Christiana Haight placed first in the 2023 ā 2024 League for Innovation International Student Literary Competition, becoming the first 51ĀŅĀ× student to earn the first-place title in the competitionās history.
Christianaās featured poem in the international competition was titled, Your Yellow Paint. While writing this poem, she drew inspiration from the life and works of Vincent van Gogh and his ability to capture beauty through personal pain. āIāve always loved his work,ā shared Christiana. āI have always resonated with how he found beauty in things, even though he struggled with so much darkness.ā
Christiana also earned the prestigious 51ĀŅĀ× Skip Renker Creative Writing Award for her 20-poem portfolio submission. āIn her poems, she takes on powerful, personal experiences, but in her way also makes them universal,ā shared Jeffery Vande Zande, 51ĀŅĀ× English professor.
When Christiana returned to school last year, it was initially an investment to advance her administrative career. But after her first English class, she remembered how much she loved to write. Now with several creative and advanced writing courses and a few awards under her belt, sheās empowered to continue sharing her captivating poetry with the world. Her award-winning work will be published in the League for Innovationās annual literary anthology this fall.
