Two Warsaw Community High School students have been selected to be honored at New York City’s Carnegie Hall in May for their awards in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Both Megan Smith and Josiah Brace won a gold medal at the competition – Brace for painting and Smith for ceramics. Smith also received a silver medal for her art portfolio.

A total of 19 students from Northern Indiana and Southwest Michigan were awarded national medals by a panel of judges during the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, which is the country’s longest-running and most prestigious award and recognition program for creative students in grades 7-12. The students all submitted their work to the competition through the South Bend Museum of Art.

More than 1,800 of the most talented and ambitious students, representing 47 U.S. states, as well as students in Washington, D.C., and American schools abroad, were chosen to receive national medals. Students’ works were blindly adjudicated, first locally through more than 100 affiliates of the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, the presenting nonprofit of the Awards, and then nationally by panels of judges comprised of renowned artists, authors, educators, and arts professionals.

This year’s list of distinguished jurors included Andres Serrano (artist), Edwidge Danticat (writer), Michael Raisler (producer), Kay WalkingStick (artist), Jane Cohan (gallery owner), David Krasnow (“Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen”), Alison Elizabeth Taylor (artist) and Stephen Savage (illustrator). More than 255,000 submissions were received in 28 categories, including flash fiction, comic art, poetry, jewelry, science fiction and fantasy, sculpture, novel writing, video game design and a special category called “future new.”

For 91 years, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards have fostered the creativity and talent of millions of students through recognition, exhibitions, publications and scholarships. Alumni of the Scholastic Awards have gone on to continue their education at many of the top colleges and universities across the country.

Since its founding, the awards program has identified the early promise of some of our nation’s most exceptional visionaries, including alumni such as Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, Richard Avedon, Philip Pearlstein, Sylvia Plath and John Updike, all of whom won when they were teens. More recently, Stephen King, Myla Goldberg, Zac Posen and Lena Dunham have become celebrated alumni of the program.