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THE BALDWIN PRIZE

featured author at 2021 awards ceremony

3/19/2021

The special guest at this year's Baldwin Prize awards ceremony will be Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., chair of the department of African American studies at Princeton University and author of Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Lessons for Our Own.

An interview about his newest book will open the ceremony. Few people could speak more incisively about what Baldwin's legacy means today to students who are actively furthering that legacy. That he accepted the invitation so quickly speaks to their great work.

Please join us Friday, April 23 from 3 to 4 p.m. Eastern Time online. You can register via Eventbrite. Login details will be emailed to registrants before the event.

We look forward to celebrating with you.

Baldwin Prize 2021 call for volunteers

1/24/2021

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 2021, students will earn more than $2,000 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 Sunday, March 28, 2021 and asked to submit scores (according to a rubric that will be provided) by Tuesday, April 6, 2021.

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 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 Wednesday, February 24 and Wednesday, March 3, 2021 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. via Zoom. You can volunteer for as little as one hour.

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.

2021 Baldwin Prize instructions for students

1/22/2021

CLARA GILLERAN: FIRST PLACE, 9TH GRADE

4/14/2020

“I will be your mother”. Those were the words that my grandmother heard when she was at her worst, the words that guided her and saved her from falling into darkness. The words that will be forever burned into her mind as a symbol of the deepest love and compassion she ever received.

My grandmother, Loretta, grew up in Brooklyn, New York, with her sister, Francis, and her two loving parents, Dorothy and Arthur. Her mother cherished and cared for her, wishing her goodbye as she headed off to school each day. When my grandmother would walk in the door coming home she could always smell the savory scent of her mother's cooking, wafting through the house, a symbol of her mother's undying love. One day, when Loretta returned home from school, her mother was not there. She found out later that her mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and was in the hospital for testing. As time passed, she gradually got better, but suddenly began to convalesce and became extremely sick again. My grandmother, in her disoriented teenage brain, decided that she needed to be prepared for when her mother passed away, and needed to learn how to live without a mother. She wanted to be able to shove her feelings away when they came, to not fall apart when her mother died, so she began to train herself to live independently. Little did she know that independence was not as easy to obtain as she thought, and when the moment came, this death would alter her entire course of life.

One morning, my grandmother was home alone with her mother, and suddenly her
mother began to shake, clenching her heart. She tossed and turned, gasping for breath in her pain. Sirens shrieked around my grandmother, and the flashing blue and red lights were blurred by her tears. She watched doctors surround her mother under the neon glow of the fluorescent lights. Laying on a hospital bed, her mother's eyes slowly slid open. The heart attack had stopped, and my grandmother's mother began to heal. Her breathing steadied, and her bloodshot eyes slowly curled open and closed. After being tested and deemed alright, her mother was sent home. In the evening, though, it began again. It happened so fast that no one could help her. My grandmother watched it happen, frozen in place. She saw her mother die, and could not stop it. Tears streaming from her bloodshot eyes, she slowly picked up the phone and listened to it ring. Her father and sister soon crashed through the door, frantically shouting and sobbing. Her father hurried upstairs to the bedroom, his loud footsteps booming on the hardwood ground, and yelled: “zi iz toyt, zi iz toyt!”, which means “she’s dead, she’s dead!” in Yiddish. Everyone was devastated. Dorothy had been such a bright soul, and she was taken
from the earth far too soon.

My grandmother’s father was miserable, but he knew that his children mattered more than his sadness, and he needed to care for them as his wife had. So, he took them downstairs into the living room, sat them down and hugged them. He looked into their eyes, red from crying, held their faces into his hands, and whispered: “I will try my best to be your mother and your father.” At first, hearing those words, my grandmother’s teenage mind did not quite understand them. She believed that she was ready to live without a mother, that she had prepared herself enough and didn’t need her father to do that for her. She could cook, she could clean, and she could wash up, but that was not what motherhood was. A mother is a loving soul, the person that watches over her children, raises them up to soar, and catches them when they fall back down. Eventually, my grandmother began to understand this, to see how much her mother mattered to her, and how irreplaceable she was, and she began to miss her mother more and more.

