Every year, Oak Park High School selects a handful of students to be featured in the Veritas literary magazine. The application requires a submission emailed to English teacher Jessica Wall and prize money for certain competitions ranges from $10-$25. Any student at OPHS can apply and be selected for the competition. The magazine is available at the student store for $5.

This year, two competitions were held separately from the general publication of the actual creative writing magazine. The theme for the separate Writpiece was “Love Poetry” and the first place prize went to junior Chalize Ocon. 

“My poem is about what my personal ideal person would be. It’s about the idea of someone, a sort of romanticized person that doesn’t exist. I actually really didn’t think I was going to win the competition,” Ocon wrote. “I didn’t think it would win because there’s just so many talented writers, and I haven’t been in love before, so that combination made me believe it wouldn’t win.”

Second place prize went to junior Sinjon Laughton; third place went to junior Violet Kommers. 

There was an additional competition for the front cover of the magazine itself, for which the first place prize was taken by freshman Juliette Nosek. She captured a floating book with flashing lights in the background to be featured as the cover.

“This photo was taken in a completely dark room and took 20 seconds for the camera to capture. To create the bursts of light, I ran behind the book with a flashlight and waved it in all sorts of directions. Since the camera’s shutter was on so long, it captured all of the light, and not me behind it,” Nosek wrote.