We couldn’t be more excited to share that mentorship alums Aidan Forster (of Greenville, S.C.), Jacqueline He (of San Jose, Calif.), and Alisha Yi (of Las Vegas, N.V.) are this year’s three U.S. Presidential Scholars in the Arts for the Writing discipline, in the genres of Creative Nonfiction, Short Story, and Poetry respectively.
Aidan Forster
Aidan Forster is a high school senior in the creative writing program at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities in Greenville, South Carolina. His work has been honored by the National YoungArts Foundation, the National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Awards, and the Poetry Society of America, among others. His work appears in or is forthcoming from Best New Poets 2017, BOAAT, Columbia Poetry Review, Indiana Review, Pleiades, and Tin House, among others. Aidan will be a freshman at Brown University in the fall, and his debut chapbook of poems, Exit Pastoral, is forthcoming from YesYes Books.
Aidan has a long and rich history with The Adroit Journal. After his freshman year of high school, Aidan participated in the Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program for high school writers, during which he studied poetry with poet Cody Ernst. Aidan then joined our staff as a Blog Editor, where he led the execution of our interviews, reviews, op-ed’s, and other forms of blog content. Aidan then traded in his editor hat for his contributor hat, landing on the editor’s list for the Adroit Prize for Poetry in 2016, being named both the runner-up for the 2017 Adroit Prize for Prose and a finalist for the 2017 Adroit Prize for Poetry, and being named a finalist for the 2018 Gregory Djanikian Scholars Program. This summer, Aidan will serve as a poetry mentor in the 2018 Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program.
Jacqueline He
Jacqueline He is a high school senior and writer from San Jose, California. Her work has been recognized by the National YoungArts Foundation, Bennington College, Princeton University, Columbia College Chicago, John Hopkins University, the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, the Claremont Review, Gigantic Sequins, and Radar Poetry. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Jackie studied fiction with Dana Diehl in the 2017 Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program, after being named a semifinalist for the 2017 Adroit Prize for Poetry. She will be the Prose Summer Assistant for this year’s summer mentorship program, and will be a freshman at Princeton University in the fall.
You can click here to read a wonderful suite of poems by Jackie published in Radar Poetry.
Alisha Yi
Alisha Yi is a rising senior at Ed. W Clark High School in Las Vegas, Nevada. She has been recognized by the National YoungArts Foundation, National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, Princeton University, and Hollins University, among others. She has work in or forthcoming from Slice Magazine, the Miami Rail, Hermeneutic Chaos, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and elsewhere. When she isn’t writing, she is running free in desert lands.
Alisha studied poetry with Cody Ernst in our 2016 Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program, and was a finalist for the 2017 Adroit Prize for Poetry, selected by Safiya Sinclair. She will be a freshman at Harvard University in the fall.
* * *
Congratulations to all students recognized by the U.S. Presidential Scholars Program! The 2018 ceremony will be held June 24th, when each honoree will receive a Presidential Scholar Medallion.
