Oak Park High School’s Literary Arts Club held its bi-annual Writpiece competition where the winners will have an opportunity to see their work in this year’s issue of “Veritas.”

Starting last year, this club began holding themed Writpiece competitions to encourage student involvement in “Veritas,” their annual literary magazine. This publication is student-run and club members collaborate to select submissions and curate the magazine with the help of their adviser, English teacher Jessica Wall-Smith.

The Literary Arts Club’s current president, Marina Chukhlebova, and Wall-Smith were behind the initiative for the competitions.

“The idea was that we wanted to support students’ writing endeavors throughout
the entire year,” Wall-Smith said. “If we held more competitions that highlighted poetry, or certain genres of short story writing, then we could generate more campus involvement, highlight more voices and have some fun while doing so.”

Each competition has a theme, this year’s being “Languages of Poetry.” Normally, themes are picked by the president and members of the club’s board.

“This [theme selection] was unique in that Hunter Glass, who is not in Veritas, but is actually the president of the Spanish Honors Society approached [the club with this idea],” Wall-Smith said. “He has a passion for creative writing and wondered if he could partner with Veritas to highlight more languages through creative writing since so many people on our campus are multilingual.”

After selecting the theme, the club began promoting the competition to maximize submissions.

“We design flyers and do a big push, especially in English classes for teachers to advertise. We get on the video announcements and the student bulletin so everyone is aware of the theme,” Wall-Smith said. “From there [students] have about a month to write.”

Club members are responsible for reviewing and rating each submission piece based on a club-created rubric.

“The club has decided each year what the rating rubric will be and since it’s entirely student-run, the students ultimately decide,” Wall-Smith said. “Immediately after [the deadline,] each club member is assigned to a different piece and we have multiple people who review each piece. We aggregate those ratings and a first, second and third place emerges.”

The deadline for the “Languages of Poetry” submissions ended Oct. 15. Students can expect the results sometime between November and early December.

“[Now students] should be thinking about submitting for general application for the Veritas literary magazine which will be open from November through December,” Wall-Smith said.