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Finalists
Amelia Webb-Harris Armeen Sheraz Asiyah Scott Camille Gasque Carl Knight Casimir Feehan Daniela Antunez Dionne Zellars Edea Kevin Elias Paragios Emilia Endy Evelin Caceres Gavin Tucker Honor Wilkes Jayla Boulware Jessica Belcher Jimmy Jiang Kamiya Boulware Katie Cruz Kaylin Epps Kennedy Evans Lanayia Jowers Leah Borntrager Lila McNabney Makaiyah Stewart Margaret Dalbey Miranda Hale Naomi Hairston Navay Lee Olivia Sentementes Olivia Wesby Rhyan Carr Sophia Reinhart Tayshawn Payton Vivian Klepper Xavier Ames Zahara Shuler Zion Haynes Zulema Martorella Evelin Caceres Best Narration Armeen Sheraz Text Narration Best Essay Involving Translation Evelin Caceres Wunderkind Passport Award Camiya Smith Erin Bell Justin Rivas-Mejia  If he were still with us, this year the writer and activist James Baldwin would be 100 years old. Rarely does anyone’s legacy age so well. Decades after his death, his work still has a precision and intimacy that all but summon him, his humor, his passion, and intellect into the room. It is why filmmaker Raoul Peck could make an Oscar-nominated documentary, “I Am Not Your Negro” (2017), using Baldwin’s words. After “Moonlight” (2016) won the Academy Award for Best Picture, director Barry Jenkins could have done just about anything. But he used that cachet to adapt Baldwin’s novel “If Beale Street Could Talk.”
Baldwin still talks to us--in print, on film, his face and quotes on t-shirts and posters--about how to be humane and how to come to terms with how much we need one another. He is saintly. I was once gifted a candle with his image, a yellow-orange sun burning around his head, from the Unemployed Philosopher Guild’s Secular Saint Candle line. People don’t just want to read him but in challenging times wish that they--and others--could emulate Baldwin. That impetus inspired, for example, “Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own” (Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., 2020). Baldwin is passion without sentimentality. Intellectual clarity without cruelty. Love that embraces the full ugly-beautiful breadth of human experience. He speaks to people and the practices and institutions we create that can destroy us. He was Black and queer when both things could be even deadlier than they are today. And he gave voice to all of it. How do we honor such a figure? Baldwin calls us to listen to, confront, and comfort the broken places within us and help others to do the same. It is interior, deeply personal work that shows up in how we show up, that changes everything with which we come into contact, and whose greatest proof is in how we interact. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke from a mountaintop. He had to shock an entire nation and its guilty, dead forefathers into action. Baldwin is eloquent but always conversational, personal, his essays the finest letters one could ever receive for an audience of exactly one person: you. To read him is to undergo open-heart surgery one paragraph at a time. Here are ideas for honoring James Baldwin this year. Read something by Baldwin and share it. I especially love his “Collected Essays,” edited by Toni Morrison. Open to any page. You can’t go wrong. Have a Baldwinesque conversation with someone you love--or with a total stranger. The Baldwin Prize is a scholarship and essay competition that asks high school students to listen and reflect the way Baldwin did. But you don’t have to participate in the competition to have an eye-opening exchange. Use this year’s Baldwin Prize prompt to spark a deeper conversation with someone you love, admire, or just want to get to know better. Ask your elected officials to pass a proclamation in Baldwin’s honor. Sample language for such a proclamation is here and below. You can find your US elected officials at every level of government here. We hereby recognize 2024 as the James Baldwin Centennial in honor of James Arthur Baldwin, American writer and civil rights advocate born on August 2, 1924. We honor Baldwin, who in his work and in his life asked America and its people to live out their finest ideals. We honor Baldwin because he helped Black people, queer people, the marginalized, the ignored, the lonely, those who needed to be seen and see in that reflection love: He helped everyone. We honor Baldwin because there are few better examples of citizenship, of neighborliness, of humanity demanding and inspiring full expression. We are better because of his example. Ask the organizations with which you are affiliated to share a statement honoring Baldwin, e.g., on their website or social media. They can also start with the language above and add to or modify it as needed. Suggestions are here. And spread the word using the hashtag #Baldwin100. 2024 is a busy, cacophonous year. Reflecting on Baldwin can help. Photo credit: Allan Warren. CC BY-SA 3.0. The language below is provided to inspire government proclamations (state, local, and higher) and messages of recognition from a range of organizations, e.g., educational institutions, cultural organizations, and civil rights groups. These can be anywhere: online, on social media, and in print. Every organization making a positive contribution to civic life can recognize some of what it hopes to achieve in James Baldwin and is, indeed, arguably already part of his legacy. The text below is an example. Add to it or modify as necessary. E.g., organizations may want to add the name of their organization to the statement.
