Stories (Appearing with permission of Writers & Guardians)

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     Second Place Short Story (Tied)

     "Finding Cris" by Madeline Kerr

 Thank you so much for reading my story. I am not Seneca or Indigenous but did do research prior to writing the story. As young children in school, we would learn about residential schools and forced adoptions and how much these things have affected the Indigenous community in Canada and forever altered our country's history. After reading a CBC article in 2021 about a young Inuit man who struggled with his identity and was very much affected by the Quebec government acknowledging Indigenous adoption practices by passing a new law that allowed children to maintain connections with their Indigenous birthparents, something that would have been very helpful in Cris' case, I was very affected. The fact that Indigenous peoples often experience such a low quality of services from the Canadian government is absolutely awful. I believe it's really important for stories about the environmental state in North America to feature Indigenous perspectives and while this story does feature Indigenous aspects I would never try to speak for indigenous people or their culture . Activists such as Autumn Peltier speak powerfully on the subject of our climate crisis. I urge anyone who reads this story to listen to all indigenous voices before my own work.  

Again, thank you for reading my story, 

Maddie

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/indigenous-adoption-quebec-recognition-1.4181941-Link to CBC article 

Second Place Short Story (Tied)

"Saplings" by Liam Lomax

Fourth Place Short Story

    "Drop Out, Turn on, Tune In" by Griffin Wicke

Fifth Place Short Story

"Prototype A44B" by Shayon Majumdar & Rufus Hand

Finalist

"First Day on the Job"

by Jonah Doherty

Finalist

"The Hat"

by Luisa-Fernanada Restrepo Bedoya

   Finalist

"Sarah Runs for Mayor"

by Liam Guthrie