Barbie + Girls Write Now: The Inspiring Women Writing Contest Collection
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The Barbie Dream Gap Project and Girls Write Now teamed up for a writing contest in celebration of Isabel Allende.
Isabel Allende’s books tell the stories of inspiring girls and women— participants were asked to write a story about a girl, woman, or gender expansive individual who discovers their power(s)—whether real, fictional, or even magical.
WINNER (9-12 CATEGORY)
Angela Stands Up
By Roxy Loneman-Meyer
Angela was 10 years old. She just moved from Vietnam to Somerville, Massachusetts. She was starting her first Ghost Festival away from her original home. The Ghost Festival is a holiday where people celebrate their ancestors with a delicious meal and extra chairs and plates of food for their ancestors in the summer, and she was afraid that her ancestors couldn’t find her because she lived in Somerville. She was scared and lonely because no one wanted to be her friend. They thought she was weird and ignorant.
Roxy Loneman-Meyer
Roxy Loneman-Meyer (they/them) is a 10 year-old student from Westbrook, Maine. They are the winner of the Barbie Dream Gap Project x Girls Write Now: Inspiring Women Writing Contest (age 9-12 category).
WINNER (13-18 CATEGORY)
And So She Did
By Sophie Da Silva
Tlack. Tlack. Tlack. That was the sound of Anayeli’s once-white Reeboks hitting the gravel, a mixture of crushed rock and dried mulch. Today was the day she would win. The path around the canary yellow field was four hundred meters long and worn down from the constant heat spell and humidity in the air. Hoo. Hoo. Hoo. Anayeli’s breathing remained constant, every step she took was accompanied by the sound of her heart beating and her lungs contracting. She had planned this race well for weeks. Start near the end of the pack of sweaty boys and work her way to the front. She could see Jose and Jacob’s shirt backs up ahead. I am a jaguar. She loosened her arms with each stride. I have the strength of a thousand suns. Sun. Sun. Sun. She reached Jose and stayed with him for a bit as she rounded the corner of the path. Of course, he tried to speed up once Anayeli started to pass him. But Anayeli remembered. She remembered every day after school the sweat soaked practices and her coach with his gray stopwatch timing them lap after lap, set after set. “Try to keep up to the boys if you can,” he would say. “You’re getting pretty fast for a girl.” No, coach, I am faster than the boys. I am speed.
Sophie Da Silva
Sophie Da Silva is an avid sixteen-year-old writer living in Houston,Texas. Through her poetry, shortstories, flash fiction, and her first novel in the works, she hopes to explore her multicultural Latine background and share stories that touch readers. Her most recent work was published in the Girls Write Now 2024 Anthology and is also forthcoming in several publications. Aside from writing, she loves running, reading, and promoting sustainability in fashion!
HONORABLE MENTION (9-12 CATEGORY)
A Pain to Escape
By Adiba Halim
Aurora sits there looking out onto the audience filled with women of all ages and color, thinking back on her own past and how she came to write a book. Aurora looks at the interviewer with a warm smile, ready to give her answer.
HONORABLE MENTIONS (13-18 CATEGORY)
Raising Good Southern Women
By Savannah Massey
She sat across from me, bleach-blonde hair still in pastel curlers that had been abused like that since the 1970s, stirring her morning coffee. “You dress like a boy but I know, deep down, you’re a girly girl.”
the silence she swallowed whole
By Isabella George
But somewhere, she knew there was more. Something deeper, hidden in the cracks between what they taught her to be and what she dared to become. The voice of resistance read like scripture in her bones.