Princeton University (2), Stanford University, University of Cambridge (UK), University of Chicago, University of Miami, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California, and Yale University (3).
6: Adroit Prize judges Richie Hofmann and Wendy Rawlings selected Nathan Durham (Kenyon College, ’17) and Isabel DeBre (Brown University, ’18) for the 2014 Adroit Prizes for Poetry and Prose respectively.
Read Nathan’s poem “Chevrolet” here, read Isabel’s story “Digging” here, and check out all other young writers recognized here!
7: We hosted the annual Adroit Journal Reading at the 2014 New York City Poetry Festival.
Featuring contributors Sam Ross and J. Scott Brownlee, and poetry readers Caleb Kaiser and Talin Tahajian. Missed it? Click here! (Shout-out to summer mentee Erica Lin for recording!)
8: We nominated contributors Amorak Huey and Jacques J. Rancourt for inclusion in Best New Poets 2014.
And Adroit-affiliated poets took the anthology (which was just released!) by storm. Congrats to Benjamin Goldberg, Richie Hofmann, Peter LaBerge, Jenny Molberg, Jacques J. Rancourt, Nicole Rollender, Talin Tahajian, Anna Rose Welch, and Phillip B. Williams, as well as all other inclusions! And thanks to anthology guest editor (and previous Adroit contributor) Dorianne Laux.
9: We released our Summer 2014 Issue.
Featuring cover art by Brian Oldham, and contributions from Terrance Hayes, Richie Hofmann, Jill McDonough, Michael Chaney, and Joe Wilkins, among other lovely writers and artists.
10: Z.Z. Boone’s “The Buddy System” and Elizabeth Martin’s “Too Small Yet” were named Notables for The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2014, edited by Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket).
And were joined on the 2014 Notables list by Managing Editor Alexa Derman’s “Variations on Ophelia,” originally published in Word Riot.
11: Adroit met the 2014 Foyle Young Poet of the Year Awards with three Overall Winners and four Commended Winners.
12: We supercharged our online blogosphere with tons of exhilarating and relevant youth-generated content.
Featuring elephants, Hollywood, feminism, The Voice, and UNIQLO. What more could you want to read about? (Okay, okay – that’s a rhetorical question. We’re writers, we get it.) Learn more about our blog pretties Amanda, Ariella, Derick, and Henry by clicking here.
13: Contributors Ellen Bass, Jennifer Givhan, and Brittany Cavallaro were named 2015 National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellows.
Congratulations to them, and quite well deserved! See the full list of recipients here.
14: We doubled the number of submissions received in the history of our little publication.
Remember when we said something along the lines of, “We hit 8,000 culumative submissions of art and writing!” around this time last year? Well, we just hit 16,000 submissions, so: thank you, thank you, THANK YOU to our loyal readers and submitters for sending us the best work ever. Keep doing it!
(Honorable Mention: A record shattering twelve Adroit-affiliated young writers were recognized as Finalists for the 2015 YoungArts Awards. Be sure to tune into the 2015 Writers Reading in a few weeks, and you’ll get a sneak peek of one of first entries for this list next year! Details here.)
All in all: a pretty solid year, no? Thank you, 2014, for all you’ve given each and every one of us – here’s to 2015!
