The Orinda Junior Women’s Club is thrilled to announce the winners of Youth Ink 2025, the annual creative writing contest open to middle school students who live in or attend school in Orinda. The prompt for this year’s event was “The Capes We Wear,” though participants had the freedom to explore other topics. Here are the talented winners of this year’s top prizes:
- 1st Prize: Natalie Zhen, “Beneath All These Threads”
- 2nd Prize: Olivia MacDiarmid, “Counting by Color”
- 3rd Prize: Joanna Yu, “Threads of Bravery”
In addition, we’d like to acknowledge the honorable mentions for their commendable entries (in alphabetical order):
- Ava Allaire, “Finding Grace”
- Nithya Amilineni, “The Life I Had”
- Caroline Compton, “The Merry-go-round”
- Casey Eun, “Until”
- Olivia Kirk, “Our Group”
- Isabella Park “My Symbols of Strength”
- Jaya Patel, “Cloaked”
- Olivia Spoto, “Her Forgotten Stories”
- Eva Sway, “Two”
- Mao Yoshikuni, “Echo of Ashes”
The awards ceremony took place at the Orinda Library Auditorium, with guest speaker, Praveen Singh, Chief Marketing Officer of TYT Network. We extend our gratitude to all participants for sharing their talents with us. We are very grateful for our volunteer judges – Linda Bizzarri, A.J. Brown, Anne Lowell, and Sana Shukairy. They thoughtfully provided time and expertise in reading each entry and contemplating this year’s winners among a stellar pool of entries. Lastly, we’d like to thank our community sponsors: Friends of the Orinda Library, The Intuitive Writing Project, Lamorinda Arts Council and Orinda Community Foundation.
