Student wins another writing award

Following on from winning the Editor’s Choice Prize in the New Zealand Writers Youth Laurate competition in early May, Xiaole Zhan (Year 13) has just won a second writing award. The Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand in conjunction with the University of Otago Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Festival ran a competition where school students could “Submit an essay on a Shakespeare topic of your choice. Length is up to 2000 words”. Xiaole’s essay was titled   “In Defense of Confusion – Love, Adolescence, and Shakespeare’s Zoo of Humanity”.  In it, she discusses two works – “Romeo and Juliet” and “Much Ado About Nothing”  and goes into what it means to be a young and modern reader of Shakespeare’s plays. She won 1^st= from the hundreds of essays submitted. As well as a monetary prize, Xiaole also gets a one year Membership to the prestigious New Zealand Society of Authors.