Looking back, my grandmother is touched by the caring, gentle words her father told her. Her father grew up with nothing. He was a poor immigrant and barely had enough money for food. But this just made him appreciate the world more. It made him generous and loving, and turned him into the man that cared for her. He held her close and comforted her when he was in pain, and wiped away his tears to catch hers. He put his feelings and overwhelming emotions aside to care for and cherish her. These words now touch my grandmother's heart, and she understands how kind her father was to have the generosity to save her when she was in tears, breaking down. In her darkest moments, he shone through as her angel, a glowing savior, and swooped her back up to the skies. The compassionate words that my grandmother was told that day are ones that she has and always will forever remember. “I will be your mother.”

JONAH DANIELS: 2ND PLACE, NINTH GRADE

4/14/2020

What Igor and I both loved to do was to go to opera. When we first got married, neither of us knew much about opera because we had not gone as children and our parents didn’t expose us to that. One time, Igor was invited to speak in Austria, and as the world-famous Viennese Opera House is the centerpiece of tourism, our hosts invited us to a show. We went to a very well known performance called Tosca, and it was so wonderful that we got very excited about opera and we wanted to start learning more about it. We got cassettes back in those days, and you would have the libretto, which are the words on a little booklet in English and Italian. Igor was much more intense than I was, he would listen to the music and read the libretto. That way he would learn the words and understand the words. We learned about the music and then we would go and see the operas, and whenever we traveled we took the opportunity to see an opera in the city we were visiting.

At his Resting Shiva, the week-long period of mourning after he was buried, a man told me about how he discovered that one woman liked opera, so as he did a procedure on her, he sang opera. This allowed her to relax as the procedure occurred. Even though it was a simple and short story, remembering our shared love of the Opera from it comforted me.

In the aftermath of his death, I was in a lot of pain and despair. It was one of the most difficult parts of my life, and I felt lost. At his Shiva, many people showed up but did not know what to say to me while I was going through this difficult time. I found out that the ones that comforted me the most were those who did things such as tell me stories about Igor, and told me that my feelings were normal.

Igor became good friends with his former doctor residents, teaching them well and
treating them as human beings. There was one couple that both had different religions. The husband was Jewish and the wife was not, and as she had her first child, she was starting to think about what religion she wanted to teach her children. She liked Jewish traditions such as Friday night dinners, so one night they invited us over for Friday night dinner. During dinner, she told me how Igor would talk to her and tried to help her better understand Judaism, answering her questions about what it means to have a Jewish child. She said that Igor really helped her and made it easier to make her decision. Later, I heard that when she had her second child, she wanted them to be Jewish, and she and the rest of the family converted to Judaism.

Stories such as these that described how Igor helped others really comforted me. These compassionate stories allowed me to realize his everlasting impact on others and not just me. Although compassion and empathy are similar, I believe that the thing that sets them apart is that when you show compassion, you take action and say something rather than just be understanding. During my time of grief and suffering, the most helpful were those who took action to help me. Through the stories that showed me compassion, the people and stories encouraged me to keep on moving forward, comforting me by seeing the lasting impact Igor had on others. Without these stories, my life would have turned out much differently than it is now.

By moving past this experience, the way people treated me with compassion completely changed the way I handle tough situations. I have a friend that I sometimes visit, and she is frustrated about how she is getting older and unable to do the things she used to do. I can relate to her because I am also in a similar situation, growing older as well. Because I know what types of compassion work on me, now I am more understanding towards those around me. I listen to those when they are suffering, and when they are going through tough times, I use my
experiences to help them during their time of suffering.

Even today, I continue doing the things that Igor and I did together. I still continue to go to operas, and whenever I go, rather than making me sad, it makes me feel close to him and brings back wonderful memories. I continue with the joint love that we had, enjoying the opera at home or at a concert hall. Even though those stories were probably not a big deal to them, they changed my entire view of being without him. Although he is gone, his impact will forever live on in the memories of other people.

GRACE JOHNSON: 3RD PLACE, NINTH GRADE

4/14/2020

Compassion can come from many places. A person telling you that you dropped your wallet on the street, for example. However, it means the most when compassion comes from someone you love and trust. Empathy, kindness, encouragement, and everything else compassion stands for are vital in any relationship.

In 1968 I was born the second oldest of four children in small town New Jersey. As I
grew older I started to struggle with severe depression and anxiety, which I still live with today.

