Chasing Spirits + Girls Write Now
Writing for Life Essay Contest
Honoring Maya Logan Eileraas
Girls Write Now proudly joined forces with Chasing Spirits to present the inaugural "Writing for Life" Writing Prize. This award honors the free, rebellious spirit of fourteen-year-old Maya Logan Eileraas, who used the pandemic to write their novel and fought for writing as a lifeline while in foster care and mental healthcare facilities. Together, we amplify the vitality of today’s most promising young writers who use the power of their creative voices to confront the world around them.
Essay Contest Writing Prompt
Maya's Story
About The Novel Chasing Spirits
Chasing Spirits honors the audacity and integrity of Maya Logan’s chosen path and the creative expressions that sustained them: intricate brushstrokes on canvas, poetic verses echoing their deepest thoughts, melodies strummed in solitude, and the midnight aromas of freshly baked confections.
After six months on the run from DCFS custody, hospital emergency rooms, adolescent psychiatric wards, police cars, strangers’ apartments, ambulances, and temporary shelters, Maya Logan was found unconscious in a group home in north Los Angeles.
Late one night in May 2021 during a global pandemic, fourteen-year-old Maya Logan Eileraas ran away to live with their girlfriend in Bel Air. “Nothing left to lose,” they posted on social media. Searching for their own truths around identity, home, family, world, and belonging, Maya Logan was fiercely determined to author a new life.
More than a tribute to an extraordinary teenager’s bold journey into the wild, gift for storytelling, and art of self-invention, Chasing Spirits is a stunning meditation on what it means to love, a nuanced exploration of the infinite complexity of the human psyche, and an unflinching look at a rebel heart whose light was extinguished too soon.
Centering Maya Logan’s novel, penned during the isolation of remote learning, as a testament to their profound introspection and boundless imagination, Chasing Spirits brings together investigative journalism, personal reflections, short stories, artwork, social media posts, and secret journals.
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
Joan Didion
First Prize Winner (Ages 13-15)
We Will Always Belong Somewhere
By Bobin Shim
Apparently, as a kid, my parents took me out to the city all the time to see things from zoos to museums, and I can’t remember any of it. What I can remember, though, are the stories I made in my head while I was bored, lonely, and most of the time, both. I was constantly lost in my own head, telling my mom about how I still remembered seeing God putting me in a plastic box in heaven like those American Girl Dolls I saw at Toys-R-Us. Even now, it’s the only thing I can remember from when I was that young.
First Prize Winner (Ages 16-19)
Seeds of Stigma
By Ivanna Sintes-Klein
I was just a flower, planted in a garden I didn’t choose.
The soil was the school, and the gardeners were the teachers. Some watered us with kindness, while others neglected us, pulling petals they didn’t understand, trimming stems that didn’t grow as they wanted.
Seeds get planted in the mind. Teachers, friends, and parents shape how you see others, treat differences, and respond when you hit rock bottom. For me, the most powerful seed was how I viewed mental health.
From the beginning, I watched the other flowers. Some bloomed brightly, reaching toward the sun. Others wilted, bruised by storms no one could see. Some curled their petals inward, quiet and afraid. Some grew thorns, not to hurt anyone, but to protect what was left after being stepped on too many times.
Honorable Mentions (Ages 13-15)
The Words That Make Us Whole
By Carolyn Austin
I used to think families were supposed to look a certain way, like in picture books where mom, dad, and kids smile together in matching sweaters. At father-daughter dances at school, I stood against the gym wall and watched other girls in my class twirl in their fathers’ arms and felt like I was missing an essential piece of myself. My family felt like a half-finished sentence, or like a book missing a page.
A Letter to You and I
By Alexandria Thornycroft
Dear Alexandria,
It was the end of 5th grade. You practically followed your queer friend around like a dog. They never really cried, and I think that you looked up to them for that. Our mother and father were not afraid of making homophobic jokes, the same for our friends. It wasn’t taught in your house that being gay was a sin or anything close to that. I fear our family knew you were queer even before you stopped wearing dresses. Still, those little jokes made all the difference.
Honorable Mentions (Ages 16-19)
I Was Made to Be Big Before I Was Allowed to Be Small
By Veony Marie Artis
Growing up Black, plus-size, and queer in a world that rarely leaves space for even one of those truths was not just a hardship; it was a curriculum. I learned early what it meant to be watched, to be labeled, to be handled like a problem before I could even define myself as a person. I was forced into a version of strength that had nothing to do with empowerment and everything to do with survival.
The world didn’t wait for me to grow; it handed me armor before I asked for a mirror. Before I knew what femininity felt like in my own body, it was already taken from me. My body was policed and politicized before I ever got to call it beautiful. I was made to be big—loud, strong, unbreakable—before I was allowed to be small, soft, questioning.
They Called Me Blasphemy, I Called It Poetry
By Saraí Pérez
After bidding goodbye to the only place I have ever known—my country Venezuela—and facing the isolation of the pandemic in Colombia, I felt my identity fading.
Colombia was like confusing cumin for cinnamon in a cupcake recipe. Everything felt out of place. I was displaced to Colombia, an immigrant for the first time. My life was confined to the pages of Alejandra Pizarnik and Socrates. But basketball changed something in me; it awakened my desire to grow, to come back to life, to compete, to connect with others.
My mom didn’t want me to join the team. She complained that basketball was only for boys and that the few girls who played were definitely lesbians. A sin. Back then, there were only three girls on the team: Geraldine, Jhara, and Rolierquis, though everyone called her “La Mella.” Little did I know she would soon become the center of my world.
