Georgia High School Senior Wins Narrative Magazine’s ‘Tell Me A Story’ Writing Competition

Narrative magazine publishes works by established and emerging writers. Their annual Tell Me A Story high school writing competition is usually an essay contest, but this year was open to poetry submissions. Westminster senior Sarah Lao was this year’s first prize winner with her poem “Triptych.” Lao was also the 2020 Teen Georgia Poet Laureate.

Salvadoran poet and former Narrative prize-winner Javier Zamora worked with each of the contest finalists when revising their works.  “Javier is just so brilliant. When we were talking about my work, he let me first ask questions I had about this poem and where I should revise it. Surprisingly, we had very different questions and concerns about this poem. And I think that’s largely because I spent a very long time on this poem and Javier really helped me hone into what might have been a weaker part and how to fix that,” said Lao. She continued, “I also really loved talking to him about poetry and the life of a poet in general. It’s very rare to get the chance to hear about the industry part of being a poet.”

Her piece will be published in Narrative magazine and it will be featured on their podcast “Narrative Outloud.”