The Writer’s Path to Carnegie Hall

Colin Johnson, a 14-year-old Laguna Beach resident is headed for Carnegie Hall this summer, but not to play in a concert. Johnson, a seventh grader at St. Margaret’s Episcopal School in San Juan Capistrano, is a skateboarder who moonlights as a writer and poet and does a mighty fine job of it.

So fine, in fact, that he has won two national gold medals and one silver medal in the 2007 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards contest, for which he will be honored at Carnegie Hall with special events on June 14 and 15, with an awards ceremony on the evening of June 15.

Out of 100,000 art and writing entries submitted to the contest by seventh to 12th graders, 350 writing entries were awarded national gold and silver medals. Colin, who submitted six entries in all, received two gold medals for his short stories “Make the Moon Dance for Me” and “The Tomb Painter” and a silver medal for his collection of poetry, “In Götheréan,” which he has been working on for the past four years.

Colin originally put together his writing submissions because entering the contest was “something the school was doing,” and so he participated along with others. He never gave it much thought after that and certainly never expected to win. “I was very surprised,” he confessed. “I thought it was just a joke at first because I really couldn’t believe it would happen to me.”

Asked whether he had a preference for writing or poetry, Colin was unequivocal about liking both equally for different reasons. “In stories,” he explained, “you get to create characters, which is really fun and you get to control them,” while in poetry, “you create some beautiful images and pictures that people can see when they read it.” Colin is transparently enthusiastic about his writing, although it hasn’t always been that way.

“I remember when Colin used to prefer science to writing,” said Clarissa Ngo, his English teacher. “But he worked on it, and now he’s going to be honored at Carnegie Hall. It just goes to show you that anything is possible.” In recent years, Colin’s work was twice published in Stone Soup, a magazine that takes less than one percent of its international submissions, once by McGraw Hill in a backpack reader, and once in a standardized test.

As for a future career as a writer, Colin says it is too early to say. As passionate as he is about writing, Colin is just as passionate about skateboarding. In fact, he sees writing as a possible means to furthering his skateboarding pursuits by making plans on how to spend the royalty checks. “I’m going to collect them all, then build a house with ramps so I can skateboard inside.”

In the meantime, Colin will savor the award experience, making his first trip to New York City also a trip to Carnegie Hall. His family already planned a summer trip to visit Civil War sites in Virginia. They will happily make a detour.