When three of Summer Lee’s stories were recently honored regionally by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards – including two Gold Keys, a Silver Key, and a nomination for the American Voices Medal – the Oak Grove High School freshman took the recognition as an incredible honor and the beginning of a bright future.
That feat would have been impressive enough on its own, but Lee – who first started applying for those awards in seventh grade – has advanced to national recognition for her work, with her story MEMORABILIA winning the American Voices Medal and the Gold Medal, while her story A Common Anguish won and the Silver Medal. For those accomplishments, Lee will be honored with a ceremony in June at Carnegie Hall in New York City, where she will be one of only 16 students in the country to receive the Gold Medal.
“I’m astonished,” said Lee, whose grandfather, Jerry Shepherd, was co-owner of Main Street Books in Hattiesburg. “When I found out, I said, ‘oh yeah, they’re going to announce the awards,’ and I asked my mom if I could go check it. I couldn’t even speak – I just gave my mom the computer.”
The American Voices Medal, the Gold Medal and the Silver Medal will be presented to Lee during her three-day trip to New York, where she and other attendees will take part in various other events in addition to the awards ceremony.
“They have a prom that is just for students who won, and a lot of the artists are encouraged to make their own outfits and things like that,” Lee said. “So we can all truly celebrate each other and our achievements, and there will be lectures by famous authors. And there will be an exhibition of our writings before the actual ceremony.”
MEMORABILIA, which won a Gold Key in addition to the American Voices Medal and the Gold Medal, tells the story of the connection between Lee and her father, who died when Lee was 8 years old. Of all the awards Lee has earned, the American Voices Medal is perhaps the one she’s most proud of.
“I was up against four other people, three of whom were seniors and two of whom attended the Mississippi School of the Arts,” she said. “What the award means is that I was who they think best represents the writing that Mississippi has to offer from this generation.
“We are a land of stories – if there’s one thing that Mississippi is prestigious for, it’s our authors. So to be chosen and honored in such a way, for people to say they think this represents the best writing that Mississippi has to offer – it’s incredible.”
A Common Anguish, which was awarded the Gold Key and the Silver Medal, recounts an imaginary encounter between Lee and Harper Lee, the famous author of To Kill a Mockingbird.
“It’s more blurring the lines for me,” Lee said. “The last book that Poppa (Shepherd) ever gave to me was To Kill a Mockingbird.
“I started reading it, and I read more about Harper Lee, and I saw a lot of similarities between herself and me. I felt this kind of connection, so I wrote about me interviewing her and telling her about my Poppa.”
The Silver Key was awarded for Lee’s fantasy story Honeysuckle Heaven.
“It’s about an angel who is forbidden to really feel emotion, but falls in love with another angel and is cast from heaven,” Lee said. “They spend their entire life trying to find this other angel whom they love.
“They become musicians and they go to a rehearsal that’s a jam session they put together with random musicians, and they find the person they’ve been looking for this entire time.”
Of the 320,000 submissions of writing and arts that were submitted for the awards, only 3,000 were considered for national recognition.
Along with a full scholarship to Millsaps College, which came with the Gold Key, Lee is also in the running for a $300,000 scholarship during her trip to New York.
“Even if I don’t receive this direct scholarship, I know for a fact that having gotten this award at all immediately puts me in the running for other scholarship opportunities,” Lee said. “It’s a prestigious award, and I can hardly wrap my head around it.”
In addition to her recognitions from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, which are presented by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, Lee also scored a 1280 on the PSAT, earning invitations to tour Rice University, Brown University and Stanford University.
She also plans to participate in the Envision and Stanford Law School Intensive Law & Trial program, allows students to essentially job shadow professors from Stanford Law School to gain hands-on experience in the law field.
The program gives participants the opportunity to learn about the legal system by putting on trials and helping attorneys with their court cases, which will help Lee in her future endeavors to become a public interest lawyer.
Lee is currently enrolled online at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is taking Introduction to American Law.
“I’m really excited to be able to experience what it’s like in an actual courtroom, especially because one of the scariest things about going into college is, what if I end up not liking what I’ve chosen?” Lee said. “But to have this before-hand experience is really helpful.”