In the 80s mental illness was way more taboo than it is today, so on top of feeling awful all the time, I didn’t know how to cope with what I was going through. Eventually I went to a psychiatrist, and then many psychiatrists. All of which did not make me feel any better, in fact these experiences made me feel worse.

After high school, I was too sick to go to college. Instead, I decided to move to New York City. A year or two later my mental illness had not gotten much easier to deal with, and on top of that I was a single mother. However, now I had direction. I had something to work towards, because I had decided to become a doctor. I wanted to be a psychiatrist, to help those who were struggling like me. I had decided to become the person that I needed most when I was young.

I threw myself into my studies at community college, then moved to Baltimore to attend Johns Hopkins. I met my husband as an undergrad, he was a teaching aid in my biology class. We stayed together through my college years, and then got married while I was in med school. My depression had not faded, but now I had learned new ways to cope and deal with my sickness. Everything was on track until I had to go through residency.

Residency is where a med school graduate works at a hospital to gain skills in an actual work environment before they can start working for real. While I was in residency, a woman had an invasive surgery that she didn’t need. The radiologist who ordered the surgery said that I had told him to do this, which was absolutely crazy because I was just an intern. My job was to learn and help out with small tasks, not to make important medical decisions for patients. Nonetheless, the entire department believed him and not me. I got in so much trouble there was a big meeting where all of my superiors talked about what to do about me.

Unsurprisingly, nobody at the meeting was on my side. They all voted to kick me out of the department. A meeting with the chief of the department of medicine was scheduled. This all would have been very stressful for a healthy person to deal with, but my anxiety made this a very very difficult time.

Finally the day of the meeting came. I got there early and was trying to hold myself
together in the parking lot. Against all odds I had gotten this far, and it was all about to be taken away. On my way there I had called my husband, just to get some reassurance, and as I was waiting he pulled into the parking lot. He had driven two hours from work to meet me. He told me that I was a good person and that no matter what everything would be OK. His compassion was the only thing that gave me the strength to go into that meeting.

I walked into the office and heard the chief say that he did not think that I should be allowed to stay in the program. However, the chief continued to say that the psychiatry department had stepped in and that I would just be moved to another part of the hospital.

The only reason I could enter the office was because of that moment of compassion and encouragement in the parking lot. Hearing the news was not half as hard as stepping foot inside the building. Reassurance from someone I loved helped me do that. Compassion can come from anywhere, but it means the most if it is from someone you love.

DA'JAE STINNETTE: 1ST PLACE, TWELFTH GRADE

4/14/2020

To have compassion or to be compassionate to someone means to be sympathetic and concerned for the misfortunes of others. I interviewed my mother to learn about a time where she was shown compassion from someone else. I chose my mother because I know that life has not been easy for her and I was interested to see an important moment where kindness was shown to her.

Below is her story.

My mother, Natalie, was born and raised in the city of Baltimore so she has not been a stranger to the violence that this city holds, however she never could have predicted that someone she loved would be a victim to the ongoing violence in this city. She never would have thought that it would hit this close to home. Antawn and her met in the year of 2002 and welcomed my little brother, Antwan, in 2004. They had a long journey of 10+ years together but they grew apart and ended their relationship a couple of years ago. Though they were no longer in a relationship, they shared a bond and raised their son together.

On October 11, 2019, Antawn’s car was shot approximately 10 times, 5 bullets pierced his skin and he passed away on October 12, 2019. My mother couldn’t explain how she felt. From seeing him laying in the hospital bed, holding his hand as he took his last breath or him laying in the casket... she honestly still can’t explain how she feels about her son's father being gone. Antawn being gone not only left us all distraught but it was also difficult because it left her without the support and the extra help. For example, on certain days he would take my brother to football practice or basketball practice, now she has no one to share that responsibility with. One of the biggest obstacles was paying her son's tuition because he attends a Catholic high school which means it isn’t cheap. The tuition is $330 a month. Her and Antawn went half for August, my mom paid for the month of September and Antwan was supposed to pay October.

About a week after his death, my mother was sitting in Weis parking lot because she stopped there on her way to work. She was talking to a friend and she was asking how my mother was holding up. This particular friend is also a coworker and she would always joke around and say how my brother would marry her daughter one day because she wants her son in law to be a future athlete. My mom stated that it was strange that she called her this day because she would usually text her around that time due to the fact that my mother would usually be at work. A few
days prior, she asked my mother about the school that Antwan attends but my mother didn't think anything of it at the time.

