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 1st= 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.

Westlake Girls High School
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