We hereby recognize 2024 as the James Baldwin Centennial in honor of James Arthur Baldwin, American writer and civil rights advocate born on August 2, 1924. We honor Baldwin, who in his work and in his life asked America and its people to live out their finest ideals. We honor Baldwin because he helped Black people, queer people, the marginalized, the ignored, the lonely, those who needed to be seen and see in that reflection love: He helped everyone. We honor Baldwin because there are few better examples of citizenship, of neighborliness, of humanity demanding and inspiring full expression. We are better because of his example.  The Baldwin Prize is an essay competition at Baltimore City College High School. Named after the writer and humanitarian James Baldwin, the Prize gives City College students an opportunity, during a pivotal stage of their development, to use the written word to explore their inner lives and how it connects with our shared humanity. In 2024, students will earn more than $3,000 in awards.
We are set to have 400 student writers this year, so we need your help. There are two volunteer opportunities. You can register here and read more details below. 1. Read and score essays Readers (AKA judges) just need a willingness to read student writing and a bit of time. Each judge will be given no more than 6 essays on Saturday, March 30, 2024 and asked to submit scores (according to a rubric that will be provided) by Monday, April 8, 2024. If you're curious, you'll find this year's prompt here. It's about some of the influences that have had a deep impact on how we think or feel. 2. Be a writing consultant Writing consultants should have some experience writing or editing work for publication. The type of publication and amount of writing or editing experience is not important. Writing consultants just need to be able to listen to students talk about the progress they've made on the current draft of their story and lead a group conversation (consisting of up to three students and one consultant) on things each young writer may want to consider as he or she revises the piece ahead of the submission deadline. Consultations will take place on Friday, February 22 and 23, 2024 from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Eastern Time. You can volunteer for as little as one hour online (via Zoom) or in person (at Baltimore City College High School). To volunteer, please complete this short form. More information about the Baldwin Prize: - Learn all about the Prize and what students say about it in this short video. - The Baldwin Prize blog has pictures and information from previous events as well as winning student essays. - And we have a newsletter. You can sign up for it here.  “I tend to say,” Matt Story begins when describing himself, “I'm a Midwest-born mama's boy, who moved to California, and met my wife, who's an entrepreneur. I'm a girl-dad podcast host. I'm a curious marketer.” Matt Story is many things, including vice president for global brand partnerships and advocacy at Visa and host of the What’s Your Story podcast. He brings to all of these roles a combination of kindness and curiosity that helps people convey the best of what they know about a range of subjects and positions them to see Matt’s well honed point of view. Not long after Baldwin Prize founder Lionel Foster joined Matt for an episode of What’s Your Story, Lionel knew he wanted to turn the tables and hear more from a master communicator for whom storytelling is actually part of his name. They talked about the many things empathetic listening have unlocked for Matt, personally and professionally.
Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity. After I appeared on your podcast, I realized you’ve made a profound practice of listening to other people. You extend your platform to others and learn cooperatively through conversation. Skilled listening is, I think, core to how James Baldwin operated and definitely central to what we try to encourage through the Baldwin Prize. So I wanted Baldwin Prize students to hear about you and that practice. I think you're spot on. I also think there are pillars to what you just described. For example, asking questions—that’s both a skillset and an art. Let me unpack it this way. I think a superpower everybody can tap into is consistency. No matter what you do, if you're consistent, you will see results. I think we sometimes can view it as, “Oh, I need to be the most well written, or I need to be the greatest artist or the greatest speaker.” But the only way you get to that level is through consistency. The more you do it, the more you get to that elite status. I would just offer one tiny tweak there. I think consistency with thoughtfulness can yield great results, because it is possible to consistently do the wrong things. Yes, I agree. That’s a great addition. It’s consistency with focus and intentionality. The second piece is curiosity. I'm just a curious person. I always say, “Tell me why you did this” or “What happened when you did that?” I see it as a type of life hack, because I can ask you, “What was going to Johns Hopkins like?” And I can actually learn from your experience on that campus even if I’ve never been there. I've seen that most people that tend to be both successful but also flexible tend to have that curiosity. The last piece is being a creator, not in the trendy sense of going on TikTok and making dance videos. But building, creating, making something puts you in the act of action, which I think we just all benefit from. So the podcast is a thing I create. I have to find the right interviewee, talk to him or her, edit the conversation, do all those things. I'm always in the activity of building, and that also is one way that I learn. I love those pillars. You just gave a master lesson on craft. How did you become the person who operates that way, who brings that kind of consistency and curiosity to everything? This may sound extreme, but trauma and the things that we struggled through tend to be what yield our abilities. I was originally born in Detroit. Then we moved to Indiana when I was going into third grade. So there was a transition of going from a place where my community looked like me to a place where I was one of the few who looked like me. Because I physically stood out, I did whatever was possible to try to fit in. I portrayed what I saw or what I thought would allow me to fit in. During my entry into the workforce I did the same thing. I looked around and thought, “Who's the most successful person in the room? Act like him.” And that tended to be a white male. What I found was that I could actually get pretty good at that, but I realized if I continued to do that, I would never operate at my ultimate capabilities. My first opportunity to move into what I would say was a jumping-off point for what I was