On this particular day she asked her “ Are you sitting down?” in which my mom replied that she was.

“Good because I need to tell you something and you don't have to tell anyone else, but Antwans tuition is paid. With everything that yall have going on, the last thing you and him need to worry about is his education.” she stated. All my mom could do after hearing her say that was cry until they were both bawling on the phone together. My mother was going through a lot ever since his death and she's never been the type to ask for help so for her to voluntarily help just made my mother feel so grateful and overwhelmed. My mother later found out that she paid $1900 dollars for the entire school year.

My mother has always been the type of person to show compassion to others. If she has it, then she will definitely will help anyone who needs it. That is why this act of compassion was so important to her because although she always helps others, It isn't often that the help is replicated.

This was my first time hearing about this act of compassion that was shown towards my mother and it honestly made me feel grateful and overwhelmed with joy. My mother has 3 kids and she basically raised us all by herself. Despite her being a single mom, I never had to worry about my next meal or having a roof over my head because she always made it happen. When my brother's father passed away, it negatively affected my entire family. Not only did he lose his life but he lost it to the violence in Baltimore. Nothing has ever been easy for my mom but I know that this was definitely one of the most hurtful things that could have happened to her and my brother. I saw her cry many times after he died and it hurt my heart because nobody ever wants to see their mother distraught or in pain. Knowing that there are still good people out there not only made me feel better but it also inspired me. Hearing about her friend that paid my brother's tuition, made me want to be like her. I would like to be someone in the world that helps others because I saw how much her kindness positively affected my mother and I would like to have that same effect on others.

2020 Call for volunteers

11/24/2019

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 2020, students will earn $6,000 in awards.

We are set to have 500 student writers this year, so we need more help than ever. 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 Sunday, March 15, 2020 and asked to submit scores (according to a rubric that will be provided) by Sunday, March 29, 2020.

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 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 21, 2020 from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at Baltimore City College High School (3220 The Alameda, Baltimore, Maryland 21218). You can volunteer all day or any portion of the day.

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.

Free Advice: Lori Gottlieb on bad first drafts and authenticity

6/11/2019

Lori Gottlieb is the New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. The book grew out of a relationship that drove Gottlieb, a psychotherapist, to see a therapist herself. She had to learn in a deeply personal way the kinds of things she helps her patients understand about longing, identity, and connection. She writes with candor and wit about a painful, sometimes humiliating process and why every moment of it was worth it.

Baldwin Prize founder Lionel Foster spoke with Gottlieb about how she turned raw personal experience into a story that is connecting with millions of strangers.

Edited by David Dudley

How old were you when you started writing for more than just school assignments? Was it always something you liked to do?

When I was younger, I kept diaries, but I kept them hidden. I never thought I would be a writer, although I always loved reading. I loved the way it could take me to other worlds and help me to see myself in other people's experiences. I took a lot of solace in books, especially when things were hard.

When I decided to go to medical school, I went looking for my old science notes, and I found this diary. I shared it with a friend who had grown up with me. He was a writer, and he said, “This is a book—you should make this into a book.” I said, “Why would anybody want to read that?” But he was right. And it became my first book. And then I started really enjoying the process of writing.

That’s such a good question: Why would anyone want to read that? Something might resonate with you personally, but it requires work and some kind of transmutation for it to feel relevant for people who aren't connected to that experience. How do you move from the intensely personal to something that's relatable to others?

I used to think that if it was very personal, nobody would relate to it. But I’ve come to realize that the personal is universal. Even if somebody hasn't had that exact experience, they will see aspects of themselves in your experience. We really are more the same than we are different. You’ve experienced those emotions: You've experienced shame, sadness, anxiety, anger, feeling mischaracterized—the taboo feelings like envy. Everybody experiences those. The more we put them out there, the more people say, “Oh, you understand me.”

I think you're absolutely right. If you step out and show yourself, warts and all, it opens up something in other people and allows them to do the same thing. Why do we have these taboos? Every time I've taken that step, people have responded positively.

Because we don't realize how normal we are. We feel like, “Oh, people are going to see something about me that's going to make them not like me—they’ll think something's wrong with me.” The opposite is what actually happens. The more you tell the truth of your story, the more you draw people towards you.

