By KLAS STOLPE
Sentinel Staff Writer
Blatchley Middle School seventh-grader Emily Hill has received a national honor for her writing skills.
The 13-year-old has received the Gold Key award in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards of 2019 and The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers for her story “Oblivion.”
“I feel pretty amazed and happy,” Emily said. “I wasn’t sure if my writing would make it that far, and when I got the Gold Key certificate I saw some other people who had gotten it and they were mostly high schoolers, so I felt pretty proud.”
Hill was presented with her Gold Key Award at Wednesday’s School Board meeting at the ANB Founders Hall.
The story is about a young orphan girl named Elvina.
“She lived in different foster homes until she found her forever home with this older woman and the woman’s granddaughter, Sophia,” Hill said.
Emily Hill (Sentinel Photo)
The two girls were the same age and grew close. A time jump in the story has 23-year-old Elvina living in London when she learns of her adopted mother Eleanor’s death. Elvina moves back to live with Sophia and they are involved in a car crash.
“Not everyone makes it out alive,” Hill said. “They were in the car together and Sophia did not survive.”
The story ends with Elvina waking up from a coma to the news.
“I kind of mostly made it up as I went along,” she said. “When I got to the darker part I decided to just end it there because I have read lots of books where it is just all happy endings. That always didn’t seem super realistic to me. I wanted to make something with a darker ending. Things I have written before did not end like that, so this was interesting for me.”
Hill was accompanied by Blatchley language arts teacher Emily Demmert at the award presentation Wednesday night.
“This is a national contest” Demmert said. “In the whole western region she, among a few other students, was chosen to have her work forwarded to New York to be judged for a national award.”
The distinction of having her work forwarded to the national competition earned Emily the Gold Key award and an invitation to apply to a special summer writing camp.
“I think we are going to see a lot more good writing from Ms. Hill,” Demmert said.
School Board president Jennifer McNichol also presented Hill with a Certificate of Achievement from the board.
“This is one of our favorite parts of all of our meetings,” McNichol said.
Hill said she has been writing as long as she can remember.
“I made up stories and told them a lot when I was younger,” she said. “When I was 10 I tried to write stories on the family computer. I made little stories up and told them to my friends and family since I have been growing up.”
Middle school has focused her writing more on topics so she was excited to write her “crazy wonderful kind of creative story.”
“I do write with paper and pencil,” she said. “I’m a pretty fast typer so I like typing when I can, but I do also write the old-fashioned way.”
Hill said writing has always been a hobby she enjoys and had no advice for aspiring writers.
“I didn’t think my writing was super amazing at first,” she said. “So I don’t know.”
Emily is the daughter of Kathleen and Jon Hill.