supposed to do was joining an agency that helped companies figure out how to get into video games as an advertising platform. I was going into such a non-traditional place that it gave me the space to show up as my authentic self. I also was surrounded by the most diverse group of people that I'd ever worked with. I actually knew about that stuff because I was playing video games, and I was buying sneakers on the weekend. It allowed me to not separate who the Saturday Matt was from the Monday Matt. And that set me apart—this time in a good way. You are a master communicator. Could you talk a bit about some of the non-obvious ways in which your ability to speak with people and/or write have been beneficial? It's funny, because growing up, my least favorite subjects were English and literature. Some of that was self-fulfilling, because I told myself I wasn't a writer or good at reading, and I pushed into math and the sciences. Throughout my entire university experience, I might have taken one or two literature courses. What I found as I got older is when it comes to digesting and consuming information, reading is the easiest way to learn from someone that you may never meet. And whether it's fiction or nonfiction, being able to go into a world where you can immerse yourself, take information, and store it is immensely valuable. As an engineer, the way my brain works is by connecting dots. I used to write computer code. I transitioned that into becoming a marketer where I'm looking at behaviors and determining how I can influence those behaviors. I need information. I need contextual cues about what's happening in the world. I have to be able to communicate the idea and the opportunity. One of my superpowers is being able to take very complex things and simplify them. To me, that's effective communication. That could be the spoken word, the written word, even emojis. The real question is: How do you connect with another person in a way that can help them understand the topic? One thing I try to get across to the high school students I work with is that they have no appreciation for how much older people really want to help them, how invested we are in their success even if we've never met them. You speak with and help a lot of younger people. Why do you care, and what do you want to convey? We are the future ancestors. Thinking about James Baldwin and many other luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance and other moments--the investments they made in their community, which we, you and I, are benefiting from. It is my responsibility to make an investment. There’s a phrase: I'm planting seeds that will grow into trees that I'll never see the shade of. To me, that's the responsibility we have, because we're standing on the shoulders of those ancestors. The only thing we can do is pay it forward and help someone do something faster, bigger, broader, more easily than we did. I tell young people I can only help them, if they know what they need help with. Being able to vocalize where you want to go and what you want to do, that's how you unlock that help. Finalists
Adriana John Amadi McIntyre Amelia Post Annabel Fogleman Ariana Calderon Autumn Scott-Rice Aylin Cerezo-Mendoza Campbell Anderson Charlie Martin Charlotte Subelsky Chi'lynn Carroll Henry Ratnow Isioma Ideh Jaidyn Smith John MacGillis Julia Sanchez Julian Traut Justice Gaines Naomi Boldon Naviah Meyers Patricia Francis Ripley Wilson Ty Neveah Waverly Johnson Zharia Dixon Zoe Johnson Zoey Tull Judge's Special Award Ahmed Nejjari Allison Vongsaly Amani Brunson Amber Brawner Daron Trent Desire Dutton Mason Nowicki Stanley Richardson Travis Winstead Victoria Osunkunle Narration Colin Muher Text Narration Best Essay Involving Translation Ariana Calderon Wunderkinder Passport Award Travis Pennington Travel Award Ky'Mera Pauling Iche'la Carter  Request a time here. Donate here.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Baldwin Prize is an essay competition at Baltimore City College High School. Named after the writer and humanitarian James Baldwin, the Prize helps City College students use the written word to explore their inner lives and how it connects with our shared humanity. Participating students will receive $9,000 in awards this year. Baldwin Prize founder Lionel Foster lives in Washington, DC. If you need your lawn mowed in Brookland and surrounding parts of northeast DC (Brookland, Brentwood, Langdon, Edgewood, and Eckington), let the Baldwin Prize take care of it. Pricing is highly competitive and depends on the size of the jobs. All funds will go directly to the Baldwin Prize, and donations are tax-deductible. Sign up for a slot here or contact Lionel at lionel_foster@hotmail.com.  The Baldwin Prize is an essay competition at Baltimore City College High School. Named after the writer and humanitarian James Baldwin, the Prize gives City College students an opportunity, during a pivotal stage of their development, to use the written word to explore their inner lives and how it connects with our shared humanity. In 2023, students will earn more than $3,000 in awards.
We are set to have 400 student writers this year, so we need your help. There are two volunteer opportunities. You can register here and read more details below. 1. Read and score essays Readers (AKA judges) just need a willingness to read student writing and a bit of time. Each judge will be given no more than 6 essays on Saturday, March 25, 2023 and asked to submit scores (according to a rubric that will be provided) by Monday, April 3, 2023. If you're curious, you'll find this year's prompt here. It's about the biggest life lessons we would recommend for ourselves and others. 2. Be a writing consultant Writing consultants should have some experience writing or editing work for publication. The type of publication and amount of writing or editing experience is not important. Writing consultants just need to be able to listen to students talk about the progress they've made on the current draft of their story and lead a group conversation (consisting of up to three students and one consultant) on things each young writer may want to consider as he or she revises the piece ahead of the submission deadline. Consultations will take place on Friday, February 24, 2023 from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Eastern Time. You can volunteer for as little as one hour online (via Zoom) or in person (at Baltimore City College High School). To volunteer, please complete this short form. More information about the Baldwin Prize: - Learn all about the Prize and what students say about it in this short video. - The Baldwin Prize blog has pictures and information from previous events as well as winning student essays. - And we have a newsletter. You can sign up for it here. |
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