Congratulations to Zaid Shircliff, Class of 2029, on winning Third Place in the Spencertown Academy Arts Center 2026 Young Writers’ Contest!
THIRD PLACE: Zaid Shircliff, 9th Grade, Berkshire Waldorf School
In this first-person narrative, the writer draws from current events in the Middle East to intimately portray the occupation’s brutal impact – in particular, how it thrusts the children into adult circumstances. We meet a young Palestinian boy, Ahmed, one evening when he recognizes that he must secretly make the harrowing trip to a new aid truck to help his desperate family. As Ahmed fearfully sneaks out a window with his emptied backpack, the author’s adept use of imagery and pacing brings us into the shadowy world of terror facing our too-young hero, Though this is a work of fiction, we commend the author on creating a work with strong emotional truth.