Writing a future for herself as an author

CORNWALL — Anna D’Alvia wants to be a writer when she grows up. But it seems that it’s not going to work out the way she planned. It turns out she’s well ahead of schedule. She’s a writer now, and has already won prizes for two submissions to the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.The eighth-grader at Cornwall Consolidated School placed in the Northeast Regional Competition. She earned a Silver Key Award for poetry and a Gold Key Award for a short story in the “flash fiction” category. The latter will be judged along with Gold Key Award winners nationwide. National winners are recognized at a ceremony at Carnegie Hall in New York City.Whether Anna makes it to Carnegie Hall or not, she can already count herself among fellow award winners that include Andy Warhol, Sylvia Plath, Truman Capote, Richard Avedon, Robert Redford and Joyce Carol Oates.“Surprised” was how Anna described her reaction to the news. She was up against students in middle school and high school.Writing for the contest was assigned as part of an online writing course from school, called Crafting the Essay. “I feel like I learned a lot for the course,” she said, “but I never expected to win awards.”Anna has known she wanted to write ever since reading the novel “Watership Down” by Richard Adams.“It inspired me. I think mostly because it is about animals, which I love.”Her favorite animal is the wolf, although her pets are a little more typical: a dog, a cat and a lizard.“The Last Leaf” is Anna’s winning anthropomorphic essay. “I found the last leaf on a tree one autumn and I saved it. It was lying on a shelf in my room all wrinkled and doing nothing. I decided to write my essay about its memories of when it was strong on the branch, and in the autumn, when all the other leaves had fallen down.”Anna’s poetry comes almost accidentally.“Sometimes when I’m stuck on a story I just write everything that’s on my mind, and sometimes it turns into a poem.”Her winning poem is called “Sounds in a Lonely World.”Anna entered another Scholastic competition, sending in a short novel. Given the length of the submission, winners won’t be announced for about a year, but Anna said a medal for that would be well worth the wait.