So there's the truth and sometimes the rawness of that experience. But there’s also writerly craft and technique. Can you talk about that? Because you need both.

That's exactly right. Anne Lamott, who wrote a great book about writing called Bird by Bird, talks about “shitty first drafts.” Your first draft is just getting it on paper.

Everyone's story has an inherent narrative: There's a beginning, middle, and end. The end doesn't have to be, “And now it's all better” or “Now we’ve solved that.” The end might be a new emotional place you got to, even if you're still struggling. How did you go from the place you started to the place you are now?

As you go from one draft to another, is there anything about that process you find especially difficult?

There’s a temptation to clean yourself up in the second draft. We get self-conscious. Don’t do that, because you'll be taking out the realness, the authenticity.

In my new book, I don't come off in the way I would want to present myself to the world. There was a temptation to say, “Do I really have to show how clueless I was? Do I have to show how resistant I was to seeing what was right in front of me? Do I have to show that session where I just cried the whole time? Do I have to show that I couldn't hold it together and I was falling apart on my bedroom floor?” And, yes, I did have to show that, because that was true to the story.

Sometimes, what we need to clean up in the second draft is too many words: Often less is more. You can show a scene, but you don't have to show the play-by-play. You show the emotional resonance of the scene.

How do you know what to strip away?

It’s important to get another reader. In my case, I have editors. The editor will say, “This wasn't clear to me,” or “I don't think we need this,” or “We need to move this up.” They’ll help you with structure and pacing and telling the story in a way that makes sense to the reader. We know our stories, so sometimes we don't realize we're not being clear. We fill in the gaps in our mind. But the reader is hearing it for the first time.

At the end of that process, what’s it feel like to finally be done?

It feels great when you push “send” on that manuscript. Remember, you’ve gone through lots of drafts at this point. When you turn it in, you feel, “Ah, that was great.” And then, like three weeks later, you've got to rewrite the whole thing.

You have to relish the moments of accomplishment, because writing is hard. A lot of people look at successful authors and think it's easy: They just write these books, and it just magically happens. It doesn’t. It's hard to sit down and not get distracted by the Internet or whatever. You need the discipline to say, “I'm going to sit down for an hour of uninterrupted time, and this is all I'm going to do.”

And when you do that, it makes you feel so good, even if it didn’t seem like you accomplished something. Maybe it wasn't a good writing day, but just write something. Regardless of what happens in terms of publishing, it feels good to sit down and clear your mind and understand more about what was inside of you.

When I was an opinion columnist, I wrote about social policy issues from a very personal perspective, and I thought hard about how much of other people’s stories and identities to expose. I imagine that's something you do, too. Your son is in this book, for example, and so is your significant other. How do you know how much of other people's stories to expose as you tell your own?

That's a great question. My son got to read the parts he was in and give me thumbs-up or thumbs-down. That was important, because I don't want to tell his story in a way that he doesn't feel reflects his experience.

In terms of the romantic relationship, you know, I call him “Boyfriend” in the book. I never use his name, and I don't give away a lot of detail. What's interesting is he starts off as a villain, but as I grow, we realize that I had a role in this, too. I think that's more interesting for readers. I was doing a lot of the same things, and I didn't realize it. That humanized both of us. You can't just write about somebody else from a place of anger: You have to find a place of empathy for who they are and why they did what they did.

So the Baldwin Prize was inspired by the life and work of James Baldwin, and you have at least one quote from Baldwin in your book: “Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction. But nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.” What’s your relationship to Baldwin's work?

I think that Baldwin was one of these people who really wrote honestly and personally about his life. And I'm always drawn to memoir. I'm always drawn to people's real stories. When someone says, “This was my experience, and I'm going to share it with you,” that is so bold.

I'm doing this interview for high school students who are learning how to become better writers. What else do you think they should know?

It’s really important for them to believe in themselves. They’re going to face people who aren't fans of their work. You can't let those voices overpower you. You have a story to tell, and it's important, and someone will respond. Don't give up because you got some negative feedback: Use that to fuel you to improve your writing.

So many times people think—like I thought—“nobody wants to hear this story.” No, we do. We actually want to hear your story. Never think that somebody doesn't want to hear your story. Your story is inherently interesting.

2019 Awards Ceremony

5/27/2019