Honorable Mentions Named for Our Writing Contest in Partnership with Lena Dunham and Random House

The Honorable Mentions Have Been Chosen for Our Contest in Partnership with Lena Dunham and Random House

August 17, 2026

We recently held a writing contest and philanthropic fund in partnership with Lena Dunham and Random House. It featured a prompt inspired by Lena’s #1 New York Times bestseller, Famesick, which asked writers to write about “a moment you stopped performing, named something you’d been told to keep quiet, or found relief in writing down what you couldn’t say out loud.”

The contest was open to all girls, women, and gender-expansive youth across the United States, ages 14-24. With hundreds of entries from individuals both within and outside the Girls Write Now community, a panel of judges named Ariel Zhang’s poem, “someday i’ll love,” as the winning piece. Read more about Ariel’s win here.

Honorable mentions include Girls Write Now mentee Kylie Lohse’s personal essay, “But You Don’t Look Autistic,”; Maura Cleary’s piece, “The Reconciliation Room,”; Deepa Alugupali’s “For years, I was very good at being fine,” and “Up & Down” by Izzy Ster. The pieces were judged by authors Sinéad Burke, Hunter Harris, and Jane Pratt, along with the Girls Write Now’s editorial committee.