Creative Writing
About Creative Writing
Words can build worlds, capture a moment, challenge an idea, or give shape to something deeply personal. The Creative Writing discipline invites young writers to explore the power of their own voice through poetry, fiction, nonfiction, plays, screenplays, and more. Whether you’re telling a story only you can tell or imagining something entirely new, we want to experience the world through your words.
Meet some review panelists!
Creative Youth Award submissions are reviewed by accomplished writers, educators, and industry professionals who bring a range of perspectives and experience to the process. Meet a few of the Creative Writing panelists who help recognize and celebrate the voices of young writers across the Bay Area:
-
Antonio López is San Mateo County’s 2025-2027 Poet Laureate. He holds degrees from Duke University, Rutgers-Newark, and the University of Oxford as a 2018 Marshall Scholar. His poetry and essays have appeared in numerous publications, anthologies and podcasts including Poetry Foundation, Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology, The Slowdown, Poetry Daily, among others. Antonio served his hometown of East Palo Alto, as a councilmember and mayor for the from 2020 to 2024. He is currently finishing his PhD in the Modern Thought and Literature program at Stanford University.
-
2023 Panelist
Alexis Madrigal is the co-host of KQED’s Forum. He is also a contributing writer at The Atlantic, the co-founder of the COVID Tracking Project, and the creator of the podcast, Containers. He was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley's Information School, and is working on a book about Oakland and the Bay Area's revolutionary ideas.
-
2025 Panelist
Claudia is an author and scholar from Chiapas, Mexico. She is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative writing at Dominican University of California. And she also is the author of two novels No habra retorno (2015), winner of the Rosario Castellanos National Novel Award 2015, and Cálao Bicorne (2023). Recently, her short fiction book Lacandona Speed was recognized in the First International Intergenre Writing Contest in Spanish in Canada and the United States, Literal, Latin American Voices
Awardee Highlights
